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Passbolt on Google Cloud Run

Passbolt on Google Cloud Run

Passbolt (Community Edition) is a free, open-source, team-oriented password manager with GPG-based encryption and per-user/group credential sharing — AGPL-3.0 licensed, ~6k GitHub stars. It occupies a different niche from this catalog's Vaultwarden module: Vaultwarden is a personal/Bitwarden-compatible vault, while Passbolt is built around organization-wide GPG-encrypted credential sharing between users and groups. This module deploys the official passbolt/passbolt image 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 Passbolt 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.


What Passbolt costs on RAD, and how that compares​

For a team of ten, Passbolt on RAD's Cloud Run module costs about US$84 a month with no per-user licence. Passbolt's own Pro edition is a self-hosted licence from US$4.90/user/month (10-user minimum) on top of your own hosting; RAD deploys the free Community Edition, so the licence fee below is for extra features, not a hosted alternative. Figures are as at 8 October 2026; sources are listed at the end of this section.

If you only need it occasionally — studying for a certification, a demo, a seasonal business — a RAD-managed project can be deleted and restored within 30 days for a few credits, so that US$84 becomes a few dollars a month instead. See Pause it for free, below.

What you pay on RAD​

In a Google Cloud project you ownIn a project RAD manages for you
Module fee, once per deployment75 credits (US$7.50 at the top-up price)67.5 credits (10% lower)
Build timeAbout 19 credits per build (RAD's average build takes about 19 minutes)The same
Google Cloud running costBilled by Google to your own billing account (table below)Metered hourly in credits; RAD publishes 32 credits a day, about 960 credits a month (about US$96 at the top-up price, US$77 at the Scale plan's rate)
Who owns whatYou own the project and its billing; RAD deploys and updates itRAD 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, 1x vCPU / 2 GiB (scaleToZero)US$13.16
Cloud SQL for MySQL, 1 vCPU / 3.75 GB, zonal, 10 GB SSDUS$51.02
NFS/cache file server (small VM)US$13.43
Cloud NAT and networkingUS$5
Cloud Storage (add-ons, backups)US$1
Totalabout US$84
  • Cloud SQL and Cloud Run cost the same in africa-south1 (Johannesburg); the VM costs about 10% more.
  • Scale-to-zero is the default. The Cloud Run line above already reflects that cost; setting min_instance_count = 1 keeps an instance warm and raises this line, in exchange for no cold starts.
  • Avoid Filestore for a small deployment. The module uses a small NFS/cache VM by default. Filestore's smallest instance is 1 TiB, which costs about US$164 a month on its own.

How it compares​

  • Passbolt sells its own Pro edition as a self-hosted licence: US$4.90 per user per month, billed annually, with a 10-user minimum (passbolt.com/pricing, 8 October 2026) — about US$49/month for a 10-person team. That is a licence fee on top of hosting, adding SSO, LDAP provisioning and tag management to the free Community Edition RAD deploys — it is not a hosted alternative to either RAD figure above.
  • A bare VPS running the free Community Edition — Hetzner CPX22 or a DigitalOcean 2 vCPU/4 GB Droplet, both about US$24/month — undercuts RAD's own-project figure above, at the cost of running MySQL, backups and GPG key handling yourself. Passbolt only needs 1 vCPU / 2 GiB, so a smaller/cheaper VPS tier would likely do.
  • For a password manager specifically, who can read the backups matters as much as the price: RAD keeps the database and secrets in Cloud SQL and Secret Manager rather than on a server you administer by hand.
  • If Passbolt needs to stay up without scaling to zero, or run beside other Kubernetes workloads, see the GKE guide instead — about US$110 a month in your own project, or 2,970 credits (about US$238–297) a month in one RAD manages.

