--- title: Postgres Hit the Connection Limit. Now What? 🤯 | daily.dev description: When Postgres hits its connection limit under traffic spikes, the instinct to raise the limit is often wrong. The real culprit is frequently 'idle in... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/postgres-hit-the-connection-limit-now-what--f2djjf5zt twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Postgres Hit the Connection Limit. Now What? 🤯 | daily.dev og:description: When Postgres hits its connection limit under traffic spikes, the instinct to raise the limit is often wrong. The real culprit is frequently 'idle in... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/postgres-hit-the-connection-limit-now-what--f2djjf5zt og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/F2DJjf5Zt.png og:image:alt: Postgres Hit the Connection Limit. Now What? 🤯 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- [YouTube](https://daily.dev/sources/youtube) [Watch video](https://api.daily.dev/r/F2DJjf5Zt) # [Postgres Hit the Connection Limit. Now What? 🤯](https://api.daily.dev/r/F2DJjf5Zt "Go to post") This title could be clearer and more informative. Try out Clickbait Shield for free (5 uses left this month). When Postgres hits its connection limit under traffic spikes, the instinct to raise the limit is often wrong. The real culprit is frequently 'idle in transaction' connections — code that holds a DB connection while waiting on slow external calls like payment providers. The fix involves three stages: kill stuck sessions and set idle transaction timeouts, refactor application code to release connections before slow external calls, and deploy PgBouncer as a connection pooler so thousands of app connections map to a small fixed pool of real Postgres connections. [#database](/tags/database "Check all #database posts")[#postgresql](/tags/postgresql "Check all #postgresql posts") Jul 26 • 2m watch time Comment Bookmark Copy Share your thoughts Post Share this post [](https://daily.dev/sources/youtube) [YouTube](https://daily.dev/sources/youtube "https://daily.dev/sources/youtube") 2.2K Followers • 27.3K Upvotes #### Would you recommend this post? 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