Flowise on Google Cloud Run

Flowise is an open-source visual AI workflow builder that lets non-developers assemble LangChain and LlamaIndex AI pipelines through a drag-and-drop interface. This module deploys Flowise on Cloud Run v2 on top of the App_CloudRun foundation, which provisions and manages the shared Google Cloud infrastructure.

This guide focuses on the cloud services Flowise uses and how to explore and operate them from the Google Cloud Console and the command line. For the mechanics common to every Cloud Run application — service identity, ingress and load balancing, scaling and concurrency, CI/CD, Cloud Armor, IAP, Binary Authorization, VPC Service Controls, backups, and the deployment lifecycle — refer to the App_CloudRun foundation guide rather than repeating them here.

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What Flowise costs on RAD, and how that compares

In a Google Cloud project you own, Flowise on RAD's Cloud Run module costs about US$69 a month, plus US$7.50 once per deployment and no per-user licence. GKE Autopilot is the alternative for workloads that must stay up continuously or run beside other Kubernetes apps; see the GKE guide, about US$93 a month. Flowise is an open-source visual AI workflow builder for assembling LangChain and LlamaIndex pipelines by drag and drop. Figures are as at 8 October 2026; sources are listed at the end of this section.

If this runs in a project RAD manages for you, it can be deleted and restored within 30 days for a few credits instead of sitting there running — so an occasional-use deployment costs a few dollars a month, not US$69. See Pause it for free, below.

What you pay on RAD

	In a Google Cloud project you own	In a project RAD manages for you
Module fee, once per deployment	75 credits (US$7.50 at the top-up price)	67.5 credits (10% lower)
Build time	A few credits per build	The same
Google Cloud running cost	Billed by Google to your own billing account, about US$69 a month for the default configuration (table below)	Metered hourly in credits; RAD publishes 26 credits a day, about 780 a month (about US$78 at the top-up price)
Who owns what	You own the project and its billing; RAD deploys and updates it	RAD owns the project, with guardrails, quotas and budget alerts; you get console access, and a minimum purchased balance is held in reserve

10 credits cost US$1 on a one-off top-up, and less on a monthly plan. In a project RAD manages, the database, file server and network are shared by every application in the project, so a second application does not add a second database.

Default running cost in your own project (us-central1, Google list prices):

Resource (module default)	Per month
Cloud Run, 1 vCPU / 1 GiB, scaling to zero	US$12
Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL, 1 vCPU / 3.75 GB, zonal, 10 GB SSD	US$51
Cloud NAT gateway and IP address	US$5
Cloud Storage for backups	US$1
Total	about US$69

How it compares

Flowise has its own official hosted plan, Flowise Cloud: Flowise's own hosted Cloud plan starts at $35/month (Starter: unlimited flows, 10,000 predictions/month, 1 GB storage); a $65/month Pro plan raises those limits — read 8 October 2026.

Option	Per month	Who runs it
Flowise Cloud, Starter (official hosted plan)	US$35/mo	Flowise
RAD, Cloud Run, your own project	US$69, plus US$7.50 once	RAD's automation, in your project
RAD, Cloud Run, a RAD-managed project	about 780 credits (US$78)	RAD
RAD, GKE Autopilot	about US$93; see the GKE Autopilot guide	RAD

Flowise Cloud's price was read from its own pricing page on 8 October 2026 and may have changed since — check the source before relying on the figure.

• Flowise Cloud is the fixed comparison; a self-managed server is the flexible one. On your own Hetzner or DigitalOcean box (2 vCPU/4GB, about US$24/month) or a GCP Compute Engine e2-standard-2 (2 vCPU/8GB, about US$49/month) you would pay less in cash than either option, but you run the operating system, the database, backups, security patches and upgrades yourself — exactly what RAD's managed Cloud SQL, Secret Manager and monitoring do for you.
• A cheap server is cheap until something breaks. On RAD, backups, point-in-time recovery, password rotation through Secret Manager, and logging and monitoring come from Google Cloud by default. On your own server, or on a fixed-price hosted plan with no infrastructure control, each of those is a job someone still has to do or a limit you cannot change.

