Upstash Redis with Render

Render Web Services, Background Workers and Cron Jobs run long-lived processes, so they can keep a normal TCP connection to Upstash Redis. Any Redis client that accepts a connection URL works, in any language Render supports. The only Render setting you add is a REDIS_URL environment variable.

Database Setup#

Create a Redis database using the Upstash Console or Upstash CLI. Pick a primary region close to the Render region you plan to use, for example a US East region for Render’s Virginia region or a Frankfurt region for Render’s Frankfurt region.

On the database page, open the Connect section, select the TCP tab and copy the connection string:

rediss://default:YOUR_TOKEN@YOUR_ENDPOINT:6379

Connect from your app#

Read the connection string from REDIS_URL and pass it to your Redis client:

// npm install ioredisconst { Redis } = require("ioredis");const redis = new Redis(process.env.REDIS_URL);

# pip install redisimport osimport redisr = redis.from_url(os.environ["REDIS_URL"], decode_responses=True)

// go get github.com/redis/go-redis/v9import (	"os"	"github.com/redis/go-redis/v9")opt, err := redis.ParseURL(os.Getenv("REDIS_URL"))if err != nil {	panic(err)}rdb := redis.NewClient(opt)

The rediss:// scheme turns on TLS, so no extra client options are needed. For a complete example app, see the Express quickstart.

A Web Service must listen on the port in the PORT environment variable, which Render sets (the default is 10000). Push the project to a GitHub, GitLab or Bitbucket repository.

Create the Web Service#

1

Create a new Web Service

In the Render Dashboard, click New and select Web Service. Connect your Git provider and select the repository, or paste a URL under Public Git Repository.

2

Configure the build

Set Language, Build Command and Start Command for your app. Render pre-fills them from what it detects in the repository (for a Node app it suggests yarn and yarn start), so check all three. For the Express quickstart, use npm install and npm start. Choose a Region close to your Upstash database and an Instance Type.

3

Add REDIS_URL

Under Environment Variables, add a variable with the key REDIS_URL and your Upstash connection string as the value.

4

Deploy

Click Deploy web service. Render builds and starts the app, and shows its onrender.com URL when the deploy finishes.

To change the variable later, open the service, click Environment in the left pane, and edit REDIS_URL. Saving starts a new deploy unless you choose Save only.

Test#

After the deploy finishes, check the service’s Logs. A wrong REDIS_URL shows up there as a connection or authentication error when your app first talks to Redis. To check the connection explicitly, send a PING from your app after it connects; Upstash replies PONG (redis-py’s ping() returns True).

Upstash or Render Key Value#

Render also offers Render Key Value, a Redis-compatible store (Valkey) that runs on Render’s private network. Services in the same region and workspace can reach it over an internal URL, and paid instances support disk-backed persistence.

Upstash is a good fit when you want:

• A database you can also reach from your laptop, CI, other hosts and edge functions. Render Key Value is not reachable from outside Render until you add allowed IP ranges.
• Per-request pricing with a free tier, instead of an instance size. See Pricing.
• The HTTP API and global read regions for serverless and multi-region apps.

The app code is the same in both cases. Only the value of REDIS_URL changes.