Saleor on Google Cloud Run

Saleor is an open-source, GraphQL-first headless e-commerce platform built on Python/Django (product catalog, checkout, orders, and payment plugins, all exposed through a GraphQL API rather than a bundled storefront). This module deploys Saleor 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 Saleor 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 Saleor costs on RAD, and how that compares

Running Saleor in your own GCP project costs about $100.40/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. Or see the GKE guide for the alternative deployment target; either way, 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	~$100.40/month, billed to your own billing account at Google's list price	~32 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 / 3 GiB (scaleToZero)	$29.95
Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL, 1 vCPU / 3.75 GB, zonal, 10 GB SSD	$51.02
NFS/cache file server (small VM)	$13.43
Cloud NAT and networking	$5.00
Cloud Storage (add-ons, backups)	$1.00
Total	$100.40

How it compares

• Saleor's own official managed offering, Saleor Cloud, starts at $1,599/month (Select tier, up to $200,000 GMV; source: https://saleor.io/pricing) -- aimed at production storefronts at real transaction volume, so it is not a like-for-like comparison with a single self-serve deployment, but it is the only verified commercial price for this exact platform.
• 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.
• Saleor is a commerce API that live storefronts depend on, so uptime tends to matter more here than squeezing the running cost down -- but the same pause mechanism below still applies to a staging or demo storefront that is not taking live orders.

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 Saleor 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 Saleor 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 5 days or more. Most of the running cost here is usually the database and the NFS/cache VM; they stop only when nothing else in the project uses them, so deleting this app while something else shares the project saves only this app's own compute part.

Keep data first: nightly backups go to a bucket inside the deployment and are deleted with it, so copy the latest backup out before deleting if you want to keep it.

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://saleor.io/pricing for the named competitor's price.

1. Overview

Saleor runs as a custom-built container (ghcr.io/saleor/saleor:3.23 wrapped with a cloud entrypoint) on Cloud Run v2. The deployment wires together a focused set of Google Cloud services:

Capability	Google Cloud service	Notes
Compute	Cloud Run v2	Two Cloud Run services: the main Saleor API (uvicorn, 2 workers + co-located Celery worker/beat) and a separate prebuilt Dashboard service; 2 vCPU / 3 GiB by default on the main service
Database	Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL 15	Required — fixed by Saleor_Common regardless of database_type
Object storage	Cloud Storage	A dedicated media bucket provisioned automatically
Cache & broker	Redis (optional)	Backs CACHE_URL/CELERY_BROKER_URL for the co-located Celery worker
Secrets	Secret Manager	Auto-generated SECRET_KEY, RSA_PRIVATE_KEY, DJANGO_SUPERUSER_PASSWORD; database password
Ingress	Cloud Run URL / Cloud Load Balancing	Default run.app URL, fully public; optional external HTTPS load balancer + custom domain

Sensible defaults worth knowing up front:

• PostgreSQL 15 is mandatory. Saleor_Common fixes the database engine; selecting any other value in database_type has no effect.
• The Celery worker (order processing, webhooks, emails, scheduled tasks) runs co-located inside the main container, started as a background process by the cloud entrypoint — not a separate additional_services sidecar. It needs the same custom-built image the Foundation only knows the Artifact Registry path for after this module call, so co-location avoids a plan-time cycle.
• cpu_always_allocated = true by default. The co-located Celery worker needs continuous CPU between requests, not only while serving a request — confirmed live that request-based billing under-resources the combined workload.
• Resource sizing is pre-tuned: 2000m CPU / 3Gi memory. Confirmed live that smaller sizes OOMKill under the combined load of 2 uvicorn workers + Django + Celery worker/beat, all in one container.
• Three secrets are generated automatically: SECRET_KEY, RSA_PRIVATE_KEY (Saleor's JWT signing keypair — must never be rotated casually), and DJANGO_SUPERUSER_PASSWORD.
• A separate, genuinely prebuilt Dashboard service (ghcr.io/saleor/saleor-dashboard:3.23) is deployed alongside the API as an additional_services entry. Its API_URL is baked into the served UI at container start, computed from the main API's own predicted service URL + /graphql/.
• Redis is optional and off by default (enable_redis = false). When enabled, redis_host must be set explicitly — Cloud Run has no automatic NFS-IP fallback.
• Health probes target /health/, unauthenticated, confirmed 200 both locally and live.
• min_instance_count = 0 by default — the main API scales to zero when idle; set to 1 in production to avoid cold starts.