Pause it for free: delete a RAD-managed project, restore it when you need it

If Flowise runs in a project RAD manages for you, you have an option beyond scaling down: delete the whole project, and restore it within 30 days for close to nothing. This suits a deployment you only need occasionally — studying for a certification, a demo, a seasonal need — far better than running it continuously.

• How it works. Deleting a RAD-managed project unlinks its billing first, then asks Google to delete the project. Google does not remove it immediately: it keeps it, recoverable, for 30 days, and because billing is already unlinked, nothing is charged while it waits. Unlike deleting one module, this does not tear down Cloud SQL, the VM or Cloud Run one by one — the whole project, and everything in it, simply stops.
• Restoring costs a handful of credits, not a rebuild. Within 30 days, the project's owner can restore it. RAD asks Google to undelete the project and reattaches its billing account, then asks you to run Update on each deployment to confirm everything came back. Because nothing was individually destroyed, that Update finds the same resources already there — it is a check, not a rebuild, and an Update never charges the module fee again. That costs a handful of build-time credits in total (under US$1) for a typical 2–3-deployment chain.
• So a month of occasional use can cost a few dollars, not US$69. Deploy Flowise, use it for a session, delete the project. Restore it next time you want it, confirm with Update, and delete it again when you're done. You pay only for the module fee once, the builds, and whatever hours it was actually live.
• What this needs. You must own the project (not a bring-your-own one RAD only manages billing for), and you restore it yourself within the 30 days — after that, Google deletes it for good. Restoring is admitted like creating a new project: your purchased credit balance must still clear the tier's floor (100 credits for the sandbox tier most study/demo use fits). Google says most services are fully working again within 36 hours of a restore.
• One real gap: nightly backups do not survive. Backups are written to a bucket inside the project, and that bucket has Cloud Storage's soft-delete explicitly turned off, so it is very likely gone as soon as you delete the project — even though the project itself is recoverable for 30 days. If you've customised this deployment and want to keep that work, copy a backup out (to Google Drive, or a bucket outside the project) before deleting. For a default install with nothing irreplaceable in it, this does not matter.

Pay only while you use it, the other way: delete and redeploy

Cloud Run already scales to zero between requests, so most of its own compute cost stops on its own when nobody is using it. The option above only applies to a RAD-managed project; in your own project, or once the 30-day window has passed, the way to stop paying is to delete the deployment and deploy it again when you need it.

• What a redeploy costs. The module fee again plus the builds: about 80 credits (US$8). Deleting saves money if Flowise would otherwise sit unused for about 4 days or more in your own project (about US$2.29 a day), or about 3 days or more in a RAD-managed one (26 credits a day).
• Delete everything Flowise uses. Most of the running cost is usually the database and any shared file/cache VM. They stop only when nothing else in the project uses them, so deleting this app while something else shares the project saves only this app's own compute part.
• Keep data first. Nightly backups go to a bucket inside the deployment and are deleted with it, so copy the latest backup out before deleting if you want to keep it.
• Note your settings. RAD does not recreate a deleted deployment for you; you enter the settings again when you deploy.

Lab sessions and Managed Environments

• Lab sessions, for training. A trainer runs a session for a class. Each participant gets Flowise in their own Google Cloud project for 15 minutes to 24 hours, within an allowance the trainer sets. Either the trainer funds every place, or each participant pays for their own. Everything is deleted when the session ends and unused credits go back to the trainer.
• Managed Environments, for consultancies. A partner runs the app for a client from a ring-fenced wallet it funds, and settles with the client directly. If the wallet runs low, billing pauses and the data is kept, so nobody receives an unexpected charge. At the end the partner hands the project over and the deployments become the client's own.

Credits can be bought in more than 20 currencies, including XAF, XOF, NGN, GHS, KES and ZAR, by card, bank transfer or mobile money.

Sources (8 October 2026): Google Cloud list prices from the Cloud Billing Catalog API; RAD's own fees and daily-credit estimate from radmodules.dev/pricing; Delete and restore projects for the pause/restore mechanism; Flowise Cloud pricing. Prices change; check each source before relying on a figure.