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

If Passbolt 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 occasional use — studying for a certification, a demo environment, a seasonal business — far better than running Passbolt 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 Cloud SQL, any 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 credits (under US$1) for a typical 2–3-deployment chain, against the 80 credits (US$8) a full redeploy costs below.
  • So a month of occasional use can cost a few dollars, not US$84. Deploy Passbolt, use it for a while, 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 time Passbolt 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 and demo use fits). Google says most services are fully working again within 36 hours of a restore.
  • One real gap: the backup bucket does not survive. Passbolt's backups 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 made changes to Passbolt you want to keep, copy a backup out (to Google Drive, or a bucket outside the project) before you delete, the same as the redeploy workflow below. 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​

Cloud Run already scales to zero between requests. 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), because RAD recreates the project and shared services before Passbolt. Deleting saves money only once Passbolt would otherwise sit unused for about 3 days or more, both in your own project (about US$2.79 a day) and in a RAD-managed one (32 credits a day).
  • Most of the running cost is usually the database and the shared file/cache VM. They stop only when nothing else in the project uses them, so deleting Passbolt while something else shares the project saves only Passbolt's own compute part.
  • Keep data first. Backups are written 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.
  • 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 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; radmodules.dev/pricing for RAD's own fees and daily-credit estimates; Delete and restore projects for the pause/restore window and what it says about Cloud Storage objects without soft delete; Passbolt pricing.


1. Overview​

Passbolt runs as a single Apache/PHP container on Cloud Run v2. The deployment wires together a focused set of Google Cloud services:

CapabilityGoogle Cloud serviceNotes
ComputeCloud Run v2Apache/PHP container, port 80, 1 vCPU / 2Gi by default, min_instance_count = 0 (scale-to-zero)
DatabaseCloud SQL for MySQL (MYSQL_8_0)Required — Passbolt is a MySQL-only CakePHP application; discrete DATASOURCES_DEFAULT_* env vars, not a single DSN
Cryptographic stateTwo dedicated GCS buckets (storage, jwt)Hold the vendor-self-generated GPG server keypair and JWT keypair — not Terraform-generated secrets
SecretsSecret ManagerOnly the database password is generated by the foundation — Passbolt itself contributes no secret at all (Passbolt_Common's secret_ids output is always empty)
IngressCloud Run URL / Cloud Load BalancingDefault run.app URL; optional external HTTPS load balancer + custom domain

Sensible defaults worth knowing up front:

  • MySQL is mandatory. database_type = "MYSQL_8_0" is fixed by Passbolt_Common; Passbolt is built on CakePHP with a MySQL-only schema.
  • No server-side application secret. Unlike WordPress (multiple salts) or Laravel-family apps (APP_KEY), Passbolt has no Terraform-generated encryption key at all. Its security model is entirely client-side: the browser extension generates a GPG keypair and master password locally during setup. The server's own GPG keypair (for encrypting data to Passbolt) and its JWT keypair (API auth tokens) are both self-generated by the vendor's own entrypoint on first boot and persisted on dedicated GCS volumes — not created or rotated by Terraform.
  • Two purpose-built GCS volumes, not one, and not the whole /etc/passbolt directory. storage mounts narrowly at /etc/passbolt/gpg; jwt mounts narrowly at /etc/passbolt/jwt. Mounting a single volume over all of /etc/passbolt would shadow baked-in config/PHP files (app.php, bootstrap.php, routes.php) that live directly in that directory in the image — the same class of bug this catalog previously hit with Cloudreve.
  • HTTPS = "on" is always injected. Passbolt's bootstrap.php has $trustProxy = false hardcoded, so it does not honor X-Forwarded-Proto by default — but it does check the literal env('HTTPS') value directly. Since Cloud Run terminates TLS at the edge and forwards plain HTTP to the container, this static override makes Passbolt generate https:// URLs correctly in emails and absolute links.
  • enable_cloudsql_volume defaults to false at this module's variable level — asymmetric with Passbolt_GKE, where it defaults true (both match Passbolt_Common's own default of true). Set it explicitly to true for socket-based MySQL connections on Cloud Run.
  • No first-visit web setup wizard. The only way an admin account exists is via the admin-bootstrap init job, which prints a one-time setup URL to Cloud Logging for the operator to open in a Passbolt-compatible browser extension.
  • No Redis. enable_redis = false by default — Passbolt has no Redis integration used by this module.

