Apache Superset on Google Cloud Run

Apache Superset is an open-source data exploration and visualisation platform trusted by organisations worldwide. This module deploys Superset 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 Superset 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 Superset costs on RAD, and how that compares

Superset on RAD's Cloud Run module costs about US$83.31 a month in a Google Cloud project you own, with the module fee charged once in RAD credits. For the lowest cost this stays on Cloud Run, kept warm rather than scaled to zero since dashboards are typically opened throughout the working day; GKE Autopilot is only worth it if it needs to sit beside other Kubernetes workloads — see the GKE guide for that option, at about US$129.18 a month instead, with a higher module fee to match its larger default pod. If you only need Superset occasionally — a reporting cycle, an analytics trial — a RAD-managed project can be deleted and restored within 30 days for a handful of credits (under US$1) instead of paying for it to sit idle. See Pause it for free, below. Figures are as at 8 October 2026; sources are listed at the end of this section.

What you pay on RAD

	In a Google Cloud project you own	In a project RAD manages for you
Module fee, once per deployment	110 credits (US$11 at the top-up price)	99 credits (10% lower)
Build time	About 3-6 credits per build	The same
Google Cloud running cost	Billed by Google to your own billing account, about US$83.31 a month for the default configuration (table below)	Metered hourly in credits; RAD publishes 37 credits a day, about 1,110 a month
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 and network are shared by every application in the project, so a second application does not add a second set of them.

Default running cost in your own project (us-central1, Google list prices):

Resource (module default)	Per month
Cloud Run, 2x vCPU / 2 GiB (warm)	US$26.28
Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL, 1 vCPU / 3.75 GB, zonal, 10 GB SSD	US$51.02
Cloud NAT and networking	US$5.00
Cloud Storage (add-ons, backups)	US$1.00
Total	US$83.31

How it compares

• Preset, the managed hosting company founded by Superset's creator, charges $20/user/month billed annually (or $25/user/month monthly) on its Professional plan for unlimited users and workspaces, after a free Starter tier for up to 5 users (source: preset.io/pricing). A five-analyst team on Preset Professional runs $100-125/month before any add-ons; RAD's own-project figure is a flat infrastructure cost that does not move with headcount.
• A self-managed comparison: Hetzner CPX22 (2 vCPU/4GB) runs about $24/month, a DigitalOcean 2 vCPU/4GB Droplet is the same $24/month, and a GCP Compute Engine e2-standard-2 (2 vCPU/8GB) is about $49/month — cheaper, but Superset also needs a managed database and its own backups, which you would then run by hand.
• Superset's own licensing is free either way — the comparison here is per-seat managed hosting (Preset) against flat infrastructure (RAD), not software cost.

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

If Superset runs in a project RAD manages for you, deleting the whole project unlinks its billing first, 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 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 built dashboards or saved datasets you want to keep, 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 the 30-day restore window has passed, the alternative is to delete Superset outright and redeploy it later. A redeploy costs the module fee again, plus the builds — roughly 115 credits (about US$11.50) in your own project, or 104 credits in a RAD-managed one.

Deleting saves money only once Superset would otherwise sit unused long enough to clear that redeploy cost against its own daily running cost — against the own-project total above (about US$2.78 a day), that works out to about 5 days or more, or about 3 days or more in a RAD-managed one (37 credits a day). Most of the running cost here is the database; it stops only when nothing else in the project uses it, so deleting Superset 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; Delete and restore projects for the pause/restore mechanics; preset.io/pricing for Preset's hosted Superset plans.

