Miniflux on Google Cloud Run

Miniflux is a minimalist, self-hosted RSS/Atom feed reader — a single static Go binary that stores all state in PostgreSQL. This module deploys Miniflux 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 Miniflux 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 Miniflux costs on RAD, and how that compares

Running Miniflux in your own GCP project costs about $167.44/month in Google Cloud charges; RAD's module fee is a one-time 175 credits (or 157.5 credits in a RAD-managed project), covering setup and support -- not the ongoing cloud bill, which Google bills you directly in your own project or RAD meters hourly in credits in a RAD-managed one. If a lower running cost matters more than the deployment target, see the GKE guide for the lower-cost option; otherwise, if you deploy into a RAD-managed project you can pause the whole thing for free when you are not using it -- see Pause it for free below.

What you pay on RAD

	Your own project	RAD-managed project
Module fee	175 credits, once	157.5 credits, once (10% lower)
Build time	metered in credits as the build runs (a few credits, typically)	same
Google Cloud running cost	~$167.44/month, billed to your own billing account at Google's list price	~77 credits/day, metered hourly by RAD at list price plus margin

Default running cost in your own project

Resource	US$/month (Google list price, us-central1)
Cloud Run, 2x vCPU / 4 GiB (alwaysOn)	$110.42
Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL, 1 vCPU / 3.75 GB, zonal, 10 GB SSD	$51.02
Cloud NAT and networking	$5.00
Cloud Storage (add-ons, backups)	$1.00
Total	$167.44

How it compares

• the project's own official hosted instance costs $15/year (about $1.25/month) (source: https://miniflux.app/#pricing), run by the project itself with no infrastructure to operate -- the comparison that matters here is less the sticker price and more whether you want the vendor's own cloud or your own GCP project with RAD managing it.
• Running it yourself on a bare VPS is still the cheapest cash option -- Hetzner CPX22 (2 vCPU/4GB) runs about $24/month, a DigitalOcean 2 vCPU/4GB Droplet is also $24/month, and a GCP Compute Engine e2-standard-2 (2 vCPU/8GB) is about $49/month -- plus the admin's own time for backups, security patches and upgrades, which RAD's managed Cloud SQL, Secret Manager and monitoring cover for you -- but RAD's price is never meant to beat a VPS, only to replace the admin time a VPS still needs.
• Either way, this is a single-user feed reader, so the running cost above is what actually drives the bill, not the module fee -- and that running cost is the one you can pause (see below).

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

This is the headline for a RAD-managed project. Deleting a RAD-managed project first unlinks its billing, then asks Google to delete the project outright -- Google's own 30-day recoverable soft delete. Unlike deleting one module, 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 credits (under US$1) in total for a typical 2-3-deployment chain.

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 the app 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

In your own project (or once you are past the 30-day restore window above), the alternative is to delete Miniflux outright and redeploy it later. A redeploy costs the module fee again, plus the builds -- roughly 175 + 3-6 credits of build time.

Deleting saves money only once Miniflux would otherwise sit unused long enough to clear that redeploy cost against its own daily running cost -- against the own-project total above, that works out to about 3 days or more. Most of the running cost here is usually the database; it stops only when nothing else in the project uses it, 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.

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; https://cloud.google.com/resource-manager/docs/delete-restore-projects for the pause/restore mechanics; https://miniflux.app/#pricing for the named competitor's price.

