Vikunja on Google Cloud Run

Vikunja is an open-source, self-hosted to-do and project management application — lists, kanban boards, gantt charts, calendars, reminders, and team sharing via a REST API and web UI. This module deploys Vikunja 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 Vikunja 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 Vikunja costs on RAD, and how that compares

Running Vikunja on Cloud Run in your own Google Cloud project costs about US$115.17/month in Google Cloud charges, on top of a one-off 75-credit RAD module fee (US$7.50) charged once at deploy time. Vikunja is a self-hosted to-do and project-management app, and it runs alwaysOn by default so lists, kanban boards and reminders stay responsive without a cold start — which is most of this running cost. In a RAD-managed project the module fee drops to 67.5 credits (10% lower) — see Pause it for free below — or see the GKE guide for a lower-cost alternative.

What you pay on RAD

	Own project	RAD-managed project
Module fee (one-off)	75 credits	67.5 credits (10% lower)
Build time	~3-6 credits per build, either way	~3-6 credits per build, either way
Google Cloud running cost	US$115.17/month, billed by Google at list price	~54 credits/day (about 1620/month, US$162 at the top-up price), metered at list price plus RAD's margin

10 credits cost US$1 on a one-off top-up, and less on a monthly plan.

Default running cost in your own project

Resource (module default)	Per month
Cloud Run, 1x vCPU / 0.5 GiB (alwaysOn)	US$44.72
Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL, 1 vCPU / 3.75 GB, zonal, 10 GB SSD	US$51.02
NFS/cache file server (small VM)	US$13.43
Cloud NAT and networking	US$5
Cloud Storage (add-ons, backups)	US$1
Total	US$115.17

How it compares

• Vikunja's own hosted cloud charges per user: Personal is €4/month (single user), Family is €10/month for up to 5 users, and Organization is €5/month per user for teams — verified on Vikunja's pricing page, 8 October 2026. A 5-person team on the Family plan is €10/month (about $11), well below RAD's own-project running cost here; Vikunja Cloud's own hosting is genuinely cheap because it's a shared multi-tenant service, where RAD gives you a dedicated, isolated project.
• A self-managed VPS comparison, sized to Vikunja's 1 vCPU / 0.5 GiB default: a Hetzner CPX11 or DigitalOcean 1 vCPU/2GB Droplet runs about $6-12/month — cheaper in cash terms, plus your own time for Postgres backups and patching, which RAD's managed Cloud SQL and Secret Manager cover for you.
• For a single user or small household, Vikunja's own cloud plans are the cheapest option in cash terms; RAD's case here is a dedicated project you fully control, not the lowest sticker price.

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

This is the headline advantage of a RAD-managed project, and it costs nothing while paused. Deleting a RAD-managed 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, 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've customised Vikunja 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 30 days have passed on a RAD-managed one, there is no free pause — deleting removes the resources for good, and bringing Vikunja back means redeploying from scratch. That costs about 78-81 credits in your own project, or about 70.5-73.5 credits in a RAD-managed one.

Deleting only saves money once Vikunja would otherwise sit unused long enough to clear that redeploy cost against its own running cost — about 2 days or more in your own project (about US$3.84 a day), or about 1 days or more in a RAD-managed one (54 credits a day).

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; Google's project delete/restore documentation for the pause/restore claims; Vikunja pricing.

1. Overview

Vikunja 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	Go service, 1 vCPU / 512 MiB by default, single instance
Database	Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL 15	Required — Vikunja does not support MySQL in this module
Container build	Cloud Build + Artifact Registry	Wraps the scratch upstream image with a grafted busybox
Secrets	Secret Manager	Auto-generated VIKUNJA_SERVICE_JWTSECRET; 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 app connects over the Cloud SQL private IP, not the socket. Vikunja builds a postgres:// URL internally, and the Auth Proxy socket path's colons break URL parsing. The entrypoint connects over the private IP with sslmode=require.
• The image is scratch-based and gets a busybox graft. The upstream vikunja/vikunja image has no shell, so the custom build copies in a static busybox to run the entrypoint. container_image_source defaults to "custom".
• VIKUNJA_SERVICE_JWTSECRET is generated automatically and stored in Secret Manager. Rotating it after first boot invalidates all active user sessions.
• cpu_always_allocated = true by default. Vikunja runs an in-process reminder/cron scheduler that must run without an inbound request, so CPU is not throttled between requests. This keeps a single instance warm.
• Single instance by default (min_instance_count = 1, max_instance_count = 1). Vikunja has no built-in coordination for multiple concurrent instances.
• Public ingress by default. ingress_settings = "all" so the UI and API are reachable. Enable IAP to require Google sign-in.
• NFS is enabled by default, and must stay on. Tasks, projects and users live in PostgreSQL; task attachments are files, and the wrapper points Vikunja at the NFS mount (VIKUNJA_FILES_BASEPATH = nfs_mount_path, /data) so they survive restarts.
• VIKUNJA_SERVICE_PUBLICURL is set at runtime from the actual CLOUDRUN_SERVICE_URL, so links and the frontend always use the real service URL.