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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 Saleor API and Dashboard services

Saleor's API runs as a Cloud Run v2 service that autoscales by request load. The Dashboard runs as a second, independent Cloud Run service (an additional_services entry) serving the static admin UI bundle.

• Console: Cloud Run → select either 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

Saleor stores all application data (products, orders, checkouts, users, payment records) in a managed Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL 15 instance. The service connects privately through the Cloud SQL Auth Proxy (Unix socket or TCP private IP depending on enable_cloudsql_volume); no public IP is exposed. On first deploy, db-init creates the application database and role, then db-migrate (which depends on db-init) applies Django's schema migrations.

• 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. Cloud Storage

A dedicated Cloud Storage media bucket is provisioned automatically for Saleor's uploaded product/media assets. Additional buckets can be declared via storage_buckets.

• Console: Cloud Storage → Buckets.
• CLI:

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

See App_CloudRun for GCS Fuse and CMEK options.

D. Redis (cache & Celery broker)

Redis is disabled by default. When enable_redis = true is set, redis_host and redis_port are injected as REDIS_HOST/REDIS_PORT, and the cloud entrypoint composes CACHE_URL (Redis DB /0) and CELERY_BROKER_URL (Redis DB /1) from them.

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

  redis-cli -h <redis-host> ping
  # Confirm the composed URLs in the running revision's logs (entrypoint echoes on start):
  gcloud run services logs read <service-name> --project "$PROJECT" --region "$REGION" --limit 50

E. Secret Manager

Three secrets are generated automatically and stored in Secret Manager: SECRET_KEY (Django's cryptographic signing key), RSA_PRIVATE_KEY (JWT signing keypair for all issued access/refresh tokens), and DJANGO_SUPERUSER_PASSWORD (bootstrap admin account password). 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.

F. Networking & ingress

The main API service is reachable at its run.app URL by default (fully public — ingress_settings = "all"). The Dashboard service is deployed with ingress = INGRESS_TRAFFIC_ALL so the admin UI is also directly reachable. An external HTTPS load balancer with a custom domain, Cloud CDN, and Cloud Armor can be layered on.

• 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.

G. Cloud Logging & Monitoring

Container logs from both services 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. Saleor Application Behaviour