1. Overview

Miniflux runs as a single Go 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	Single Go binary, 2 vCPU / 4 GiB by default, always-CPU-allocated with min = 1 for the in-process feed poller
Database	Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL 15	Required — Miniflux stores all state here; no MySQL/other engine
Object storage	Cloud Storage	A default data bucket is provisioned but not mounted/used by the app (all state lives in PostgreSQL); an optional NFS mount is also available but unused by default
Cache & queue	None	Miniflux has no Redis dependency and no separate worker
Secrets	Secret Manager	Auto-generated ADMIN_PASSWORD (initial owner); 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; selecting any other engine breaks startup.
• The feed poller runs in-process. Miniflux has no separate worker — the same container serves the UI and refreshes feeds on POLLING_FREQUENCY. Because of this, cpu_always_allocated = true and min_instance_count = 1 are the defaults: request-based billing would throttle the poller to ~0 CPU when idle and stall refreshes. To scale to zero, flip cpu_always_allocated = false + min = 0 and externalize polling via a Cloud Scheduler hit to /v1/feeds/refresh.
• The initial owner is seeded, not self-registered. CREATE_ADMIN = 1 seeds the admin account from the ADMIN_PASSWORD secret on first boot; open self-service signup stays off. Retrieve the password from Secret Manager to log in.
• Schema migrations run on boot (RUN_MIGRATIONS = 1) — there is no separate migrate job, so upgrading the version applies schema changes automatically.
• No Redis. enable_redis = false — Miniflux keeps every feed, entry, and session in PostgreSQL. Leave it off.
• Public ingress by default. ingress_settings = "all" so the web UI (and Miniflux's own API / Fever / Google Reader endpoints) are reachable. Enabling IAP will front the UI with Google sign-in.
• DATABASE_URL is composed at runtime by the container entrypoint (libpq keyword/value form), branching on socket vs loopback vs private-IP TCP so the same image works on Cloud Run and GKE.

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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 Miniflux service

Miniflux runs as a Cloud Run v2 service listening on port 8080. Each deployment creates an immutable revision; traffic can be split across revisions for safe rollouts. Because the feed poller runs in the container, CPU is allocated at all times and at least one instance is kept warm.

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

  gcloud run services list --project "$PROJECT" --region "$REGION" \
    --filter="metadata.name~miniflux"
  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

Miniflux stores all application data (feeds, entries, users, sessions, categories) 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 is exposed. On first deploy the db-init Job creates the miniflux database and role and installs the hstore extension owned by the app role.

• 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=miniflux --database=miniflux --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 / NFS

Miniflux needs no object storage — it keeps all state in PostgreSQL. The variant's storage_buckets default still provisions one data Cloud Storage bucket (scaffold boilerplate), but it is not mounted or referenced by the application; override storage_buckets = [] to skip creating it. NFS is off by default (enable_nfs = false): Miniflux links enclosures rather than downloading them, so it has no attachment storage and needs no shared filesystem.

• Console: Filestore → Instances (if NFS is enabled); Cloud Storage → Buckets.
• CLI:

  gcloud filestore instances list --project "$PROJECT"
  gcloud storage buckets list --project "$PROJECT"

See App_CloudRun for NFS, GCS Fuse, and CMEK options.

D. Secret Manager

One secret is generated automatically: ADMIN_PASSWORD — the initial owner password seeded into Miniflux on first boot. The database password is managed separately by the foundation.

• Console: Security → Secret Manager.
• CLI:

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

See App_CloudRun for injection and rotation details.

E. Networking & ingress

The service is reachable at its run.app URL by default (public ingress). 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. When a custom domain is used, set BASE_URL so Miniflux emits correct absolute links and feed-proxy URLs.

• 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. The entrypoint logs its DATABASE_URL connection mode (socket / loopback / private-IP TCP) at start — useful when diagnosing DB connectivity.

• 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. Miniflux Application Behaviour

• First-deploy database setup. The db-init Job runs db-init.sh using postgres:15-alpine. It connects through the Cloud SQL Auth Proxy and idempotently creates the miniflux database and role, grants privileges, re-owns the public schema, and installs the hstore extension owned by the app role (so Miniflux migration v119, which drops hstore, succeeds). The job is safe to re-run.
• Schema migrations on boot. The entrypoint sets RUN_MIGRATIONS=1, so Miniflux applies its own schema migrations on every start — no separate migrate step. Allow extra time on the first boot for the initial schema build.
• Initial owner is seeded. CREATE_ADMIN=1 seeds the admin account (ADMIN_USERNAME) from the ADMIN_PASSWORD secret. It is idempotent — later boots log "user already exists". Retrieve the password to log in:

  gcloud secrets versions access latest \
    --secret=secret-<resource-prefix>-miniflux-admin-password --project "$PROJECT"