1. Overview

Superset runs as a Python/Gunicorn 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	Python/Gunicorn service, 2 vCPU / 2 GiB by default, request-based autoscaling
Database	Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL 15	Required — stores dashboards, charts, datasets, and user settings
Object storage	Cloud Storage	A dedicated data bucket provisioned automatically
Cache & async queries	Redis	Disabled by default; strongly recommended for production multi-user deployments
Secrets	Secret Manager	Auto-generated SUPERSET_SECRET_KEY and 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 required. Superset uses it as its metadata database for all dashboards, charts, datasets, and role definitions. MySQL is not supported.
• SUPERSET_SECRET_KEY is auto-generated. A 50-character random key is generated and stored in Secret Manager. It signs Flask sessions — rotating it invalidates all active user sessions. Treat it as immutable after the first deploy.
• Two-phase initialisation runs automatically. A db-init job creates the PostgreSQL database and user; then an app-init job runs schema migrations and creates the admin user. Both run on every deploy but are idempotent.
• Redis is disabled by default. Without Redis, Celery workers have no broker; async query execution and dashboard caching are unavailable. Enable for production.
• The health probe targets /health — Superset's Gunicorn readiness endpoint.
• gen2 execution environment is used. Required for full Linux compatibility and, when NFS is enabled, NFS volume mounts.

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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 Superset service

Superset runs as a Cloud Run v2 service that autoscales by request load between the minimum and maximum instance counts. Each deployment creates an immutable revision; traffic can be split across revisions for safe rollouts.

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

  gcloud run services list --project "$PROJECT" --region "$REGION"
  gcloud run services describe <service-name> --project "$PROJECT" --region "$REGION"
  gcloud run revisions list --service <service-name> --project "$PROJECT" --region "$REGION"

See App_CloudRun for scaling, concurrency, execution environment, and traffic splitting.

B. Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL 15

Superset stores all metadata 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). On first deploy the db-init job creates the application database and user, and the app-init job applies the 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> --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 bucket is provisioned automatically for Superset data exports, chart outputs, and report files. The service account is granted access automatically.

• Console: Cloud Storage → Buckets.
• CLI:

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

See App_CloudRun for GCS Fuse mounts and CMEK.

D. Redis cache and async query engine

Redis serves as Superset's caching backend and Celery broker. When enabled, it powers async SQL execution, dashboard cache warming, and scheduled reports. Without Redis, all queries run synchronously and block Gunicorn workers.

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

  redis-cli -h <redis-host> ping
  redis-cli -h <redis-host> info keyspace

E. Secret Manager

The SUPERSET_SECRET_KEY and the database password are stored in Secret Manager and injected into the service at runtime.

• 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 service is reachable at its run.app URL by default. An external HTTPS load balancer with a custom domain, Cloud CDN, and Cloud Armor can be layered on; ingress settings and VPC egress control connectivity.

• Console: Cloud Run (service URL); Network services → Load balancing.
• CLI:

  gcloud run services describe <service-name> --region "$REGION" --format='value(status.url)'
  gcloud compute addresses list --project "$PROJECT"

See App_CloudRun.

G. Cloud Logging & Monitoring

Container logs flow to Cloud Logging; Cloud Run and Cloud SQL metrics flow to Cloud Monitoring. An uptime check against /health is available but disabled by default (uptime_check_config.enabled = false). Optional alert policies are available.

• 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. Superset Application Behaviour

• First-deploy database setup. The db-init job creates the Superset database and user idempotently before the service starts. It runs with postgres:15-alpine and shuts down the Cloud SQL Auth Proxy sidecar via quitquitquit on completion.
• Schema migrations on every deploy. The app-init job runs superset db upgrade on each deploy, applying any pending schema changes. It then runs superset fab create-admin to create or update the admin user, and superset init to load default roles and permissions. The app-init job depends on db-init completing successfully.
• Startup sequence. The app-init job has a 30-minute timeout to accommodate slow first-run migrations. The HTTP startup probe (60 s initial delay, 12 failure thresholds) gives the Gunicorn worker pool up to 180 seconds to come up.
• Flask secret key. SUPERSET_SECRET_KEY signs Flask sessions and encrypts database connection credentials stored in Superset's metadata. Changing it after the first deploy invalidates all sessions and makes stored credentials unreadable. The key is auto-generated as a 50-character random string in Secret Manager.
• Async queries and scheduled reports. Superset's Celery workers use Redis as the broker and result backend. Without Redis, async queries and scheduled reports are unavailable. Configure enable_redis = true and supply redis_host for production.
• Health path. Readiness/liveness probes target /health, which returns HTTP 200 when the Gunicorn worker pool is ready.
• Inspect running jobs:

  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 Superset 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.