• First-deploy database setup. db-init (postgres:15-alpine) idempotently creates the application database and role. db-migrate (the application image, depends_on_jobs = ["db-init"]) then runs python3 manage.py migrate --noinput. Both jobs are safe to re-run.
• Extensions always installed. pg_trgm, unaccent, hstore, and citext are installed unconditionally by Saleor_Common's assembled configuration — the calling module's enable_postgres_extensions/postgres_extensions variables have no additional effect on this base set.
• Celery worker + beat runs co-located, not as a separate service. Order processing, webhooks, emails, and scheduled tasks all run inside the main container's background worker process. This is why cpu_always_allocated defaults to true — without continuous CPU allocation, the worker starves between API requests.
• SECRET_KEY, RSA_PRIVATE_KEY, and DJANGO_SUPERUSER_PASSWORD are immutable after first boot. RSA_PRIVATE_KEY in particular signs every JWT Saleor issues — rotating it invalidates all active sessions. Only rotate during a planned maintenance window.
• Superuser bootstrap. The cloud entrypoint runs manage.py createsuperuser --email $SALEOR_SUPERUSER_EMAIL --noinput on every boot when DJANGO_SUPERUSER_PASSWORD is set (idempotent — a no-op once the user exists). SALEOR_SUPERUSER_EMAIL defaults to admin@example.com and is not exposed as a variable on this module — it is Saleor_Common's own fixed default.
• Health path. Startup and liveness probes target /health/ — Saleor's unauthenticated health endpoint, confirmed to return 200 as soon as the ASGI server accepts connections.
• Dashboard's API_URL is baked in at container start, not read dynamically — confirmed via the official Dashboard image's own /docker-entrypoint.d/50-replace-env-vars.sh, which sed-replaces API_URL into the built index.html. On Cloud Run this is a computed string (the main API's own predicted service URL + /graphql/), safe for for_each planning since it is not known-after-apply.
• 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 Saleor 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 services 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	saleor	Base name for resources. Do not change after first deploy.
application_display_name	Saleor Application	Human-readable name shown in the Console.
application_version	latest	Maps to the SALEOR_VERSION build ARG (3.23 when latest) and the Dashboard image's own tag.

Group 4 — Runtime & Scaling

Variable	Default	Description
deploy_application	true	Set false to provision infrastructure only.
container_resources	{ cpu_limit = "2000m", memory_limit = "3Gi" }	Sized for the combined uvicorn + Celery workload — see Overview.
cpu_always_allocated	true	Required so the co-located Celery worker keeps processing between requests.
min_instance_count	0	0 enables scale-to-zero; set 1 to avoid cold starts.
max_instance_count	1	Cost ceiling.
container_port	8000	uvicorn's bind port — must match the base image's CMD.
execution_environment	gen2	Gen2 required for NFS/GCS Fuse mounts, if used.
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 built image into Artifact Registry.

Group 5 — Access & Ingress Control

Variable	Default	Description
ingress_settings	all	Fully public by default.
vpc_egress_setting	PRIVATE_RANGES_ONLY	Route only RFC 1918 traffic via VPC.
enable_iap	false	Require Google sign-in.
iap_authorized_users / iap_authorized_groups	[]	Who may access through IAP.

Group 6 — Environment Variables & Secrets

Variable	Default	Description
environment_variables	{}	Extra non-secret settings, merged on top of Saleor_Common's own defaults (ALLOWED_HOSTS, SALEOR_SUPERUSER_EMAIL). Do not set SECRET_KEY, RSA_PRIVATE_KEY, or DJANGO_SUPERUSER_PASSWORD here.
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.

Group 7 — Backup & Restore

Standard backup_schedule, backup_retention_days, enable_backup_import, backup_source, backup_file, backup_format — see App_CloudRun.

Group 8 — CI/CD & Binary Authorization

Standard App_CloudRun Cloud Build / Cloud Deploy integration — see App_CloudRun.

Group 9 — Custom SQL Scripts

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

Group 10 — Load Balancer, CDN & Image Retention

Standard App_CloudRun load balancer/CDN/Artifact Registry cleanup options — see App_CloudRun.

Group 11 — Storage & Filesystem

Variable	Default	Description
create_cloud_storage	true	Create GCS buckets defined in storage_buckets.
storage_buckets	[{ name_suffix = "data" }]	Additional buckets, on top of the Saleor_Common-declared media bucket.
enable_nfs	true	Declared but not used by Saleor's own storage path — media is served from the media GCS bucket.
gcs_volumes	[]	GCS Fuse volume mounts.

Group 12 — Database Backend

Variable	Default	Description
database_type	POSTGRES_15	Declared for convention parity; Saleor_Common always fixes PostgreSQL 15 regardless of this value.
application_database_name	saleor_db	PostgreSQL database name. Immutable after first deploy.
application_database_user	saleor_user	Application database user. Password auto-generated in Secret Manager.
database_password_length	32	Generated password length (16–64).

