Postgres 18 is in Beta on Heroku Postgres
Change effective on 14 July 2026
Postgres 18 is now available in beta on Heroku, bringing several notable features and performance improvements to our managed Postgres database service. The beta provides an easy way for customers to try out the new release. Postgres 17 continues to be the default version for new databases until we make version 18 generally available.
Read the Postgres project’s release notes for version 18 here.
Running Postgres 18 on Heroku Postgres
To provision a new database with Postgres 18, pass the --version 18 flag:
$ heroku addons:create heroku-postgresql -a example-app -- --version 18
You can also upgrade your database to Postgres 18. For Standard-tier and higher databases, test the upgrade with the dry run method or with the fork method. For Essential-tier databases, test the upgrade with the copy method.
Upcoming Postgres 15 Deprecation
To provide the best developer experience on Heroku, we’ll deprecate Postgres 15 when Postgres 18 becomes generally available per our policy.