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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 Vikunja service

Vikunja runs as a Cloud Run v2 service. 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

Vikunja stores all application data (tasks, projects, boards, users, teams) in a managed Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL 15 instance. The db-init Job connects through the Cloud SQL Auth Proxy over a Unix socket; the running application connects over the Cloud SQL private IP with sslmode=require (its URL builder cannot use the socket path). No public IP is exposed.

• 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 Build & Artifact Registry

Because the upstream Vikunja image is scratch-based, the module builds a wrapper image via Cloud Build (grafting in a static busybox and the entrypoint) and pushes it to Artifact Registry.

• Console: Cloud Build → History; Artifact Registry → Repositories.
• CLI:

  gcloud builds list --project "$PROJECT" --limit 5
  gcloud artifacts docker images list <region>-docker.pkg.dev/$PROJECT/<repo> --project "$PROJECT"

D. Secret Manager

One cryptographic secret is generated automatically and stored in Secret Manager: VIKUNJA_SERVICE_JWTSECRET (used to sign user session JWTs). 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.

E. Cloud Storage & file attachments

Vikunja's own default attachment directory (/app/vikunja/files) is ephemeral on Cloud Run, so the module mounts NFS at nfs_mount_path (/data) and sets VIKUNJA_FILES_BASEPATH to that path; attachments are durable by default. The module declares no dedicated GCS bucket by default.

• Console: Filestore / Compute Engine (NFS VM) when enable_nfs = true.
• CLI:

  gcloud storage buckets list --project "$PROJECT"

See App_CloudRun for NFS and GCS Fuse options.

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 (the app reaches Cloud SQL over private-range VPC egress).

• 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, 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. Vikunja Application Behaviour

• First-deploy database setup. An initialization Job runs create-db-and-user.sh using postgres:15-alpine. It connects through the Cloud SQL Auth Proxy and idempotently creates the application database and role and grants privileges. The job is safe to re-run.
• Schema migrations on start. Vikunja applies its own schema migrations automatically on the first application startup — the db-init job only provisions an empty database, so allow extra time on the first revision to become healthy.
• VIKUNJA_SERVICE_JWTSECRET is immutable after first boot. It is generated once and written to Secret Manager. Changing it invalidates all active user sessions. Only rotate during a planned maintenance window.
• First registered account becomes the owner. Vikunja ships no pre-seeded admin. Open $SERVICE_URL and register — the first account owns the instance. Then disable open registration:

  # add VIKUNJA_SERVICE_ENABLEREGISTRATION="false" to environment_variables and Update

• Health path. Startup and liveness probes target /health — a public, unauthenticated endpoint that returns 200 once the server binds its port.
• 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 Vikunja 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	vikunja	Base name for resources. Do not change after first deploy.
application_display_name	Vikunja	Human-readable name shown in the Console.
application_description	Vikunja task manager on Cloud Run	Service description.
application_version	latest	Vikunja image version tag; latest builds a pinned recent release (2.3.0).
application_database_name	vikunja	PostgreSQL database name. Immutable after first deploy.
application_database_user	vikunja	Application database user. Password auto-generated in Secret Manager.

Group 4 — Runtime & Scaling

Variable	Default	Description
deploy_application	true	Set false to provision infrastructure only.
container_image_source	custom	Builds the busybox-grafted wrapper via Cloud Build; prebuilt deploys the official image.
container_image	vikunja/vikunja	Upstream image the custom build wraps.
cpu_limit	1000m	CPU per instance.
memory_limit	512Mi	Memory per instance; gen2 enforces a 512Mi floor.
container_port	3456	Port Vikunja's Go server listens on.
min_instance_count	1	Kept at 1 so the reminder scheduler stays warm.
max_instance_count	1	Single instance — Vikunja has no multi-instance coordination.
cpu_always_allocated	true	Keeps CPU allocated so the in-process reminder scheduler runs between requests.
execution_environment	gen2	Gen2 required for the 512Mi floor and NFS/GCS mounts.
enable_cloudsql_volume	true	Auth Proxy socket for the db-init job; the app itself uses the private IP.
enable_image_mirroring	true	Mirror the wrapper image into Artifact Registry.