1. Overview

Flowise runs as a Node.js container on Cloud Run v2. The deployment wires together a focused set of Google Cloud services:

Capability	Google Cloud service	Notes
Compute	Cloud Run v2	Node.js service, 1 vCPU / 1 GiB by default, request-based autoscaling
Database	Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL 15	Required — Flowise does not support MySQL in this deployment
Object storage	Cloud Storage	A dedicated uploads bucket always provisioned; stores Flowise file uploads
Secrets	Secret Manager	Auto-generated Flowise admin password
Ingress	Cloud Run URL / Cloud Load Balancing	Default run.app URL, optional external HTTPS load balancer + custom domain

Sensible defaults worth knowing up front:

• PostgreSQL 15 is mandatory. Selecting MySQL or NONE breaks startup.
• GCS-backed file storage is always enabled. STORAGE_TYPE=gcs and APIKEY_STORAGE_TYPE=db are injected automatically; API keys are stored in the database, not in files.
• DATABASE_* variables are mapped by the entrypoint script (flowise-entrypoint.sh) from platform-standard DB_* variables at container startup — do not set them directly as environment variables.
• min_instance_count = 0 by default. Cold starts of 10–20s can exceed downstream LLM client timeouts on incoming requests — set 1 for latency-sensitive production use.
• The admin password is generated automatically and stored in Secret Manager; you never set it in plain text.
• Redis is disabled by default. It is not required for Flowise core functionality, but multi-instance deployments that share flow-execution state do benefit from it.

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2. Google Cloud Services & How to Explore Them

All commands assume PROJECT and REGION are set. Service and resource names are reported in the deployment Outputs.

A. Cloud Run — the Flowise service

Flowise runs as a Cloud Run v2 service that autoscales by request load between the minimum and maximum instance counts. Each deployment creates an immutable revision; traffic can be split across revisions for safe rollouts.

• Console: Cloud Run → select the service for revisions, traffic, logs, and metrics.
• CLI:

  gcloud run services list --project "$PROJECT" --region "$REGION"
  gcloud run services describe <service-name> --project "$PROJECT" --region "$REGION"
  gcloud run revisions list --service <service-name> --project "$PROJECT" --region "$REGION"

See App_CloudRun for scaling, concurrency, execution environment, and traffic splitting.

B. Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL 15

Flowise stores all application data (flow definitions, credentials, executions) in a managed Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL 15 instance. The service connects privately through the Cloud SQL Auth Proxy over a Unix socket (no public IP). On first deploy an initialization Job creates the application database and user.

• Console: SQL → select the instance for connections, backups, flags, metrics.
• CLI:

  gcloud sql instances list --project "$PROJECT"
  gcloud sql instances describe <instance-name> --project "$PROJECT"
  gcloud sql connect <instance-name> --user=<db-user> --project "$PROJECT"

The instance name, database, user, and password secret are in the Outputs. See App_CloudRun for the connection model, backups, and password rotation.

C. Cloud Storage

A dedicated Cloud Storage uploads bucket is always provisioned by Flowise_Common. Its name is injected into the service automatically as GOOGLE_CLOUD_STORAGE_BUCKET_NAME. Flowise writes all user-uploaded files (documents, images) to this bucket. Additional buckets can be configured via storage_buckets.

• Console: Cloud Storage → Buckets.
• CLI:

  gcloud storage buckets list --project "$PROJECT"
  gcloud storage ls gs://<uploads-bucket>/          # bucket name is in the Outputs

See App_CloudRun for GCS Fuse and CMEK options.

D. Secret Manager

The Flowise admin password is stored in Secret Manager and injected into the service at runtime; plaintext never appears in configuration. The database password is managed separately by the foundation.

• Console: Security → Secret Manager.
• CLI:

  gcloud secrets list --project "$PROJECT"
  gcloud secrets versions access latest --secret=<secret-name> --project "$PROJECT"

See App_CloudRun for injection and rotation details.

E. Networking & ingress

The service is reachable at its run.app URL by default. An external HTTPS load balancer with a custom domain, Cloud CDN, and Cloud Armor can be layered on; ingress settings and VPC egress control connectivity.

• Console: Cloud Run (service URL); Network services → Load balancing.
• CLI:

  gcloud run services describe <service-name> --region "$REGION" --format='value(status.url)'
  gcloud compute addresses list --project "$PROJECT"

See App_CloudRun.

F. Cloud Logging & Monitoring

Container logs flow to Cloud Logging; Cloud Run and Cloud SQL metrics flow to Cloud Monitoring, with optional uptime checks and alert policies.