Group 12 — Jobs & Scheduled Tasks

Variable	Default	Description
initialization_jobs	[]	Leave empty for the built-in db-init → db-migrate pair.
cron_jobs	[]	Recurring jobs (e.g. Saleor management commands) via Cloud Scheduler.

Group 14 — Observability & Health

Variable	Default	Description
startup_probe	HTTP /health/, 20s delay	Startup probe forwarded to Saleor_Common.
liveness_probe	HTTP /health/, 30s delay	Liveness probe forwarded to Saleor_Common.
uptime_check_config	{ enabled=false, path="/" }	Optional Cloud Monitoring uptime check.
alert_policies	[]	Metric alert policies.

Group 21 — Redis

Variable	Default	Description
enable_redis	false	Enables Saleor's cache/broker over Redis.
redis_host	""	Must be set explicitly when enabled — no automatic fallback on Cloud Run.
redis_port	6379	Redis port.
redis_auth	""	Optional Redis auth password (sensitive).

Group 22 — VPC Service Controls & Audit Logging

Standard App_CloudRun VPC-SC and audit logging options — 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 (main API).
service_url	Default run.app URL of the main API service.
service_location	Region the services run in.
stage_services	Stage-specific service URLs (Cloud Deploy).
load_balancer_ip / load_balancer_url	External HTTPS load balancer IP / URL (when enabled).
database_instance_name	Cloud SQL instance name.
database_name / database_user	Application database name / user.
database_password_secret	Secret Manager secret holding the DB password.
database_host / database_port	DB endpoint / port.
storage_buckets	Created Cloud Storage buckets (including media).
network_name / network_exists / regions	VPC network, presence, regions.
container_image / container_registry	Deployed API image and Artifact Registry repo.
monitoring_enabled / monitoring_notification_channels / uptime_check_names	Monitoring status, channels, uptime checks.
initialization_jobs	Names of the db-init/db-migrate jobs.
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.

The Dashboard service's own URL is surfaced back into the main API's environment as SALEOR_DASHBOARD_URL rather than as a top-level Terraform output.

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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, so most mistakes below are caught up front rather than at apply or runtime.

Setting	Sensible value	Risk	Consequence if wrong
RSA_PRIVATE_KEY (auto-generated)	Never rotate outside a maintenance window	Critical	Rotating it invalidates every issued JWT — all active sessions must re-authenticate.
SECRET_KEY (auto-generated)	Never rotate casually	Critical	Rotating Django's signing key invalidates signed cookies/sessions.
application_database_name / application_database_user	Set once	Critical	Immutable after first deploy; renaming recreates the DB/user and destroys all data.
cpu_always_allocated	true	High	Setting false starves the co-located Celery worker between requests — order/webhook/email processing degrades or stalls.
container_resources	{ cpu_limit="2000m", memory_limit="3Gi" }	High	Smaller sizes OOMKill under the combined uvicorn + Celery workload — confirmed live.
enable_redis	true before relying on async task throughput at scale	Medium	Without Redis, cache and Celery broker fall back to no-op/in-memory behavior tied to a single instance.
redis_host	Set explicitly when enable_redis = true	High	Cloud Run has no automatic Redis-host fallback; a blank host breaks CACHE_URL/CELERY_BROKER_URL composition.
min_instance_count	1 for production	Medium	Scale-to-zero (0) adds cold-start delay to the first request after idle, plus a brief window before the Celery worker resumes.
SALEOR_SUPERUSER_EMAIL / DJANGO_SUPERUSER_PASSWORD	Retrieve from Secret Manager promptly	High	The bootstrap admin account is the only way in on first deploy; losing track of the generated password requires a manual Django shell reset.
enable_iap	only when the Dashboard/API don't need public access	High	IAP blocks unauthenticated requests to both the API and Dashboard services.
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. Saleor-specific application configuration shared with the GKE variant is described in Saleor_Common.

Related guides

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