• Health path. The variant's startup_probe/liveness_probe defaults target / (root), not the app's own /healthcheck endpoint — both return an unauthenticated 200 OK. Do not point probes at authenticated pages.
• The feed poller is in-process. Feeds refresh on POLLING_FREQUENCY inside the same container. With the default cpu_always_allocated = true + min = 1, polling runs continuously. If you flip to scale-to-zero, feeds will not refresh while the service is idle unless you drive /v1/feeds/refresh from Cloud Scheduler.
• BASE_URL drives absolute links. It defaults to the injected CLOUDRUN_SERVICE_URL. Set it explicitly (via environment_variables) to the custom-domain URL when you front the service with a load balancer.
• Inspect the db-init 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 Miniflux 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.

All other inputs follow standard App_CloudRun behaviour.

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.

All other inputs follow standard App_CloudRun behaviour.

Group 3 — Application Identity

Variable	Default	Description
application_name	miniflux	Base name for resources. Do not change after first deploy.
display_name	Miniflux	Human-readable name shown in the Console.
application_version	latest	Miniflux image tag (FROM miniflux/miniflux:<tag>). Pin to a release (e.g. 2.2.15) in production.

All other inputs follow standard App_CloudRun behaviour.

Group 4 — Runtime & Scaling

Variable	Default	Description
deploy_application	true	Set false to provision infrastructure only.
cpu_limit	2000m	CPU per instance.
memory_limit	4Gi	Memory per instance.
cpu_always_allocated	true	Keeps CPU allocated for the in-process feed poller. Flip to false only with min = 0 + externalized polling.
min_instance_count	1	1 keeps the feed poller running between requests; 0 (scale-to-zero) stops background polling unless externalized.
max_instance_count	5	Upper autoscaling bound. Miniflux is single-process; extra instances just share request load.
container_port	8080	Miniflux listens on 8080 (LISTEN_ADDR).
execution_environment	gen2	Gen2 required for NFS and GCS Fuse mounts.
timeout_seconds	300	Maximum request duration (0–3600 seconds).
enable_cloudsql_volume	true	Cloud SQL Auth Proxy for socket connections.
enable_image_mirroring	true	Mirror the Miniflux image into Artifact Registry.

All other inputs follow standard App_CloudRun behaviour.

Group 5 — Access & Ingress Control

Variable	Default	Description
ingress_settings	all	all keeps the UI/API publicly reachable.
vpc_egress_setting	PRIVATE_RANGES_ONLY	Route only RFC 1918 traffic via VPC.
enable_iap	false	Require Google sign-in in front of Miniflux.
iap_authorized_users / iap_authorized_groups	[]	Who may access through IAP.

All other inputs follow standard App_CloudRun behaviour.

Group 6 — Environment Variables & Secrets

Variable	Default	Description
environment_variables	{}	Extra non-secret settings merged into the container (e.g. BASE_URL, POLLING_FREQUENCY, DISABLE_LOCAL_AUTH). Do not set PORT (reserved) or DATABASE_URL (composed at runtime).
secret_environment_variables	{}	Map of env var → Secret Manager secret name.
secret_propagation_delay	30	Seconds to wait after secret creation before proceeding.
secret_rotation_period	2592000s	Secret Manager rotation notification frequency.

All other inputs follow standard App_CloudRun behaviour.

Group 7 — Backup & Restore

backup_schedule, backup_retention_days, enable_backup_import, backup_source, backup_file, backup_format — automated Cloud SQL backup and restore-on-deploy. See App_CloudRun.

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 11 — Storage & Filesystem

Variable	Default	Description
create_cloud_storage	true	Create GCS buckets defined in storage_buckets.
storage_buckets	[{name_suffix="data", location=""}]	Default data bucket is provisioned but unused/unmounted by Miniflux — override to [] to skip it.
enable_nfs	false	Provisions a Filestore NFS mount at /opt/miniflux/storage. Leave off — Miniflux stores all state in PostgreSQL.
nfs_mount_path	/opt/miniflux/storage	Mount path inside the container.
gcs_volumes	[]	GCS Fuse volume mounts (requires gen2).

All other inputs follow standard App_CloudRun behaviour.