• Console: Logging → Logs Explorer; Monitoring → Dashboards / Alerting.
• CLI:

  gcloud run services logs read <service-name> --project "$PROJECT" --region "$REGION" --limit 50

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3. Flowise Application Behaviour

• First-deploy database setup. An initialization Job (db-init) using the postgres:15-alpine image creates the Flowise database and user and grants privileges before the service starts. It is idempotent and safe to re-run.
• Health probe. Both startup and liveness probes target Flowise's dedicated health endpoint /api/v1/ping, which returns HTTP 200 when the application is ready. The startup probe allows up to 5 minutes of startup budget (30 failures × 10-second interval) to accommodate first-boot database initialisation.
• Admin login. The initial admin username is configurable via flowise_username (default admin). The admin password is auto-generated and stored in Secret Manager; retrieve it with:

  gcloud secrets versions access latest \
    --secret=<resource_prefix>-flowise-password --project "$PROJECT"

• DB variable remapping. flowise-entrypoint.sh unconditionally maps DB_HOST, DB_USER, DB_NAME, and DB_PASSWORD (injected by the platform) to DATABASE_HOST, DATABASE_USER, DATABASE_NAME, and DATABASE_PASSWORD at container startup. Do not set DATABASE_* variables directly.
• GCS file storage. STORAGE_TYPE=gcs and GCLOUD_PROJECT are always injected. Flowise writes uploaded files to the auto-provisioned GCS bucket. Overriding STORAGE_TYPE causes uploads to be written to ephemeral Cloud Run storage and lost on every new revision.
• Multi-instance considerations. Flowise stores in-memory flow-execution state. Running more than one instance without Redis causes flow executions to fail when requests are load-balanced to a different instance. Keep max_instance_count = 1 unless Redis is configured.

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4. Configuration Variables

Variables are grouped exactly as they appear on the deployment platform. Only settings specific to or notable for Flowise are listed; every other input is inherited from App_CloudRun with its standard behaviour.

Group 1 — Project & Identity

Variable	Default	Description
project_id	(required)	Target Google Cloud project.
region	us-central1	Region for the service and regional resources.

Group 2 — Deployment Environment

Variable	Default	Description
tenant_id	demo	Short suffix that makes resource names unique per environment.
support_users	[]	Emails granted project access and monitoring alerts.
resource_labels	{}	Labels applied to all resources.

Group 3 — Application Identity

Variable	Default	Description
application_name	flowise	Base name for resources. Do not change after first deploy.
application_display_name	Flowise	Friendly name shown in the Console.
application_description	(set)	Service description.
application_version	latest	Flowise image version tag.
flowise_username	admin	Flowise admin username injected as FLOWISE_USERNAME. Change before exposing publicly.

Group 4 — Runtime & Scaling

Variable	Default	Description
deploy_application	true	Set false to provision infrastructure only.
container_image_source	custom	custom builds via Cloud Build; prebuilt deploys an existing image URI.
container_image	""	Override image URI (only used when container_image_source = "prebuilt").
cpu_limit	1000m	CPU per instance.
memory_limit	1Gi	Memory per instance; raise toward 2 GiB for large flow graphs.
min_instance_count	0	Minimum instances. Set ≥ 1 to avoid cold-start latency for AI workloads.
max_instance_count	1	Maximum instances. Increase only with Redis enabled.
container_port	3000	Flowise listens on port 3000.
execution_environment	gen2	Gen2 is required for NFS volume mounts.
timeout_seconds	300	Max request duration. Increase for long-running AI workflow executions (max 3600).
enable_cloudsql_volume	true	Cloud SQL Auth Proxy sidecar for socket connections.

Group 5 — Access & Networking

Variable	Default	Description
ingress_settings	all	Which networks may reach the service. Use internal or internal-and-cloud-load-balancing to restrict.
vpc_egress_setting	PRIVATE_RANGES_ONLY	How outbound traffic is routed through the VPC connector.
enable_iap	false	Require Google sign-in via Identity-Aware Proxy. Recommended for production.
iap_authorized_users / iap_authorized_groups	[]	Who may access through IAP.

