Free-tier project restore fails 3 times: stuck in COMING_UP (all services UNHEALTHY), then reverts to INACTIVE

[marneuk]

Hi everyone,

My free-tier project was auto-paused after 7 days of inactivity, and every restore attempt fails the same way. I've already opened a support ticket (SU-509650), but since free-plan tickets have no guaranteed response, I'm hoping someone here has seen this before.

Project details

• Ref: pewmanmvyhjcldryajvz
• Region: sa-east-1 (São Paulo)
• Postgres: supabase-postgres-17.6.1.155
• Compute: nano (free plan)
• Disk: 2 GB

What happens (3 attempts on Oct 15, 2026)

1. Click "Resume project" → "Restoration in progress" is shown.
2. Project status goes to COMING_UP.
3. For the entire time, /v1/projects/{ref}/health reports db, auth, rest, realtime and storage as UNHEALTHY ("Service health check failed").
4. After ~15 minutes the status changes to INACTIVE and the dashboard shows "Project is paused" again.

Last attempt: restore started 17:08 UTC, reverted to INACTIVE at ~17:23 UTC.

status.supabase.com shows everything operational (including Project Restore), so it looks specific to this project.

Questions

• Has anyone hit this restore loop, and what fixed it?
• Is there anything I can do on my side (e.g. download the backup and restore into a new project) without losing data?
• Could someone from the Supabase team take a look at SU-509650?

Thanks!

[GaryAustin1]

You will have to wait for support to get to it. Github Discussion is not monitored by staff.
Seems like based on ticket number not that old yet to be considered a lost ticket. Free can be several days.

[diogonmoura]

did you have any luck? How long until they solved it?

[supertj]

On your second question: yes, and it doesn't touch the paused project or your ticket.

When the project drops back to INACTIVE, the paused-project page in the dashboard should show an "Export your data" row under the Resume button, with a Download backups menu. It has two entries: Database backup (PG: 17.6.1.155) and Storage objects. The Storage archive takes a few minutes to build before it downloads. If the database entry is greyed out, its tooltip says no backup is available and points you to support, which is worth adding to your ticket. Otherwise I'd grab both now, whatever support ends up doing. The database file is the latest backup Supabase holds for the project, so check the date in the file name before you rely on it.

To restore into a new project (paused projects don't count toward the Free plan's two active projects):

gunzip -k db_cluster-*.backup.gz
head -c 5 db_cluster-*.backup   # plain SQL text -> psql. "PGDMP" -> use pg_restore instead

export PGPASSWORD='new-project-db-password'
psql "postgresql://postgres.<new-ref>@<session-pooler-host>:5432/postgres" \
  --file db_cluster-<date>.backup > restore.log 2>&1

Copy the Session pooler string from Connect in the new project. Use psql 16 or newer. Supabase's docs say 15 and older can fail against the pooler with a GSSAPI error that looks like a login problem.

restore.log will be full of "already exists" errors. That's expected: the file is a full dump that recreates auth and storage, and a new project already has both. Supabase's "Restore Dashboard backup" page says the same. What matters is any error naming one of your own tables, functions or policies. Afterwards, compare select count(*) from auth.users; and the row counts of two or three tables you know well with what you expect.

Things the database file doesn't bring back:

• Storage files. The restore only recreates the storage.objects rows. Upload the files from the Storage objects archive into buckets with the same names. The Supabase page above has a script for it, or use supabase storage cp -r.
• Project settings: the new URL and API keys (update your app's env), Auth providers, redirect URLs, SMTP and email templates, Edge Functions and their secrets.
• Anything in Vault. It's encrypted with a key that belongs to the old project, so re-enter those values.

Keep the old project and the ticket as they are. If infra fixes the original later, you can still pick which copy to keep.

I wrote up the format check and the restore steps in more detail here: https://backupdrill.com/guides/restore-supabase-backup (I work on BackupDrill. The guide is free and none of it needs the product.)

[diogonmoura]

Thanks! Support was able to unstuck me :)