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	superset	Base name for resources. Do not change after first deploy.
application_display_name	Apache Superset	Friendly name shown in the Console.
application_description	Apache Superset - Data Exploration and Visualisation Platform	Service description.
application_version	latest	Superset image version tag; pin to a specific release for production.

Group 4 — Runtime & Scaling

Variable	Default	Description
deploy_application	true	Set false to provision infrastructure only.
container_resources	{ cpu_limit = "2000m", memory_limit = "2Gi" }	CPU and memory per instance; 2 vCPU / 2 GiB minimum for Superset.
container_port	8088	Superset/Gunicorn listens on port 8088.
container_image_source	custom	custom builds the bundled Dockerfile (required for psycopg2); prebuilt uses an existing image.
execution_environment	gen2	Cloud Run generation; gen2 required for NFS mounts and improved networking.
min_instance_count	1	Minimum instances; keep ≥ 1 to avoid cold-start delays (~30–60 s for Superset).
max_instance_count	5	Maximum instances (cost ceiling).
timeout_seconds	600	Request timeout; extended for long-running SQL queries.
enable_cloudsql_volume	true	Cloud SQL Auth Proxy for socket connections.
traffic_split	[]	Canary/blue-green traffic allocation across revisions.

Group 5 — Access & Ingress Control

Variable	Default	Description
enable_iap	false	Require Google sign-in via Identity-Aware Proxy.
iap_authorized_users / iap_authorized_groups	[]	Who may access through IAP.
ingress_settings	all	Which networks may reach the service (all / internal / LB-only).
vpc_egress_setting	PRIVATE_RANGES_ONLY	How outbound traffic is routed through the VPC connector.

Group 6 — Environment Variables & Secrets

Variable	Default	Description
environment_variables	{}	Extra non-secret settings. SUPERSET_SECRET_KEY is injected automatically.
secret_environment_variables	{}	Map of env var → Secret Manager secret name.
secret_propagation_delay / secret_rotation_period	(set)	Replication wait / rotation cadence.

Group 7 — Backup & Restore

Variable	Default	Description
backup_schedule	0 2 * * *	Automated backup cron (UTC).
backup_retention_days	7	Retention; raise for production/compliance.
enable_backup_import / backup_source / backup_uri / backup_format	restore options	Restore from a backup on deploy.

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 9 — Custom SQL & NFS

Variable	Default	Description
enable_custom_sql_scripts / custom_sql_scripts_bucket / custom_sql_scripts_path / custom_sql_scripts_use_root	off	Run SQL from a GCS bucket after provisioning. See App_CloudRun.
nfs_instance_name / nfs_instance_base_name	(set)	Existing NFS instance / base name for an inline one. Superset does not require NFS.

Group 10 — Domain, CDN, Cloud Armor & Image Retention

Variable	Default	Description
application_domains	[]	Custom hostnames for the external load balancer.
enable_cdn	false	Enable Cloud CDN on the LB backend.
enable_cloud_armor / admin_ip_ranges	off	Attach a WAF policy / restrict privileged access.
max_images_to_retain / delete_untagged_images / image_retention_days	(set)	Artifact Registry cleanup policy.

Group 11 — Storage & Filesystem

Variable	Default	Description
create_cloud_storage	true	Provision the data bucket.
storage_buckets / gcs_volumes	(set)	Additional buckets / GCS Fuse mounts.
enable_nfs	false	Shared Filestore volume. Superset does not require NFS.
manage_storage_kms_iam / enable_artifact_registry_cmek	false	CMEK options.

