Logto on GKE Autopilot

Logto is an open-source, MPL-2.0-licensed identity provider — an Auth0 alternative that speaks OIDC and OAuth 2.0 and ships with sign-in flows, social/enterprise connectors, multi-tenancy, and an admin console. This module deploys Logto on GKE Autopilot on top of the App_GKE foundation, which provisions and manages the shared Google Cloud and Kubernetes infrastructure.

This guide focuses on the cloud services Logto uses and how to explore and operate them from the Google Cloud Console and the command line. For the mechanics that are common to every GKE application — Workload Identity, ingress, autoscaling, CI/CD, Cloud Armor, IAP, Binary Authorization, VPC Service Controls, backups, and the deployment lifecycle — refer to the App_GKE foundation guide rather than repeating them here.

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What Logto costs on RAD, and how that compares

Logto on RAD's GKE Autopilot module costs about US$150 a month in your own project, with no per-user or per-MAU fee. RAD charges 175 credits once per deployment in your own project (157.5 credits, 10% lower, in a project RAD manages), plus build time. The same app also deploys on Cloud Run for about US$110 a month — see the Cloud Run guide for the lower-cost option. If you only need it occasionally, a RAD-managed project can be deleted and restored within 30 days for a few credits, so that monthly figure becomes a few dollars instead — 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	175 credits (US$17.50 at the top-up price)	157.5 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$150 a month for the default configuration (table below)	Metered hourly in credits; RAD publishes 111 credits a day, about 3,330 a month (about US$333.00 at the top-up price, less on a plan)
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
GKE Autopilot pod, 2x vCPU / 4 GiB	US$79
Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL, 1 vCPU / 3.75 GB, zonal, 10 GB SSD	US$51
NFS/cache file server (small VM)	US$13
Cloud NAT and networking	US$5
Cloud Storage (add-ons, backups)	US$1
GKE cluster management fee	shared across every GKE app in the project; US$0 if this is your only cluster, else ~US$73
Total	about US$150

How it compares

• Auth0 (B2C) starts at US$35 a month on its Essentials plan for up to 500 monthly active users, scaling with MAUs after that; its B2B Essentials plan starts at US$150 a month. A free tier covers up to 25,000 MAUs but drops most enterprise features.
• RAD's Logto module costs about US$150 a month in your own project — more than Auth0's entry tier at very low user counts, but it has no MAU-based metering or per-tenant pricing tier to grow out of, and you hold the user database and signing keys yourself rather than trusting a third party with every login.
• Self-managed comparison: Logto's 2 vCPU / 4 GiB footprint is close to a GCP Compute Engine e2-standard-2 (~US$49/month) or a larger Hetzner/DigitalOcean box, plus you would still need to run and patch PostgreSQL and the NFS/cache layer it depends on yourself.

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

If Logto runs in a project RAD manages for you, you have a second option that goes well beyond scaling to zero: delete the whole project, and restore it within 30 days for close to nothing. This suits Logto you only need occasionally — evaluating it, a demo environment, a seasonal or intermittent workload — 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 the project immediately: it keeps it, recoverable, for 30 days. Because billing is already unlinked, nothing is charged while it waits. Unlike deleting one module, this does not tear down the database, any VM or the compute resource one by one — the whole project, and everything in it, simply stops.
• Restoring costs a few 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. For Logto behind Services_GCP (a GKE cluster, a small NFS/cache VM, a Postgres database) and Project_GCP, that is roughly a handful of credits (under US$1) in total, against the about 180 credits (US$18.00) a full redeploy costs.
• So a month of occasional use can cost a few dollars, not US$150. Deploy Logto, use it for a while, delete the project. Restore it next time you need it, confirm with Update, and delete it again when you're done. You pay only for the module fee once, the builds, and whatever time it was actually live.
• What this needs. You must own the project (not 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 evaluation 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 and other generated files are written to a bucket inside the project, and that bucket is not protected by Cloud Storage's soft-delete, 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 Logto and want to keep that work, copy a backup out (to Google Drive, or a bucket outside the project) before you delete. For a default installation with nothing irreplaceable in it, this does not matter.

