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Stopping and starting a PostgreSQL cluster

Written by
Updated at December 25, 2025

If necessary, you can stop and restart a PostgreSQL cluster. During cluster downtime, you are only billed for your storage and backups, as per your pricing policy.

Alert

If a cluster uses local SSD storage (local-ssd), its computing resources are not released when it's stopped. This means that you are charged in full even for a stopped cluster.

Stopping a cluster

You can stop the cluster if you're not going to use the DBMS you launched for a while.

Note

Stopping a cluster is not allowed if it has no backups. In order to stop it, you must create its backup first.

  1. Go to Managed Service for PostgreSQL.
  2. Select your cluster in the list, click , and select Stop.
  3. Confirm cluster shutdown, then click Stop.

If you do not have the Yandex Cloud CLI installed yet, install and initialize it.

By default, the CLI uses the folder specified when creating the profile. To change the default folder, use the yc config set folder-id <folder_ID> command. You can also set a different folder for any specific command using the --folder-name or --folder-id parameter.

To stop a cluster, run this command:

yc managed-postgresql cluster stop <cluster_name_or_ID>

You can get the cluster name and ID from the folder’s cluster list.

  1. Get an IAM token for API authentication and place it in an environment variable:

    export IAM_TOKEN="<IAM_token>"

  2. Call the Cluster.Stop method, for instance, via the following cURL request:

    curl \
    --request POST \
    --header "Authorization: Bearer $IAM_TOKEN" \
    --header "Content-Type: application/json" \
    --url 'https://mdb.api.cloud.yandex.net/managed-postgresql/v1/clusters/<cluster_ID>:stop'

    You can get the cluster ID from the folder’s cluster list.

  3. Check the server response to make sure your request was successful.

  1. Get an IAM token for API authentication and place it in an environment variable:

    export IAM_TOKEN="<IAM_token>"

  2. Clone the cloudapi repository:

    cd ~/ && git clone --depth=1 https://github.com/yandex-cloud/cloudapi

    Below, we assume the repository contents are stored in the ~/cloudapi/ directory.

  3. Call the ClusterService.Stop method, for instance, via the following gRPCurl request:

    grpcurl \
    -format json \
    -import-path ~/cloudapi/ \
    -import-path ~/cloudapi/third_party/googleapis/ \
    -proto ~/cloudapi/yandex/cloud/mdb/postgresql/v1/cluster_service.proto \
    -rpc-header "Authorization: Bearer $IAM_TOKEN" \
    -d '{
          "cluster_id": "<cluster_ID>"
        }' \
    mdb.api.cloud.yandex.net:443 \
    yandex.cloud.mdb.postgresql.v1.ClusterService.Stop

    You can get the cluster ID from the folder’s cluster list.

  4. Check the server response to make sure your request was successful.

Starting a cluster

You can restart Stopped clusters.

  1. Go to Managed Service for PostgreSQL.
  2. Select the stopped cluster in the list, click , and select Start.
  3. In the dialog that appears, click Start to confirm the cluster launch.

If you do not have the Yandex Cloud CLI installed yet, install and initialize it.

By default, the CLI uses the folder specified when creating the profile. To change the default folder, use the yc config set folder-id <folder_ID> command. You can also set a different folder for any specific command using the --folder-name or --folder-id parameter.

To start a stopped cluster, run this command:

yc managed-postgresql cluster start <cluster_name_or_ID>

You can get the cluster name and ID from the folder’s cluster list.

  1. Get an IAM token for API authentication and place it in an environment variable:

    export IAM_TOKEN="<IAM_token>"

  2. Call the Cluster.Start method, for instance, via the following cURL request:

    curl \
    --request POST \
    --header "Authorization: Bearer $IAM_TOKEN" \
    --header "Content-Type: application/json" \
    --url 'https://mdb.api.cloud.yandex.net/managed-postgresql/v1/clusters/<cluster_ID>:start'

    You can get the cluster ID from the folder’s cluster list.

  3. Check the server response to make sure your request was successful.

  1. Get an IAM token for API authentication and place it in an environment variable:

    export IAM_TOKEN="<IAM_token>"

  2. Clone the cloudapi repository:

    cd ~/ && git clone --depth=1 https://github.com/yandex-cloud/cloudapi

    Below, we assume the repository contents are stored in the ~/cloudapi/ directory.

  3. Call the ClusterService.Start method, for instance, via the following gRPCurl request:

    grpcurl \
    -format json \
    -import-path ~/cloudapi/ \
    -import-path ~/cloudapi/third_party/googleapis/ \
    -proto ~/cloudapi/yandex/cloud/mdb/postgresql/v1/cluster_service.proto \
    -rpc-header "Authorization: Bearer $IAM_TOKEN" \
    -d '{
          "cluster_id": "<cluster_ID>"
        }' \
    mdb.api.cloud.yandex.net:443 \
    yandex.cloud.mdb.postgresql.v1.ClusterService.Start

    You can get the cluster ID from the folder’s cluster list.

  4. Check the server response to make sure your request was successful.

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