Ghostfolio on Google Cloud Run

Ghostfolio is an open-source, AGPL-licensed wealth management application for tracking net worth, investment portfolios, and asset allocation across multiple brokerage accounts and platforms — a privacy-first alternative to commercial portfolio trackers. This module deploys Ghostfolio 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 Ghostfolio 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 Ghostfolio costs on RAD, and how that compares

Running Ghostfolio in your own Google Cloud project costs about US$82.03/month in Google Cloud charges, on top of a one-time 110-credit RAD module fee (99 credits — 10% lower — in a RAD-managed project). Ghostfolio is an open-source wealth management application for tracking net worth, investment portfolios, and asset allocation across multiple accounts and platforms. If you deploy into a RAD-managed project, you can pause the whole thing for free and pick it back up later — see "Pause it for free" below.

Ghostfolio is also available on GKE — see the GKE guide if you need Kubernetes-based orchestration; this guide covers the lower-cost Cloud Run option.

What you pay on RAD

	Own project	RAD-managed project
Module fee	110 credits (one-time)	99 credits (one-time, 10% lower)
Build time	~3–6 credits (one-time, per build)	~3–6 credits (one-time, per build)
Google Cloud running cost	~US$82.03/month, billed to your own Google billing account at list price	~32 credits/day (~US$3.20/day), metered hourly at list price plus RAD's margin

Default running cost in your own project

Resource	US$/month (Google list price, us-central1)
Cloud Run, 1x vCPU / 1 GiB (scaleToZero)	US$11.58
Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL, 1 vCPU / 3.75 GB, zonal, 10 GB SSD	US$51.02
NFS/cache file server (small VM)	US$13.43
Cloud NAT and networking	US$5
Cloud Storage (add-ons, backups)	US$1
Total	US$82.03

How it compares

• There is no officially hosted/cloud version of Ghostfolio to compare against, so the honest comparison is against self-managed infrastructure, not a competing SaaS.
• A bare VPS sized to roughly 1 vCPU / 1 GiB — a Hetzner CPX22 (2 vCPU/4GB, ~US$24/mo), a DigitalOcean 2 vCPU/4GB Droplet (US$24/mo), or GCP's own Compute Engine e2-standard-2 (2 vCPU/8GB, ~US$49/mo) — usually undercuts RAD's sticker price; a VPS a size or two smaller would undercut it further.
• What that lower price does not include is the admin's own time: patching the OS, rotating database backups, renewing TLS certificates and watching for downtime. RAD's managed Cloud SQL, Secret Manager and monitoring do that for you, which is the actual trade being made, not the sticker price.
• RAD is not claiming to be cheaper than a bare VPS in cash terms — it usually is not. The case for RAD is what's managed for you.

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

If Ghostfolio is running in a RAD-managed project, you can stop paying for it entirely without destroying it. Deleting that project first unlinks its billing, then asks Google to delete the project outright — Google's own 30-day recoverable soft delete. Unlike deleting the Ghostfolio module on its own, this does not tear down Cloud SQL, any VM or the compute resource one by one: the whole project simply stops, and nothing is charged while it waits, because billing is already unlinked.

Restoring, within 30 days and only by the project's owner, 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. This costs only a handful of build-time credits in total — roughly 5–10 credits, under US$1, for a typical 2–3-deployment chain. The 99-credit module fee is not charged again.

What this needs: you must own the project (not one RAD only manages billing for), you must restore it yourself within 30 days — after that Google deletes it for good — and restoring is admitted like creating a new project, so 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 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 have customised Ghostfolio 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

If Ghostfolio is in your own project (or more than 30 days have passed on a RAD-managed one), the way to stop paying is to delete the deployment and redeploy later when you need it again.

A redeploy costs the module fee again, plus the builds: roughly 110 + ~3–6 credits (~US$11.45) in your own project, or 99 + ~3–6 credits on a RAD-managed one.

Deleting only saves money once Ghostfolio would otherwise sit unused long enough to clear that redeploy cost against its own running cost: roughly about 5 days or more idle in your own project (against its ~US$82.03/month Google Cloud bill), or about 4 days or more idle in a RAD-managed project (against its ~32 credits/day).

Most of Ghostfolio's running cost is the database and the 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 share of the total above.

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.

Lab sessions and Managed Environments

• Lab sessions, for training: a trainer runs a session for a class. Each participant gets the app 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 Billing Catalog API list prices; radmodules.dev/pricing for RAD's own fees and daily-credit estimates; Google's project delete/restore docs for the pause/restore mechanics.