Group 12 — Database Backend

Variable	Default	Description
database_type	POSTGRES_15	Fixed — Miniflux requires PostgreSQL.
db_name	miniflux	PostgreSQL database name. Immutable after first deploy.
db_user	miniflux	Application database user. Password auto-generated in Secret Manager.
database_password_length	32	Generated password length (16–64).
enable_auto_password_rotation / rotation_propagation_delay_sec	off	DB password rotation.

All other inputs follow standard App_CloudRun behaviour.

Group 13 — Jobs & Scheduled Tasks

Variable	Default	Description
initialization_jobs	[]	Leave empty to use the built-in db-init job (role/database/hstore).
cron_jobs	[]	Optional scheduled jobs (e.g. a Cloud Scheduler /v1/feeds/refresh hit when scaled to zero).

All other inputs follow standard App_CloudRun behaviour.

Group 14 — Observability & Health

Variable	Default	Description
startup_probe	HTTP /, 60s initial delay, 30 failures	Startup probe. Generous window for first-boot migrations.
liveness_probe	HTTP /, 60s initial delay, 30s period	Liveness probe.
uptime_check_config	disabled	Cloud Monitoring uptime check against the public endpoint; enable and set a path to activate.
alert_policies	[]	Metric alert policies.

All other inputs follow standard App_CloudRun behaviour.

Group 21 — Redis Cache & Queue

Variable	Default	Description
enable_redis	false	Miniflux does not use Redis — leave off.
redis_host / redis_port / redis_auth	"" / 6379 / ""	Unused by Miniflux.

All other inputs follow standard App_CloudRun behaviour.

Group 22 — VPC Service Controls & Audit Logging

enable_vpc_sc, vpc_cidr_ranges, vpc_sc_dry_run, enable_audit_logging — see App_CloudRun.

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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 (miniflux).
database_password_secret	Secret Manager secret holding the DB password.
database_host / database_port	DB endpoint / port.
storage_buckets	Created Cloud Storage buckets (a default data bucket unless overridden).
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 (db-init).
deployment_id / tenant_id / resource_prefix	Naming identifiers.
project_id / project_number	Project identifiers.
cicd_enabled / github_repository_url / github_repository_owner / github_repository_name / cicd_configuration	CI/CD status and 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).

Inherited plan-time validation. This module passes its configuration through the App_CloudRun foundation engine, which validates values and combinations at plan time — an IAP config with no authorized identities, a gen1 runtime with NFS/GCS mounts, a database_type that does not match an enabled extension, an out-of-range redis_port/backup_retention_days. 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
database_type	POSTGRES_15	Critical	Miniflux only supports PostgreSQL; any other engine breaks startup.
db_name / db_user	Set once (miniflux)	Critical	Immutable after first deploy; renaming recreates the DB/user and destroys all feeds and entries.
enable_backup_import	false unless restoring	Critical	Enabling without a valid backup source fails the import job.
ADMIN_PASSWORD (auto-generated)	Retrieve from Secret Manager	High	It is the only owner credential seeded on first boot; without it you cannot log in until you reset it in the DB.
cpu_always_allocated + min_instance_count	true + 1	High	Setting false/0 without externalized polling stops feed refreshes while the service is idle.
enable_redis	false	Medium	Redis is unused; enabling it wastes resources and changes nothing.
ingress_settings	all	High	internal blocks the public UI and external feed-reader clients (Fever / Google Reader API).
enable_iap	off unless UI must be gated	Medium	IAP fronts the UI/API with Google sign-in, blocking Fever/Reader API clients that authenticate with app tokens.
BASE_URL (env)	Actual public URL	Medium	A stale/wrong base URL yields broken absolute links and feed-proxy image URLs.
startup_probe.path	/ (default)	High	Pointing the probe at an authenticated page returns 401/403 and the revision never becomes Ready.
memory_limit	4Gi (≥512Mi floor)	Medium	Below the gen2 512Mi floor the apply is rejected; Miniflux itself is lightweight.
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. Miniflux-specific application configuration shared with the GKE variant is described in Miniflux_Common.

Related guides

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