Group 6 — Environment Variables & Secrets

Variable	Default	Description
environment_variables	{}	Extra non-secret settings. Do not override platform-managed vars (DATABASE_*, FLOWISE_*, STORAGE_TYPE).
secret_environment_variables	{}	Map of env var → Secret Manager secret name (e.g. { OPENAI_API_KEY = "flowise-openai-key" }).
secret_propagation_delay	30	Seconds to wait after secret creation before proceeding.
secret_rotation_period	2592000s	Rotation notification cadence.

Group 7 — Backup & Restore

Variable	Default	Description
backup_schedule	0 2 * * *	Automated backup cron (UTC).
backup_retention_days	7	Retention; raise for production/compliance.
enable_backup_import / backup_source / backup_file / backup_format	restore options	Restore from a backup on deploy.

Group 8 — CI/CD & Binary Authorization

Standard App_CloudRun Cloud Build / Cloud Deploy integration — see App_CloudRun. Key inputs: enable_cicd_trigger, github_repository_url, github_token, enable_cloud_deploy, enable_binary_authorization.

Group 9 — Custom SQL Scripts

enable_custom_sql_scripts, custom_sql_scripts_bucket, custom_sql_scripts_path, custom_sql_scripts_use_root — run SQL from a GCS bucket after provisioning. See App_CloudRun.

Group 10 — Load Balancer, CDN & Image Retention

Variable	Default	Description
enable_cloud_armor	false	Provision Global HTTPS LB + Cloud Armor WAF.
application_domains	[]	Custom hostnames with Google-managed SSL.
enable_cdn	false	Enable Cloud CDN on the HTTPS LB backend. Requires enable_cloud_armor = true.
admin_ip_ranges	[]	CIDRs allowed privileged access.
max_images_to_retain / delete_untagged_images / image_retention_days	(set)	Artifact Registry cleanup policy.

Group 11 — Storage & Filesystem

Variable	Default	Description
create_cloud_storage	true	Provision buckets in storage_buckets. The Flowise uploads bucket is always created by Flowise_Common.
storage_buckets	[{ name_suffix="data" }]	Additional GCS buckets to provision.
enable_nfs	false	Provision Filestore NFS volume. Requires gen2.
nfs_mount_path	/mnt/nfs	Mount path inside the container.
gcs_volumes	[]	GCS Fuse volume mounts.
manage_storage_kms_iam / enable_artifact_registry_cmek	false	CMEK options.

Group 12 — Database Backend

Variable	Default	Description
database_type	POSTGRES_15	Cloud SQL engine. Flowise requires PostgreSQL.
application_database_name	flowisedb	Database name. Immutable after first deploy.
application_database_user	flowiseuser	Application user. Immutable after first deploy.
database_password_length	32	Generated password length (16–64).
enable_auto_password_rotation / rotation_propagation_delay_sec	off	DB password rotation.
db_host_env_var_name / db_name_env_var_name / db_user_env_var_name / db_port_env_var_name / service_url_env_var_name	""	Additional env var names for connection details alongside the standard DB_* vars.

Group 13 — Jobs & Scheduled Tasks

Variable	Default	Description
initialization_jobs	[{ name="db-init", … }]	Leave at default to use the built-in PostgreSQL setup job.
cron_jobs	[]	Recurring Cloud Run Jobs triggered by Cloud Scheduler.
additional_services	[]	Additional Cloud Run services deployed alongside Flowise.

Group 14 — Observability & Health

Variable	Default	Description
startup_probe / startup_probe_config	HTTP /api/v1/ping, 30–60s delay	Startup probe; allows 5-minute budget for DB init.
liveness_probe / health_check_config	HTTP /api/v1/ping	Liveness probe.
uptime_check_config	disabled, path /	Cloud Monitoring uptime check; disabled by default.
alert_policies	[]	Metric alert policies.

Group 21 — Redis (optional)

Variable	Default	Description
enable_redis	false	Enable Redis. Not required for core functionality; needed for multi-instance deployments.
redis_host	null	Redis endpoint. Required when enable_redis = true.
redis_port	6379	Redis port.
redis_auth	""	Optional Redis auth password (sensitive).

Group 22 — VPC Service Controls & Audit Logging

Variable	Default	Description
enable_vpc_sc	false	Enforce a VPC-SC perimeter (requires organization_id).
vpc_cidr_ranges / vpc_sc_dry_run	(set)	Access level CIDRs / dry-run mode.
enable_audit_logging	false	Detailed Cloud Audit Logs.