Group 5 — Access & Ingress Control

Variable	Default	Description
ingress_settings	all	Public ingress for the UI/API.
vpc_egress_setting	PRIVATE_RANGES_ONLY	Route only RFC 1918 traffic via VPC (reaches Cloud SQL private IP).
enable_iap	false	Require Google sign-in in front of Vikunja.
iap_authorized_users / iap_authorized_groups	[]	Who may access through IAP.

Group 6 — Environment Variables & Secrets

Variable	Default	Description
environment_variables	{}	Extra VIKUNJA_* settings (e.g. VIKUNJA_SERVICE_ENABLEREGISTRATION). Do not set VIKUNJA_DATABASE_* or VIKUNJA_SERVICE_JWTSECRET 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

Variable	Default	Description
backup_schedule	0 2 * * *	Automated Cloud SQL 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 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.

Group 10 — Load Balancer, CDN & Image Retention

Variable	Default	Description
enable_cloud_armor	false	Provision Global HTTPS LB + Cloud Armor WAF.
admin_ip_ranges	[]	CIDR ranges exempted from WAF rules.
application_domains	[]	Custom domain names for the HTTPS LB.
enable_cdn	false	Enable Cloud CDN on the HTTPS LB backend.
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	Create GCS buckets defined in storage_buckets.
storage_buckets	[]	Vikunja declares no bucket by default.
enable_nfs	true	Must stay true: attachments are written to the NFS mount (VIKUNJA_FILES_BASEPATH).
nfs_mount_path	/data	Mount path inside the container.
gcs_volumes	[]	GCS Fuse volume mounts (requires gen2).
manage_storage_kms_iam / enable_artifact_registry_cmek	false	CMEK options.

Group 12 — Database Password

Variable	Default	Description
database_password_length	32	Generated password length (16–64).
enable_auto_password_rotation / rotation_propagation_delay_sec	off	DB password rotation.

Group 13 — Jobs & Scheduled Tasks

Variable	Default	Description
initialization_jobs	[]	Leave empty to use the built-in db-init job.
cron_jobs	[]	Optional Cloud Scheduler + Cloud Run Jobs.

Group 14 — Observability & Health

Variable	Default	Description
startup_probe	HTTP /health 30s delay	Startup probe; wide retry window for first-boot migrations.
liveness_probe	HTTP /health 30s delay	Liveness probe.
uptime_check_config	disabled, path /health	Cloud Monitoring uptime check.
alert_policies	[]	Metric alert policies.

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).

Inherited plan-time validation. This module passes its configuration through the App_CloudRun foundation engine, which validates values and combinations at plan time — a read replica without its primary, IAP with no authorized identities, a gen1 runtime with NFS/GCS mounts, an out-of-range container_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
VIKUNJA_SERVICE_JWTSECRET (auto-generated)	Never rotate after first boot	Critical	Rotating it invalidates all active user sessions, forcing immediate re-login for everyone.
application_database_name / application_database_user	Set once	Critical	Immutable after first deploy; renaming recreates the DB/user and destroys all data.
enable_backup_import	false unless restoring	Critical	Enabling without a valid backup_uri fails the import job.
enable_nfs	true (default)	High	Without NFS, file attachments live on ephemeral disk and are lost on every revision/restart.
memory_limit	512Mi (gen2 floor)	High	Values below 512Mi are rejected at plan time on gen2.
cpu_always_allocated	true	Medium	Flipping to false pauses the in-process reminder scheduler while the instance is idle — reminders won't fire until the next request.
container_image_source	custom	High	prebuilt deploys the raw scratch image with no shell/entrypoint mapping — the container cannot map DB_* and fails to connect.
ingress_settings	all	Medium	internal makes the UI/API unreachable from outside the VPC.
enable_iap	enable for private instances	Medium	Without IAP the UI is public; anyone with the URL can reach the login/registration page.
VIKUNJA_SERVICE_ENABLEREGISTRATION (env var)	"false" after first admin	High	Leaving registration open allows anyone with the URL to create an account.
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. Vikunja-specific application configuration shared with the GKE variant is described in Vikunja_Common.

Related guides

• Hands-on lab: Vikunja on Cloud Run — deploy it step by step, with the console screens and commands at each stage.
• Vikunja on GKE Autopilot — the same application on Kubernetes, for when you need the other deployment target.
• Vikunja Common — Shared Application Configuration — the configuration shared by both deployment targets.
• Deployed alongside Nextcloud on Google Cloud Run, OnlyOffice on Google Cloud Run, Mattermost on Google Cloud Run, Homepage on Google Cloud Run in the Team Workspace solution.