WriteFreely on Google Cloud Run

WriteFreely is an open-source, minimalist, federated blogging platform written in Go — a lightweight Medium alternative for publishing clean, distraction-free writing. This module deploys WriteFreely 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 WriteFreely 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 WriteFreely costs on RAD, and how that compares

Running WriteFreely on Cloud Run in your own Google Cloud project costs about $70.19/month in Google Cloud charges, on top of a one-off 110-credit RAD module fee charged once at deploy time. WriteFreely needs a MySQL database behind it, which together with the Cloud Run service is most of that $70.19. In a RAD-managed project the module fee drops to 99 credits (10% lower) and the running cost is metered hourly in credits instead of billed directly by Google — see Pause it for free below for the one RAD-managed advantage a self-hosted VPS cannot match — or see the GKE guide if you'd rather run it on Kubernetes.

What you pay on RAD

	Own project	RAD-managed project
Module fee (one-off)	110 credits	99 credits (10% lower)
Build time	~3-6 credits per build, either way	~3-6 credits per build, either way
Google Cloud running cost	$70.19/month, billed by Google at list price	~26 credits/day, metered at list price plus RAD's margin

Default running cost in your own project

Resource	US$/month (Google list price, us-central1)
Cloud Run, 1x vCPU / 2 GiB (scaleToZero)	$13.16
Cloud SQL for MySQL, 1 vCPU / 3.75 GB, zonal, 10 GB SSD	$51.02
Cloud NAT and networking	$5.00
Cloud Storage (add-ons, backups)	$1.00
Total	$70.19

How it compares

• write.as, run by the same team as WriteFreely, is the official hosted version of this software: its pricing page (checked 8 October 2026) lists a free tier, Pro at $6/mo (annual) or $9/mo (monthly) for up to three blogs with custom themes, and Team at $25/mo (annual) or $30/mo (monthly) for shared, collaborative publications.
• Pro is cheaper than RAD's $70.19/month own-project running cost because it's a shared multi-tenant service; RAD's module instead gives WriteFreely its own dedicated Cloud Run service and Cloud SQL database, which matters once you want full control of the data, uptime and federation identity rather than a shared host.
• A bare-VPS alternative also works: a Hetzner or DigitalOcean 2 vCPU/4GB box at about $24/mo, or a GCP Compute Engine e2-standard-2 at about $49/mo, is enough to self-host WriteFreely and MySQL together — cheaper in cash terms than RAD, with none of the managed backups, patching or monitoring RAD provides.

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 WriteFreely 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 WriteFreely back means redeploying from scratch. That costs about 113-116 credits (the 110-credit module fee plus a build).

Deleting only saves money once WriteFreely would otherwise sit unused long enough to clear that redeploy cost against its own running cost — for WriteFreely, that's about 5 days or more. Most of this running cost is usually the database — it stops only once nothing else in the project uses it, so deleting this app while something else shares the project saves only its own compute share.

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. write.as plan prices from write.as/pricing, checked 8 October 2026.

1. Overview

WriteFreely 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 / 2 GiB by default, serverless autoscaling; scale-to-zero enabled
Database	Cloud SQL for MySQL 8.0	Required — the module fixes MYSQL_8_0; reached over private-IP TCP
Object storage	Cloud Storage	A dedicated writefreely-uploads data bucket provisioned automatically
Secrets	Secret Manager	Three auto-generated AES-256 key secrets; 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:

• MySQL 8.0 is the fixed engine. database_type = MYSQL_8_0 is set by the shared application layer. WriteFreely upstream also supports SQLite/PostgreSQL, but this module standardises on Cloud SQL for MySQL.
• Cloud SQL is reached over private-IP TCP, not a socket. On Cloud Run enable_cloudsql_volume = false — DB_HOST is the Cloud SQL private IP and WriteFreely's go-sql-driver config connects over plain TCP (Cloud SQL MySQL accepts unencrypted private-IP TCP). This differs from the GKE variant, which uses the Auth Proxy sidecar on 127.0.0.1.
• The three AES-256 keys are generated automatically and stored in Secret Manager (cookies-auth, cookies-enc, email-key). They must never be rotated after first boot — rotating them logs out every user and makes previously encrypted email data undecryptable.
• A custom image is built, not pulled prebuilt. container_image_source = custom: the thin config-gen wrapper (renders config.ini, seeds the keys, runs writefreely db init) is built by Cloud Build and pushed to Artifact Registry.
• Scale-to-zero is enabled by default (min_instance_count = 0, max_instance_count = 1). Cold starts add a few seconds to the first request after idle; set min_instance_count = 1 to keep the blog always warm.
• No admin account is created automatically. Registration is closed (open_registration = false); create the first account as a post-deploy step (see §3).
• WriteFreely is Go — Redis and PHP settings are inert. The enable_redis and php_* variables come from the module scaffold and are not consumed by WriteFreely.

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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 WriteFreely service

WriteFreely 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 MySQL 8.0

WriteFreely stores all application data (blogs, posts, users, sessions) in a managed Cloud SQL for MySQL 8.0 instance. On Cloud Run the service connects over private-IP TCP (enable_cloudsql_volume = false) — no public IP is exposed. On first deploy an initialization Job (db-init) creates the application database and user; the container entrypoint then runs writefreely db init to build the tables.

• 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 data bucket (writefreely-uploads) is provisioned automatically and the workload service account is granted access. Additional buckets can be declared via storage_buckets.

• 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 and CMEK options.

D. Secret Manager

Three cryptographic secrets are generated automatically and stored in Secret Manager — the AES-256 keys WriteFreely uses to sign session cookies (cookies-auth), encrypt cookie payloads (cookies-enc), and encrypt stored email addresses (email-key). They are injected as WF_KEY_COOKIES_AUTH, WF_KEY_COOKIES_ENC, and WF_KEY_EMAIL and written to the container's keys/ directory on start. The database password is managed separately by the foundation.

• Console: Security → Secret Manager.
• CLI:

  gcloud secrets list --project "$PROJECT" \
    --filter="name~cookies-auth OR name~cookies-enc OR name~email-key"
  gcloud secrets versions access latest --secret=<secret-name> --project "$PROJECT"

See App_CloudRun for injection and rotation details, and WriteFreely_Common for why these keys must stay stable.

E. Networking & ingress

The service is reachable at its run.app URL by default (ingress_settings = "all"). 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.

F. Cloud Logging & Monitoring

Container logs flow to Cloud Logging; Cloud Run and Cloud SQL metrics flow to Cloud Monitoring, with an optional uptime check and alert policies. The entrypoint logs its progress (WriteFreely: rendered config.ini …, … seeded stable encryption keys …, … starting server …), which is useful when diagnosing first boot.

• 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. WriteFreely Application Behaviour

• First-deploy database setup. An initialization Job runs db-init.sh using mysql:8.0-debian. It creates the application database and user, grants ALL PRIVILEGES on the database, verifies the app user can connect, and shuts down the Cloud SQL Proxy sidecar. The job is idempotent (CREATE ... IF NOT EXISTS, max_retries = 3) and safe to re-run.
• Schema created on start. The container entrypoint renders config.ini and then runs writefreely db init on every start to create the tables (tolerant if they already exist), so the schema is bootstrapped without a separate migration step.
• The three AES-256 keys are immutable after first boot. They are generated once and written to Secret Manager. Changing any of them logs out every user (cookie signatures no longer validate) and makes previously encrypted email addresses undecryptable. Only rotate during a planned maintenance window with the understanding that all sessions break.
• Create the first account after deploy. Registration is closed by default (open_registration = false) and no admin is seeded. To create the first account, either temporarily set WF_OPEN_REGISTRATION = "true" via environment_variables, register through the UI, then set it back to "false"; or run WriteFreely's --create-admin against the running container.
• Public URL correctness. WF_PUBLIC_URL is set to the predicted service URL at plan time and the entrypoint falls back to the runtime CLOUDRUN_SERVICE_URL, so generated links use the real run.app host. Verify the deployed revision's URL:

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

• Health path. The startup probe is TCP (Ready as soon as port 8080 is bound) and the liveness probe is HTTP GET / — WriteFreely serves its home page with a 200 when healthy; there is no dedicated /health endpoint.
• 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 WriteFreely are listed; every other input is inherited from App_CloudRun with its standard behaviour.