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

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 — roughly 180 credits (US$18.00) in total. Deleting saves money only once Logto would otherwise sit unused long enough to clear that redeploy cost against its own running cost — about 4 days or more, both in your own project (about US$4.99 a day) and in a RAD-managed one (111 credits a day).
• Most of the running cost is usually shared. For Logto that 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 part.
• Keep your 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 list prices from the Cloud Billing Catalog API; RAD fees and the daily-credit estimate from radmodules.dev/pricing; Delete and restore projects for the pause/restore mechanics and what it says about Cloud Storage objects without soft delete; Auth0. Prices change; check each source before relying on a figure.

1. Overview

Logto runs as a Node.js web workload. The deployment wires together a focused set of Google Cloud services:

Capability	Google Cloud service	Notes
Compute	GKE Autopilot	Node.js pods, 2 vCPU / 4 GiB by default, horizontally autoscaled
Database	Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL 15	Required — Logto does not support MySQL or other engines
Object storage	Cloud Storage	One bucket provisioned automatically; optional for Logto (all core state is in Postgres)
Secrets	Secret Manager	Only the database password — Logto has no external application secret (OIDC keys are DB-seeded)
Ingress	Cloud Load Balancing	External LoadBalancer; optional custom domain + managed certificate (nip.io host by default)

Sensible defaults worth knowing up front:

• PostgreSQL 15 is mandatory. The database engine is fixed by the shared application layer; a plan-time guard rejects any non-PostgreSQL database_type.
• Logto core is published on port 3001; the admin console (3002) is not. A single GKE Service publishes one port, so only the core API / OIDC endpoint (3001) is reachable. The admin console — where the first admin account and applications are registered — runs on 3002 and needs a separate route (e.g. kubectl port-forward) for first-run setup (see §3).
• There is no application secret to protect. Logto generates its OIDC signing keys on first boot and stores them in the database. Nothing in Secret Manager needs to be guarded or rotated except the foundation-managed DB password. Protecting Logto's keys means protecting Cloud SQL.
• Cloud SQL over the Auth Proxy loopback. On GKE the Auth Proxy sidecar listens on 127.0.0.1; Logto's entrypoint connects over plain TCP loopback with SSL disabled (the proxy terminates TLS to Cloud SQL).
• Session affinity is ClientIP by default so a client consistently reaches the same pod.
• service_type = LoadBalancer with a static IP and nip.io custom domain by default (reserve_static_ip = true, enable_custom_domain = true), giving Logto a stable externally reachable HTTPS host out of the box.
• No Redis. Logto is Postgres-backed; enable_redis defaults to false.
• ENDPOINT is derived from the service URL. The entrypoint sets Logto's OIDC issuer and absolute URLs from the injected GKE_SERVICE_URL; update ENDPOINT to the external LoadBalancer / custom-domain URL once it is known.
• Minimum 1 replica is maintained (GKE does not support scale-to-zero) to keep the identity endpoint always reachable.

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2. Google Cloud Services & How to Explore Them

All commands assume you have run gcloud container clusters get-credentials <cluster> --region <region> --project <project> and that PROJECT, REGION, and NAMESPACE are set. The namespace and other identifiers are reported in the deployment Outputs.

A. GKE Autopilot — the Logto workload

Logto pods are scheduled on Autopilot, which bills for the CPU/memory the pods actually request. Horizontal Pod Autoscaling sizes the deployment between the minimum and maximum replica counts. The container and Service publish port 3001 (Logto core).

• Console: Kubernetes Engine → Workloads → select the Logto workload to see pods, revisions, and events. Kubernetes Engine → Services & Ingress shows the external IP.
• CLI:

  kubectl get pods,svc,hpa -n "$NAMESPACE"
  kubectl logs -n "$NAMESPACE" deploy/<service-name> --tail=100
  kubectl exec -n "$NAMESPACE" deploy/<service-name> -- env | grep -E 'DB_HOST|DB_IP|ENDPOINT'

See App_GKE for how Autopilot, scaling, and the workload type (Deployment vs StatefulSet) are managed.

B. Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL 15

Logto stores everything — users, applications, connectors, OIDC signing keys, and per-tenant roles — in a managed Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL 15 instance. Pods reach it through the Cloud SQL Auth Proxy sidecar on 127.0.0.1; the entrypoint connects over plain TCP loopback (the proxy terminates TLS). On first deploy an initialization Job creates the application database and role (with CREATEROLE, required for Logto's per-tenant RLS roles).

• Console: SQL → select the instance for connections, backups, flags, and 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 (logto), user (logto), and the Secret Manager secret holding the password are all surfaced in the Outputs. For the connection model, automated backups, and password rotation, see App_GKE.

C. Cloud Storage

One Cloud Storage bucket is provisioned automatically and the workload service account is granted access. Logto keeps all core state in PostgreSQL, so this bucket is available for optional assets rather than required runtime storage.

• Console: Cloud Storage → Buckets.
• CLI:

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

See App_GKE for CMEK options and GCS Fuse mounts.

D. Secret Manager

Logto has no external application secret — its OIDC signing keys are generated and stored in the database on first boot. The only secret in play is the database password, which the foundation generates and manages and syncs into the pod via the Secret Store CSI driver.

• Console: Security → Secret Manager.
• CLI:

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

See App_GKE for the Secret Store CSI integration and rotation.

E. Networking & ingress

By default the workload is exposed through an external Cloud Load Balancing IP with a reserved static address and a nip.io-based custom domain + managed certificate. Logto's OIDC issuer and all absolute redirect URLs are built from ENDPOINT, so the external host, the issuer, and registered redirect URIs must all agree — update ENDPOINT to the external URL once the LoadBalancer IP / domain is assigned.

• Console: Network services → Load balancing; VPC network → IP addresses.
• CLI:

  kubectl get ingress,svc -n "$NAMESPACE"
  gcloud compute addresses list --project "$PROJECT"

See App_GKE for custom domains, Cloud CDN, and static IP details.

F. Cloud Logging & Monitoring

Pod stdout/stderr flow to Cloud Logging; GKE and Cloud SQL metrics flow to Cloud Monitoring. The entrypoint prints a [cloud-entrypoint] line reporting the resolved DB connection mode and ENDPOINT — useful when diagnosing connection or issuer-URL problems.

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

  gcloud logging read 'resource.type="k8s_container" AND resource.labels.namespace_name="'"$NAMESPACE"'"' \
    --project "$PROJECT" --limit 50

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3. Logto Application Behaviour

• First-deploy database setup. An initialization Job runs db-init.sh using postgres:15-alpine. It idempotently creates the application role with CREATEDB CREATEROLE (required for Logto's per-tenant RLS roles) and the application database, grants privileges, transfers public schema ownership to the app role, then signals the Auth Proxy sidecar to shut down so the Job pod can complete. The job is safe to re-run.
• Schema and OIDC keys seeded on boot. On start Logto runs npm run cli db seed -- --swe (--swe = seed-when-empty, idempotent) which creates its schema and generates the OIDC private signing keys into the database — only when the database is empty. These keys are not stored in Secret Manager; the database is their sole custodian. Wiping the database regenerates new keys and invalidates all previously issued tokens and registered clients.
• No application secret to rotate. There is no encryption key or JWT secret in Secret Manager — only the foundation-managed DB password.
• Admin console (3002) is not published. The Service exposes only the core (3001). Reach the admin console to create the first administrator and register applications via a port-forward:

  kubectl port-forward -n "$NAMESPACE" deploy/<service-name> 3002:3002
  # then open http://localhost:3002