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 Passbolt service​

  • 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 MySQL​

Passbolt stores all application data — users, groups, folders, encrypted password resources, sharing permissions — in a managed Cloud SQL MySQL 8.0 instance. The database connection uses Passbolt's own discrete env var names (DATASOURCES_DEFAULT_HOST/_USERNAME/_PASSWORD/_DATABASE, confirmed against the vendor's own /passbolt/env.sh), aliased from the Foundation's standard DB_* values by the Application Module.

  • 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"

See App_CloudRun for the connection model, backups, and password rotation.

C. Cloud Storage — the GPG and JWT keypair volumes​

Two GCS buckets are provisioned by Passbolt_Common and mounted via GCS Fuse: storage at /etc/passbolt/gpg, jwt at /etc/passbolt/jwt. These are not generic upload/media buckets — they hold the vendor-self-generated server GPG keypair and JWT keypair, both generated once on first boot and reused on every subsequent boot. Losing either bucket invalidates every credential Passbolt has encrypted server-side and every issued JWT session.

  • Console: Cloud Storage → find the two buckets (names include storage and jwt suffixes).
  • CLI:
    gsutil ls -p "$PROJECT" | grep passbolt
    gsutil ls gs://<storage-bucket-name>/ # expect serverkey.asc, serverkey_private.asc

D. Secret Manager​

Passbolt itself contributes no secret — the only Secret Manager entry related to this deployment is the database password, managed by the Foundation.

  • Console: Security → Secret Manager.
  • CLI:
    gcloud secrets list --project "$PROJECT" --filter="name~passbolt"

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)'

See App_CloudRun.

F. Cloud Logging & Monitoring​

Container logs flow to Cloud Logging — including the admin-bootstrap init job's one-time setup URL output. 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

3. Passbolt Application Behaviour​

  • The 2-stage initialization job chain, and why the second job is genuinely non-trivial. Passbolt_Common defines two ordered Cloud Run Jobs, both with execute_on_apply = true:

    1. db-init (mysql:8.0-debian) — creates the MySQL role and database (the shared catalog-wide db-init.sh, caching_sha2_password-safe).

    2. admin-bootstrap (passbolt/passbolt:<version>, depends_on_jobs = ["db-init"]) — registers the initial admin account.

      Cloud Run Jobs invoke a container's command/args directly, bypassing the vendor's own /docker-entrypoint.sh chain entirely — so a bare cake passbolt register_user on a freshly-provisioned container fails with an Internal Error 500, because the GPG server keypair (normally generated during the vendor entrypoint's own boot sequence) doesn't exist yet, and the schema hasn't been installed either. The job instead sources the vendor's own entrypoint functions (/passbolt/entrypoint.sh, /passbolt/env.sh, /passbolt/deprecated_paths.sh), generates/imports the GPG server keypair if missing, generates a self-signed SSL cert if missing, runs the vendor's own install() function (which also handles JWT keypair generation and the database schema install/migrate), and only then runs cake passbolt register_user -u <admin_email> -f <admin_first_name> -l <admin_last_name> -r admin — without the -q/quiet flag, so the one-time setup URL is printed and lands in Cloud Logging. Confirmed against the real vendor /passbolt/entrypoint.sh source. Idempotent: gpg_gen_key/install() no-op once the keys and schema already exist from a prior run.

