BREAKING: Supabase pgBouncer Issues Affecting Older Projects — Workarounds Available

Supabase identifies pgBouncer connectivity issues on legacy projects. Immediate workarounds and mitigation steps inside.

Incident Summary

Supabase has identified pgBouncer connection pooling issues affecting select older projects. The issue impacts database connectivity for affected legacy instances, potentially causing connection timeouts and query failures.

What's Affected

Database connections through pgBouncer on older Supabase projects

Query execution may experience timeouts or "too many connections" errors

Primarily impacts projects that have not been recently migrated to newer infrastructure

Newer projects appear unaffected at this time

How to Check If You're Affected

1. Monitor your logs for: - "pgBouncer" error messages - "too many connections" errors - Connection timeout exceptions - "pooler error" messages in your application logs

2. Test connectivity: ```bash psql -h your-project.supabase.co -U postgres -d postgres ``` If this fails or hangs, your project may be affected.

3. Check Supabase status: Visit [status.supabase.com](https://status.supabase.com) for active incident details

Immediate Workarounds

Option 1: Direct Connection (Temporary)

Bypass pgBouncer by connecting directly to the PostgreSQL instance

Contact Supabase support for direct connection details

Note: This is a temporary measure; connection pooling should be restored

Option 2: Connection Pool Adjustment

Reduce max pool size in your application temporarily

Implement connection retry logic with exponential backoff

Add connection timeout settings:

```javascript // Example for Node.js const pool = new Pool({ max: 10, // Reduce from default idleTimeoutMillis: 30000, connectionTimeoutMillis: 5000, }); ```

Option 3: Application-Level Queuing

Implement request queuing to avoid connection storms

Use libraries like p-queue to manage concurrent requests

Limit simultaneous database operations

Option 4: Use Alternatives (Temporary)

Supabase REST API: Use HTTP endpoints instead of direct connections

GraphQL API: Switch to GraphQL queries if available for your use case

Reduces connection pool pressure while pgBouncer issues are resolved

What Supabase Is Doing

Supabase engineering is:

Investigating pgBouncer configuration issues

Planning migrations for affected older projects

Preparing infrastructure upgrades

Status unknown on ETA — check status page for updates

Recommended Actions

1. Immediate: Implement one of the workarounds above 2. Short-term: Monitor connection logs and implement retry logic 3. Monitor: Watch [status.supabase.com](https://status.supabase.com) for updates 4. Contact support: If workarounds don't resolve issues, open a support ticket with your project ID 5. Plan ahead: If eligible, request infrastructure migration to newer systems

Alternatives to Consider

AWS RDS PostgreSQL (managed directly)

Neon (PostgreSQL with serverless focus)

PlanetScale (MySQL alternative)

Firebase Realtime Database (if schema flexibility allows)

Stay Updated

Follow [@supabase](https://twitter.com/supabase) on Twitter

Monitor [status.supabase.com](https://status.supabase.com)

Check Supabase Discord for community updates

Last Updated: [Current timestamp]