  ADMIN_ENDPOINT defaults to the same host as ENDPOINT for URL consistency.
• ENDPOINT must match the browser-facing host. Logto builds its OIDC issuer and redirect URLs from ENDPOINT; the entrypoint sets it from GKE_SERVICE_URL. Update it to the external LoadBalancer or custom-domain URL via environment_variables once the external address is known.
• Health path. The startup probe targets /api/status; the liveness and readiness probes target /oidc/.well-known/openid-configuration. The liveness path must return a literal 200 because App_GKE mirrors it into the Gateway health check, and /api/status returns 204, which the load balancer treats as unhealthy (the Gateway would serve 503). The container port and probes must all be 3001. Verify:

  kubectl port-forward -n "$NAMESPACE" deploy/<service-name> 3001:3001 &
  curl -s http://localhost:3001/oidc/.well-known/openid-configuration

• Inspect init-job execution:

  kubectl get jobs -n "$NAMESPACE"
  kubectl logs -n "$NAMESPACE" job/<job-name>

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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 Logto are listed; every other input is inherited from App_GKE with its standard behaviour and defaults.

Group 1 — Project & Identity

Variable	Default	Description
project_id	(required)	Target Google Cloud project.
region	us-central1	Region for the workload 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	logto	Base name for resources. Do not change after first deploy.
application_version	latest	Logto image tag (svhd/logto:<tag>); pin to a specific release (e.g. 1.33) in production.

Group 4 — Runtime & Scaling

Variable	Default	Description
deploy_application	true	Set false to provision infrastructure only.
min_instance_count	1	Minimum replicas; GKE requires ≥ 1. Keeps the identity endpoint reachable.
max_instance_count	5	Maximum replicas.
container_resources	{cpu_limit="2000m", memory_limit="4Gi"}	CPU/memory limits and requests for the Logto container; Logto needs at least 2 GiB memory.
container_port	3001	Logto core listens on 3001; the admin console (3002) is not published. Port and probes must match 3001.
enable_cloudsql_volume	true	Cloud SQL Auth Proxy sidecar (loopback TCP).

Group 6 — GKE Backend & Cluster

Variable	Default	Description
service_type	LoadBalancer	How the Kubernetes Service is exposed.
workload_type	null (→ Deployment)	Deployment (stateless; Logto keeps all state in Postgres) or StatefulSet.
session_affinity	ClientIP	Sticky routing so a client stays on one pod.

Group 7 — StatefulSet

Variable	Default	Description
stateful_pvc_enabled	null (off)	Not needed — Logto stores all state in PostgreSQL. Enabling auto-selects StatefulSet.

Group 10 — Observability & Health

Variable	Default	Description
startup_probe	HTTP /api/status, wide first-boot window	Allows time for the seed step.
liveness_probe	HTTP /oidc/.well-known/openid-configuration	Liveness/readiness probe. Must return a literal 200 — it is mirrored into the Gateway health check, and /api/status returns 204.
uptime_check_config	disabled — /	Optional Cloud Monitoring uptime check against the LoadBalancer host; disabled by default.

Group 11 — Jobs & Scheduled Tasks

Variable	Default	Description
initialization_jobs	[]	Leave empty to use the built-in db-init job.

Group 13 — Filesystem (NFS)

Variable	Default	Description
enable_nfs	true	Provisions a shared Filestore volume. Not required by Logto (it stores all state in PostgreSQL) — safe to override to false.

Group 15 — Redis Cache & Queue

Variable	Default	Description
enable_redis	false	Logto uses Postgres for all persistence — leave false.

Group 16 — Database Backend

Variable	Default	Description
application_database_name	logto	PostgreSQL database name. Immutable after first deploy.
application_database_user	logto	Application database user (granted CREATEROLE). Immutable after first deploy.

Group 19 — Custom Domain, Static IP & Networking

Variable	Default	Description
enable_custom_domain	true	Provision Ingress + managed certificate (nip.io host by default).
reserve_static_ip	true	Stable external IP across redeploys.
application_domains	[]	Hostnames to serve; set ENDPOINT to match.

Group 20 — Identity-Aware Proxy (IAP)

Warning: Enabling IAP requires Google identity authentication for all inbound requests, including the OIDC/login flows Logto exists to serve. Leave off for a public identity provider.

Variable	Default	Description
enable_iap	false	Require Google sign-in in front of Logto.

All other inputs follow standard App_GKE behaviour.