  • No first-visit setup wizard, and a genuinely different bootstrap model from most apps in this catalog. Passbolt requires the client (a browser extension) to generate its own GPG keypair and master password — there is no server-side password to seed and nothing to retrieve from Secret Manager. Retrieve the one-time setup URL instead:

    gcloud logging read \
    'resource.type="cloud_run_job" AND resource.labels.job_name~admin-bootstrap' \
    --project "$PROJECT" --limit 20 --format='value(textPayload)' | grep '/setup/start/'
  • Health endpoint. GET /healthcheck/status.json returns an unauthenticated 200 with {"header":{"status":"success",...},"body":"OK"} once ready — confirmed via local container testing and live deployment. Both the startup and liveness probes target this path by default.

  • Inspect job execution:

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

4. Configuration Variables​

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

Group 1 — Project & Identity​

VariableDefaultDescription
project_id(required)Target Google Cloud project.
regionus-central1Region for the service and regional resources.

Group 2 — Deployment Environment​

VariableDefaultDescription
tenant_iddemoShort suffix that makes resource names unique per environment. Use a distinct value (e.g. cr) from any co-deployed Passbolt_GKE (gke) to avoid a naming collision.
support_users[]Emails granted project access and monitoring alerts.
resource_labels{}Labels applied to all resources.

Group 3 — Application Identity​

VariableDefaultDescription
application_namepassboltBase name for resources. Do not change after first deploy.
display_namePassboltHuman-readable name shown in the Console.
application_versionlatestpassbolt/passbolt image tag.
admin_emailadmin@example.comEmail for the admin account registered by admin-bootstrap.
admin_first_name / admin_last_nameAdmin / UserName fields for the initial admin account.
enable_gcs_storage_volumetrueMounts the storage (GPG) and jwt GCS volumes. Keep enabled.

Group 4 — Runtime & Scaling​

VariableDefaultDescription
deploy_applicationtrueSet false to provision infrastructure only.
container_image_sourceprebuiltDeploys the official image directly; Passbolt only supports the prebuilt image.
cpu_limit1000m1 vCPU.
memory_limit2GiMemory limit — PHP 8.x + Apache.
min_instance_count0Scale-to-zero by default.
max_instance_count1Single instance by default.
container_port80Passbolt (Apache) listens here.
execution_environmentgen2Required execution environment.
enable_cloudsql_volumetrueAsymmetric with Passbolt_GKE's default of true. Set true for socket-based MySQL connections — Passbolt's DATASOURCES_DEFAULT_HOST accepts the socket directory directly.
cloudsql_volume_mount_path/cloudsqlContainer path for the Auth Proxy socket.
container_protocolhttp1"http1" or "h2c".
enable_image_mirroringtrueMirrors the Passbolt image into Artifact Registry.

Group 5 — Access & Networking​

VariableDefaultDescription
ingress_settingsallTraffic ingress control.
vpc_egress_settingPRIVATE_RANGES_ONLYVPC egress control.
enable_iapfalseIdentity-Aware Proxy.

Group 6 — Environment Variables & Secrets​

VariableDefaultDescription
environment_variables{}Extra non-secret settings. HTTPS = "on" and (when known) APP_FULL_BASE_URL are set automatically.
secret_environment_variables{}Map of env var → Secret Manager secret name. Passbolt itself contributes none.

Group 11 — Cloud Storage​

VariableDefaultDescription
gcs_volumes[]Additional GCS buckets to mount, on top of the two Passbolt provisions automatically (storage, jwt).
enable_nfstrueProvisions a Filestore volume. Not used by Passbolt's own persistence model — the GPG/JWT keypairs live on dedicated GCS volumes and everything else is in MySQL. Harmless generic default.

Group 12 — Database Backend​

VariableDefaultDescription
database_typeMYSQL_8_0Cloud SQL engine. Passbolt requires MySQL.
db_namepassboltMySQL database name.
db_userpassboltMySQL application user.
database_password_length32Generated password length (16–64).
db_host_env_var_name / db_user_env_var_name / db_name_env_var_name / db_password_env_var_nameDATASOURCES_DEFAULT_HOST / _USERNAME / _DATABASE / _PASSWORDSet by passbolt.tf, not user-facing — Passbolt reads discrete CakePHP/PDO env var names, not the Foundation's standard DB_* names.