1. Overview

Ghostfolio runs as a NestJS (Prisma ORM) 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	NestJS API + Angular frontend served from one container, 1 vCPU / 1 GiB by default, request-based billing, scale-to-zero
Database	Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL 15	Required — Ghostfolio's Prisma ORM does not support MySQL
Cache & queue	Redis (required, not optional)	Market-data caching, sessions, and Bull queue/job management
Secrets	Secret Manager	Auto-generated ACCESS_TOKEN_SALT and JWT_SECRET_KEY; database 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. The database engine is fixed by the shared application layer; Ghostfolio's Prisma ORM does not support other engines.
• Redis is mandatory, not optional. Unlike many apps in this catalogue where Redis is an opt-in performance feature, Ghostfolio's health endpoint itself checks Redis connectivity and the app will not serve real traffic without it.
• ACCESS_TOKEN_SALT and JWT_SECRET_KEY are generated automatically and stored in Secret Manager. Both are boot-blocking — Ghostfolio has no sane default for either. Rotating ACCESS_TOKEN_SALT after first boot invalidates every previously issued Security Token (see §3).
• No seeded admin account. Ghostfolio has no email/password login form and no first-run setup wizard to fill in — the first visitor to the deployed URL clicks "Get Started" and the app mints a random anonymous Security Token as the account owner.
• Scale-to-zero is enabled by default (min_instance_count = 0, cpu_always_allocated = false). Ghostfolio's API is pure request/response with no in-process background scheduler of its own, so request-based billing applies cleanly.
• No bulk file/media storage is provisioned. Ghostfolio has no equivalent of user-uploaded attachments; storage_buckets is always empty.
• DATABASE_URL is composed at runtime, never via a Unix socket. Ghostfolio's Prisma connection string is a URL-authority DSN (postgresql://user:pass@host:port/db), and a Cloud SQL socket path's colons break that format — the container's cloud entrypoint always connects over TCP using the Cloud SQL private IP, with sslmode=require.
• application_version = "latest" is genuinely valid. Unlike several other prebuilt-image modules in this catalogue, Docker Hub's ghostfolio/ghostfolio publishes a real latest tag, so no version-pinning workaround is required (pinning is still recommended for reproducible builds).

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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 Ghostfolio service

Ghostfolio 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

Ghostfolio stores all application data (accounts, holdings, activities, market data cache, user records) in a managed Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL 15 instance. On first deploy an initialization Job creates the application database and role; Ghostfolio's own container entrypoint runs Prisma migrations on every subsequent boot.

• 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> --database=<db-name> --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. Redis (required)

Redis backs market-data caching, sessions, and Bull queue/job management — Ghostfolio will not start correctly without a reachable Redis instance. When redis_host is left empty, the platform NFS VM's IP is used as the Redis endpoint (requires enable_nfs = true or a discovered Services_GCP NFS server).

• Console: Memorystore → Redis (if using a managed instance).
• CLI:

  redis-cli -h <redis-host> ping
  # Confirm the running revision's Redis env vars:
  gcloud run services describe <service-name> --region "$REGION" \
    --format='value(spec.template.spec.containers[0].env)'

D. Secret Manager

Two cryptographic secrets are generated automatically and stored in Secret Manager: ACCESS_TOKEN_SALT (hashes the anonymous Security Token login credential) and JWT_SECRET_KEY (signs auth JWTs). 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. Ghostfolio Application Behaviour

• First-deploy database setup. An initialization Job runs db-init.sh using postgres:15-alpine. It connects to Cloud SQL and idempotently creates the application role, database, and grants. The job is safe to re-run.
• Migrations and seeding run on EVERY container boot, inside the same process as the server — not as a separate init job. The upstream docker/entrypoint.sh runs prisma migrate deploy, then prisma db seed, then starts the NestJS server. A failed migration crashes the container loudly (the upstream script uses set -ex) rather than shipping a healthy service against an empty database.
• ACCESS_TOKEN_SALT and JWT_SECRET_KEY are immutable after first boot. These are generated once and written to Secret Manager. ACCESS_TOKEN_SALT hashes the anonymous Security Token — rotating it invalidates every previously issued token (users must re-register). JWT_SECRET_KEY signs session JWTs — rotating it logs everyone out.
• No first-run form to fill in. The first visitor to the deployed URL sees a "Get Started" button; clicking it mints a random Security Token that becomes the account owner's login credential. There is no email/password to set or admin account to bootstrap.
• Health path. Startup and liveness probes target GET /api/v1/health, which checks BOTH the database AND Redis connections and returns 503 until both are healthy — this doubles as a genuine readiness gate, not just a liveness ping.
• Inspect job execution:

  gcloud run jobs list --project "$PROJECT" --region "$REGION"
  gcloud run jobs executions list --job <job-name> --project "$PROJECT" --region "$REGION"

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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 Ghostfolio are listed; every other input is inherited from App_CloudRun with its standard behaviour.

Group 3 — Application Identity

Variable	Default	Description
application_name	ghostfolio	Base name for resources. Do not change after first deploy.
display_name	Ghostfolio	Human-readable name shown in the Console.
application_version	latest	Deployment-tracking tag. Docker Hub's ghostfolio/ghostfolio publishes a real latest tag, so this is directly usable — pin to a specific release (e.g. 2.153.0) for reproducible builds.