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5. Outputs

These values are returned on a successful deployment and are the quickest way to locate and explore the running resources.

Output	Description
service_name	Kubernetes Service name.
namespace	Namespace the workload runs in.
service_cluster_ip	In-cluster ClusterIP.
stage_service_cluster_ips	Map of ClusterIPs for stage-specific services.
service_external_ip	External LoadBalancer IP (when a static IP is reserved).
service_url	URL to reach Logto core.
database_instance_name	Cloud SQL instance name.
database_name	Application database name.
database_user	Application database user.
database_password_secret	Secret Manager secret holding the DB password.
database_host / database_port	DB endpoint (127.0.0.1 via the Auth Proxy) / port.
storage_buckets	Created Cloud Storage buckets.
network_name / network_exists / regions	VPC network, presence, available regions.
container_image / container_registry	Deployed image and Artifact Registry repo.
monitoring_enabled / monitoring_notification_channels	Monitoring status and channels.
initialization_jobs / db_import_job	Names of the setup and (optional) import jobs.
deployment_id / tenant_id / resource_prefix	Naming identifiers.
project_id / project_number	Project identifiers.
cicd_enabled / cicd_configuration	CI/CD status and details (repo, trigger, registry).
github_repository_url / github_repository_owner / github_repository_name	CI/CD GitHub details.
artifact_registry_repository / cloudbuild_trigger_name / cloudbuild_trigger_id	Registry and build trigger.
kubernetes_ready	Whether the cluster/workload is ready.
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).

Inherited plan-time validation. This module passes its configuration through the App_GKE foundation engine, which validates values and combinations at plan time — a non-PostgreSQL database_type, min_instance_count > max_instance_count, Redis enabled with no resolvable host, IAP with no authorized identities, a custom domain with no hostnames. Invalid configuration fails the plan with a clear, named error before any resource is created, so most mistakes below are caught up front rather than at apply or runtime.

Setting	Sensible value	Risk	Consequence if wrong
Cloud SQL database	Back up; never wipe	Critical	Logto's OIDC signing keys live in the DB. Wiping it regenerates new keys and invalidates every issued token and registered client.
application_database_name / application_database_user	Set once	Critical	Immutable after first deploy; renaming recreates the DB/role and destroys all identity data.
database_type	POSTGRES_15	Critical	MySQL/other engines are rejected at plan time; Logto only runs on PostgreSQL.
enable_backup_import	false unless restoring	Critical	Enabling without a valid backup file fails the import job.
ENDPOINT	External LoadBalancer / custom-domain URL	High	A mismatched issuer breaks OIDC discovery, redirect URIs, and every OAuth callback.
container_port	3001	High	The core listens on 3001; a wrong port makes every probe and request fail. Admin console (3002) is intentionally unpublished.
enable_iap	false for a public IdP	High	IAP blocks all unauthenticated requests, including the OIDC/login flows Logto exists to serve.
container_resources.memory_limit	4Gi (≥ 2 GiB)	High	Below ~2 GiB Logto is prone to OOM under load.
session_affinity	ClientIP	High	Without stickiness, sequential requests from one client can hit different pods mid-flow.
Admin console access (3002)	kubectl port-forward for setup	High	The first-admin/setup UI is on 3002, unreachable via the LoadBalancer — first-run setup stalls without a port-forward.
min_instance_count	1	High	GKE requires min ≥ 1; the validation guard rejects invalid values.
enable_cloudsql_volume	true	High	The Auth Proxy sidecar is required for the loopback PostgreSQL path on GKE.
enable_redis	false	Low	Logto does not use Redis; enabling it wires an unused dependency.
quota_memory_requests / _limits	binary units (4Gi, 8192Mi)	Critical	Bare integers are bytes and block all pod scheduling in the namespace.

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For the foundation behaviour referenced throughout — IAM and Workload Identity, autoscaling, ingress and certificates, CI/CD, Cloud Armor, IAP, Binary Authorization, VPC-SC, backups, and image mirroring — see App_GKE. Logto-specific application configuration shared with the Cloud Run variant is described in Logto_Common.

Related guides

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