Group 13 — Jobs & Scheduled Tasks​

VariableDefaultDescription
initialization_jobs[]Leave empty for Passbolt_Common's default 2-job chain (db-init → admin-bootstrap). A non-empty list replaces it entirely.
cron_jobs[]Passbolt has no platform-scheduled recurring tasks by default.

Group 14 — Observability & Health​

VariableDefaultDescription
startup_probeHTTP /healthcheck/status.json, 20s delay, 20 retriesPassbolt's unauthenticated status endpoint.
liveness_probeHTTP /healthcheck/status.json, 60s delaySame endpoint.
uptime_check_config{ enabled=false, path="/" }Cloud Monitoring uptime check.

Group 21 — Redis​

VariableDefaultDescription
enable_redisfalseNot used by Passbolt. Present for platform compatibility.

Group 22 — VPC Service Controls & Audit Logging​

Standard App_CloudRun VPC-SC integration — see App_CloudRun.


5. Outputs​

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

OutputDescription
service_nameCloud Run service name.
service_urlDefault run.app URL of the service.
service_locationRegion the service runs in.
database_instance_nameCloud SQL instance name.
database_name / database_userApplication database name / user.
database_password_secretSecret Manager secret holding the DB password.
database_host / database_portDB endpoint / port.
storage_bucketsThe storage (GPG) and jwt GCS buckets.
container_imageDeployed image.
initialization_jobsNames of the created init jobs (db-init, admin-bootstrap).
deployment_id / tenant_id / resource_prefixNaming identifiers.
project_id / project_numberProject identifiers.
cicd_enabled / github_repository_urlCI/CD status.
vpc_sc_enabled / vpc_sc_perimeter_name / vpc_sc_dry_run_modeVPC-SC status.

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.

SettingSensible valueRiskConsequence if wrong
database_typeMYSQL_8_0CriticalPassbolt's CakePHP schema is MySQL-only — any other engine breaks startup entirely.
enable_gcs_storage_volumetrueCriticalDisabling loses the persistent volumes for the self-generated GPG server keypair and JWT keypair — every credential Passbolt has encrypted server-side, and every issued JWT session, becomes unrecoverable on the next container restart.
initialization_jobs order (db-init → admin-bootstrap)Leave [] unless you fully understand the dependencyCriticalThe admin-bootstrap job's replication of the vendor's own GPG-key-generation/schema-install sequence is load-bearing — a naive replacement job that just runs cake passbolt register_user directly fails with an Internal Error because the GPG server keypair and schema don't exist yet.
enable_cloudsql_volumetrue (note: defaults false on this variant)MediumPassbolt's DATASOURCES_DEFAULT_HOST works over the Cloud SQL Auth Proxy Unix socket directly; leaving this at its Cloud-Run-side default of false uses direct TCP instead, which still works but forgoes the socket's TLS termination and matches neither Passbolt_Common's own default nor the GKE variant.
admin_email / admin_first_name / admin_last_nameSet intentionally before first deployMediumThese seed the one and only admin account the admin-bootstrap job creates; there is no in-app way to change them after the fact except through Passbolt's own admin UI once logged in.
No admin password to lose track of——Unlike most apps in this catalog, there is no Secret-Manager-held admin credential to retrieve. If the one-time setup URL is missed and expires, the fix is deleting and re-running the admin-bootstrap job (it is idempotent for the GPG/JWT/schema steps, but register_user itself may need a fresh invocation for a new URL — check Passbolt's own CLI docs for re-issuing a setup link).

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. Passbolt-specific application configuration shared with the GKE variant is described in Passbolt_Common.

Need RAD to do something it does not do yet? Request it on the roadmap, or vote on what is already there.