Railway connection guide
Railway PostgreSQL Connection String
Use Railway's generated DATABASE_URL inside a service or from your local Mac without mixing private and public hostnames.
Use the connection value generated by Railway, keep it in an environment variable, and test it before changing application code. The URI shape below is a template, not a credential to paste unchanged.
- URI scheme
- postgresql://
- Default PostgreSQL port
- 5432
- Credential handling
- Environment variable or secret manager
- First test
- psql "$DATABASE_URL" -c "select now();"
Connection string template
postgresql://postgres:PASSWORD@HOST:PORT/railwayReplace every uppercase placeholder. Percent-encode reserved characters in URI usernames and passwords.
Environment variable
DATABASE_URL="${{Postgres.DATABASE_URL}}"Where to get the Railway values
Open the PostgreSQL service and look under Variables. Railway exposes a complete DATABASE_URL plus individual PGHOST, PGPORT, PGUSER, PGPASSWORD, and PGDATABASE values.
The failure mode worth checking first
Railway services in the same project can use private networking. Your laptop cannot resolve that private hostname, so use the public TCP proxy values when connecting from PostgresGUI or psql.
Test the connection
Run a cheap read-only command before migrations or application startup. That separates network, TLS, and authentication errors from framework configuration problems.
Connection check
psql "$DATABASE_URL" -c "select now();"Open it in PostgresGUI
Paste the PostgreSQL URI into PostgresGUI or enter the same host, port, database, user, password, and SSL mode as separate fields. A desktop connection is useful for checking the visible schemas and role permissions before debugging the application layer.
Questions that come up
Should the connection string be committed to Git?
No. Commit an example with placeholders and load the real value from an environment variable or secret manager.
Why does a password with @ or # break the URI?
Those characters have meaning inside a URL. Percent-encode the username and password, or use a structured connection API instead of assembling a URL by hand.
Do I need sslmode=require?
Most hosted PostgreSQL services require TLS. For strict certificate and hostname verification, use sslmode=verify-full with the provider's trusted root certificate when the client supports it.