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5. Outputs

Returned on a successful deployment — the quickest way to locate and explore the running resources.

Output	Description
service_name	Cloud Run service name.
service_url	Default run.app URL of the service.
service_location	Region the service runs in.
stage_services	Stage-specific service URLs (Cloud Deploy).
load_balancer_ip / load_balancer_url	External HTTPS load balancer IP / URL (when enabled).
database_instance_name	Cloud SQL instance name.
database_name / database_user	Application database name / user.
database_password_secret	Secret Manager secret holding the DB password.
database_host / database_port	DB endpoint / port (sensitive).
storage_buckets	Created Cloud Storage buckets.
network_name / network_exists / regions	VPC network, presence, regions.
container_image / container_registry	Deployed image and Artifact Registry repo.
monitoring_enabled / monitoring_notification_channels / uptime_check_names	Monitoring status, channels, uptime checks.
initialization_jobs	Names of the setup jobs.
deployment_id / tenant_id / resource_prefix	Naming identifiers.
project_id / project_number	Project identifiers.
cicd_enabled / cicd_configuration	CI/CD status and details.
github_repository_url / github_repository_owner / github_repository_name	CI/CD repo details.
artifact_registry_repository / cloudbuild_trigger_name / cloudbuild_trigger_id	Registry and build trigger.
vpc_sc_enabled / vpc_sc_perimeter_name / vpc_sc_dry_run_mode	VPC-SC status.
audit_logging_enabled / artifact_registry_cmek_enabled	Audit logging and CMEK status.

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6. Configuration Pitfalls & Sensible Defaults

Risk: Critical (data loss / outage / security) — High (service degraded) — Medium (cost or partial degradation) — Low (minor).

Setting	Sensible value	Risk	Consequence if wrong
database_type	POSTGRES_15	Critical	Flowise requires PostgreSQL; MySQL/NONE breaks startup.
enable_cloudsql_volume	true	Critical	Without the Auth Proxy sidecar, the database connection is refused.
application_database_name / _user	set once	Critical	Immutable after first deploy; renaming recreates the DB/user and destroys data.
enable_backup_import	false unless restoring	Critical	Enabling without a valid backup file fails the import job.
flowise_username	change from admin	High	The default username is publicly known; combined with a guessed password it grants full access to all AI flows.
FLOWISE_SECRETKEY_OVERWRITE	leave unset after first deploy	High	Changing or removing this after the first deploy permanently scrambles all stored LLM API keys and vector-store credentials.
memory_limit	1Gi	High	Below 512Mi the Node.js process is OOM-killed on startup. Production with large flow graphs needs 2Gi.
max_instance_count	1 (without Redis)	High	Multiple instances without a shared Redis store cause flow executions to fail when requests are routed to a different instance.
STORAGE_TYPE	gcs (default)	High	Overriding to anything else writes uploads to ephemeral storage, lost on every new revision.
ingress_settings	restrict for admin-facing	High	Default all allows traffic from any source; set to internal-and-cloud-load-balancing to restrict.
enable_iap	enable for admin-facing	High	The Flowise UI is otherwise publicly reachable without authentication.
min_instance_count	1	Medium	0 causes cold starts of 10–20 s that frequently exceed downstream LLM client timeouts.
enable_redis	enable with >1 instance	Medium	Required for shared session/queue state across multiple instances.
startup_probe.failure_threshold	30 (default)	Medium	Reducing below 10 causes Cloud Run to restart the container before Flowise has finished its DB init on first boot.
backup_retention_days	7 (raise for prod)	Medium	Too short for compliance retention.

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For the foundation behaviour referenced throughout — service identity, scaling and concurrency, ingress and load balancing, CI/CD, Cloud Armor, IAP, Binary Authorization, VPC-SC, backups, and image mirroring — see App_CloudRun. Flowise-specific application configuration shared with the GKE variant is described in Flowise_Common.

Related guides

• Hands-on lab: Flowise on Cloud Run — deploy it step by step, with the console screens and commands at each stage.
• Flowise on GKE Autopilot — the same application on Kubernetes, for when you need the other deployment target.
• Flowise Common — Shared Application Configuration — the configuration shared by both deployment targets.