Group 4 — Runtime & Scaling

Variable	Default	Description
cpu_limit	1000m	1 vCPU is sufficient for typical usage.
memory_limit	1Gi	1 GiB is sufficient for typical usage.
min_instance_count	0	Scale-to-zero — Ghostfolio's API is pure request/response.
container_port	3333	Ghostfolio's DEFAULT_PORT (libs/common/src/lib/config.ts).
cpu_always_allocated	false	Request-based billing — no in-process background scheduler to throttle.
enable_cloudsql_volume	true	Mounts a Cloud SQL Auth Proxy sidecar, but Ghostfolio's cloud entrypoint never connects through the socket path directly — see §1.
container_image_source	custom	Cloud Build wraps the prebuilt ghostfolio/ghostfolio image with a thin cloud entrypoint.

Group 6 — Environment Variables & Secrets

Variable	Default	Description
environment_variables	{}	Extra non-secret settings. DATABASE_URL, PORT, and REDIS_PASSWORD (aliased from REDIS_AUTH) are composed by the cloud entrypoint — do not set them here.
secret_environment_variables	{}	Map of env var → Secret Manager secret name (e.g. a custom market-data provider API key).

Group 12 — Database Backend

Variable	Default	Description
db_name	ghostfolio	PostgreSQL database name. Immutable after first deploy.
db_user	ghostfolio	Application database user. Password auto-generated in Secret Manager.

Group 13 — Jobs & Scheduled Tasks

Variable	Default	Description
initialization_jobs	[]	Leave empty to use the built-in db-init job. No separate migrate job exists — migrations run inside the app container on every boot.

Group 14 — Observability & Health

Variable	Default	Description
startup_probe	HTTP /api/v1/health, 30s delay, 12-failure threshold	Checks BOTH database AND Redis connectivity.
liveness_probe	HTTP /api/v1/health, 30s delay, 3-failure threshold	Same endpoint as the startup probe.

Group 21 — Redis Cache

Variable	Default	Description
enable_redis	true	REQUIRED — always forward unconditionally, never gate on redis_host != "".
redis_host	""	Redis endpoint. Leave empty to use the NFS server IP (requires enable_nfs = true).
redis_port	"6379"	Redis port.
redis_auth	""	Redis auth password (sensitive). Aliased at runtime onto Ghostfolio's own REDIS_PASSWORD env var.

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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.
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.
storage_buckets	Always empty — Ghostfolio needs no bulk file/media storage.
container_image / container_registry	Deployed image and Artifact Registry repo.
initialization_jobs	Names of the setup jobs.
deployment_id / tenant_id / resource_prefix	Naming identifiers.
project_id / project_number	Project identifiers.

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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).

Inherited plan-time validation. This module passes its configuration through the App_CloudRun foundation engine, which validates values and combinations at plan time. Invalid configuration fails the plan with a clear, named error before any resource is created.

Setting	Sensible value	Risk	Consequence if wrong
ACCESS_TOKEN_SALT (auto-generated)	Never rotate after first boot	Critical	Rotating it invalidates every previously issued Security Token — every user must re-register.
JWT_SECRET_KEY (auto-generated)	Only rotate in a maintenance window	Critical	Rotating it invalidates all active sessions, forcing immediate re-login.
db_name / db_user	Set once	Critical	Immutable after first deploy; renaming recreates the DB/user and destroys all data.
enable_redis	true, always forwarded unconditionally	Critical	Ghostfolio's health endpoint checks Redis directly — without it the app never reports healthy, regardless of redis_host.
redis_host	"" (NFS) or explicit	High	When Redis is on but no host resolves (NFS off, no explicit host), REDIS_HOST is empty and the app fails its own health check.
enable_backup_import	false unless restoring	Critical	Enabling without a valid backup_uri fails the import job.
application_version	Pin for production	Medium	latest is genuinely valid here (unlike most modules), but still floats to whatever Docker Hub currently tags as latest — pin for reproducible deploys.
min_instance_count	0 is fine for most deployments	Low	Scale-to-zero adds a brief cold-start delay on the first request after idle; set 1 only if that latency matters.

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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. Ghostfolio-specific application configuration shared with the GKE variant is described in Ghostfolio_Common.

Related guides

• Hands-on lab: Ghostfolio on Cloud Run — deploy it step by step, with the console screens and commands at each stage.
• Ghostfolio on GKE Autopilot — the same application on Kubernetes, for when you need the other deployment target.
• Ghostfolio Common — Shared Application Configuration — the configuration shared by both deployment targets.
• Deployed alongside Firefly III on Google Cloud Run, Wallos on Google Cloud Run, ActualBudget on Google Cloud Run in the Finance & Wealth Tracking solution.