Group 12 — Database Backend

Variable	Default	Description
database_type	POSTGRES_15	Fixed — do not change. Superset requires PostgreSQL.
application_database_name	superset_db	Database name. Immutable after first deploy.
application_database_user	superset_user	Application user. Immutable after first deploy.
database_password_length	32	Generated password length (16–64).
enable_auto_password_rotation / rotation_propagation_delay_sec	off	DB password rotation.
db_host_env_var_name / db_name_env_var_name / db_user_env_var_name / db_port_env_var_name / service_url_env_var_name	(set)	Names under which connection details are injected.

Group 13 — Jobs & Scheduled Tasks

Variable	Default	Description
initialization_jobs	[]	Leave empty to use the built-in two-phase db-init + app-init pipeline.
cron_jobs	[]	Recurring jobs triggered by Cloud Scheduler — useful for cache warmup or report generation.

Group 14 — Observability & Health

Variable	Default	Description
startup_probe / startup_probe_config	HTTP /health, 60 s delay, 12 failures	Allows up to 180 s for the Gunicorn worker pool to initialise.
liveness_probe / health_check_config	HTTP /health, 30 s delay	Liveness probe.
uptime_check_config	disabled, /health	Cloud Monitoring uptime check.
alert_policies	[]	Metric alert policies.

Group 21 — Redis Cache

Variable	Default	Description
enable_redis	false	Enable Redis for Celery and caching. Strongly recommended for production.
redis_host	""	Redis hostname or IP. Required when enable_redis = true.
redis_port	6379	Redis port (number in the Cloud Run variant).
redis_auth	""	Optional Redis authentication password (sensitive).

Group 22 — VPC Service Controls & Audit Logging

Variable	Default	Description
enable_vpc_sc	false	Enforce a VPC-SC perimeter (requires organization_id).
vpc_cidr_ranges / vpc_sc_dry_run	(set)	Access level CIDRs / dry-run mode.
enable_audit_logging	false	Detailed Cloud Audit Logs.

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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.
database_password_secret	Secret Manager secret holding the DB password.
database_host / database_port	DB endpoint / port.
storage_buckets	Created Cloud Storage buckets.
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.
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).

Setting	Sensible value	Risk	Consequence if wrong
SUPERSET_SECRET_KEY (auto-generated)	immutable after first deploy	Critical	Changing the key invalidates all active sessions and makes stored database connection credentials permanently unreadable.
database_type	POSTGRES_15	Critical	Superset requires PostgreSQL; changing breaks startup.
enable_cloudsql_volume	true	Critical	Disabling removes the Auth Proxy sidecar; all PostgreSQL connections fail.
application_database_name / _user	set once	Critical	Immutable after first deploy; renaming recreates the DB/user and destroys all dashboards and metadata.
enable_backup_import	false unless restoring	Critical	Enabling without a valid backup_uri fails the import job.
enable_redis	true for production	High	Without Redis, Celery workers have no broker; async queries and scheduled reports are unavailable.
redis_host	set explicitly	High	Required when enable_redis = true; empty causes Celery workers to fail on startup.
container_resources.memory_limit	2Gi minimum	High	Under 1 GiB Gunicorn workers are OOM-killed during query execution.
container_resources.cpu_limit	2000m	High	Under 1000m the app-init migration job may time out in its 30-minute window.
min_instance_count	1	High	0 adds cold-start latency and risks missed async work; Superset takes 30–60 s to start.
startup_probe.failure_threshold	12 or higher	High	Reducing too far causes Cloud Run to kill the container before Superset finishes database migrations.
application_version	pin to a specific release	Medium	latest triggers uncontrolled upgrades that may introduce breaking API changes.
enable_iap / enable_cloud_armor	enable for production	Medium	Without them, the Superset login form is publicly reachable.
timeout_seconds	600	Medium	Reducing below 120 s causes long-running analytical queries to be aborted mid-execution.
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. Superset-specific application configuration shared with the GKE variant is described in Superset_Common.

Related guides

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