Render Postgres

To back up a Render Postgres database, Backup connects to it over the public internet like any other Postgres. Render Postgres is real, stock PostgreSQL, so there are no surprises in a dump or a restore. Two things are worth getting right before you start: which connection string to hand Backup, and whether you've locked down external access.

Which connection string

Use Render's external connection string, not the internal one. The internal URL only resolves inside Render's private network, so a service connecting from outside Render can't reach it. Backup connects from outside, over IPv4, so it needs the external URL. It looks like:

postgres://username:[email protected]:5432/database

Host is the full ...render.com name, port is the standard 5432, and the connection is over IPv4. Always give Backup the full hostname, not a raw IP address.

Find the connection details

1. Open your database in the Render Dashboard.
2. On the database's Info page, find the PostgreSQL public connection details section (older UIs label the same thing under a Connect menu).
3. Copy the External Connection String (also shown as the External Database URL). It already contains the username, password, host, port, and database name.

Set SSL mode to require and paste the string into Backup's credentials step. Render encrypts external connections in transit with Render-managed TLS certificates, so SSL is expected. For a least-privilege setup, create a read-only role in your database and put its credentials in the external URL — see read-only role snippets.

Network access

By default, Render Postgres accepts external connections from any IP address as long as the credentials are valid, so a fresh database works with just the external URL. If you add an IP allow list to restrict external access, add Backup's egress IP 18.196.207.101. Backup always connects from that single static address (see network access).

Restore tests

Every backup can be restore-tested: Backup replays the archive into a throwaway, vanilla PostgreSQL engine and confirms your data comes back. Render doesn't ship proprietary, platform-only extensions. Anything you've enabled (postgis, pgvector, pg_stat_statements, pgcrypto, and the like) is a standard community extension that installs cleanly into a stock engine, so a restore test exercises your real schema and runs clean.

From there, it's the standard flow

Backup runs a full pg_dump on your schedule and writes the encrypted archive to storage you control. You can download any backup and restore it with standard Postgres tools, independent of Norcube. The full walkthrough is in connect a database.