Group 3 — Application Identity

Variable	Default	Description
application_name	writefreely	Base name for resources. Do not change after first deploy.
display_name	WriteFreely	Human-readable name shown in the Console.
application_version	latest	writeas/writefreely image tag; latest resolves the base image to the pinned 0.12.0 build ARG. Pin a release in production.

Group 4 — Runtime & Scaling

Variable	Default	Description
deploy_application	true	Set false to provision infrastructure only (secrets, storage, IAM) without the container.
container_image_source	custom	Leave as custom — the config-gen wrapper must be built.
cpu_limit	1000m	CPU per instance; 1 vCPU is sufficient for a typical blog.
memory_limit	2Gi	Memory per instance.
min_instance_count	0	0 enables scale-to-zero; set 1 to avoid cold starts.
max_instance_count	1	Single instance by default.
container_port	8080	WriteFreely's web server binds port 8080.
execution_environment	gen2	Gen2 required for NFS and GCS Fuse mounts.
enable_cloudsql_volume	false	Off — Cloud Run reaches MySQL over private-IP TCP, not a socket.

Group 5 — Access & Ingress Control

Variable	Default	Description
ingress_settings	all	Allow public internet traffic to the blog.
enable_iap	false	Require Google sign-in in front of WriteFreely.

Group 6 — Environment Variables & Secrets

Variable	Default	Description
environment_variables	{}	Extra settings. Use for WF_SITE_NAME, WF_SITE_DESCRIPTION, WF_OPEN_REGISTRATION. Do not set WF_KEY_* or DB_* here.
secret_environment_variables	{}	Map of env var → Secret Manager secret name.

Group 12 — Database Backend

Variable	Default	Description
database_type	MYSQL_8_0	Fixed MySQL engine.
db_name	writefreely	Database name → injected as DB_NAME. Immutable after first deploy.
db_user	writefreely	Application user → injected as DB_USER. Password auto-generated in Secret Manager.

Group 14 — Observability & Health

Variable	Default	Description
startup_probe	TCP, 30s delay	Ready as soon as port 8080 is bound.
liveness_probe	HTTP /, 30s delay	Restarts the container if the home page stops responding. The TCP startup probe already covers slow boots.

Group 21 — Redis (inert for WriteFreely)

Variable	Default	Description
enable_redis	false	Not consumed — WriteFreely stores all state in MySQL. Scaffold leftover.

All other inputs follow standard App_CloudRun behaviour.

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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 details (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 (private IP) / 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 — IAP with no authorized identities, a gen1 runtime with NFS/GCS mounts, a database_type that does not match an enabled extension, an out-of-range 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
AES-256 keys (WF_KEY_*, auto-generated)	Never rotate after first boot	Critical	Rotating logs out every user and makes encrypted email data undecryptable.
db_name / db_user	Set once	Critical	Immutable after first deploy; renaming recreates the DB/user and destroys all data.
database_type	MYSQL_8_0	Critical	Changing the engine after first deploy orphans the existing data.
enable_backup_import	false unless restoring	Critical	Enabling without a valid backup_uri fails the import job.
container_image_source	custom	High	Setting prebuilt without an image that embeds the config-gen entrypoint yields a container that cannot render config.ini and fails to start.
enable_cloudsql_volume	false	High	On Cloud Run, forcing the socket without matching entrypoint logic breaks MySQL connectivity; TCP private IP is the tested path.
application_version	Pin a release	Medium	latest can shift the base image across redeploys; pinning keeps builds reproducible.
ingress_settings	all	Medium	internal makes the blog unreachable from the public internet.
enable_iap	Off for a public blog	Medium	IAP blocks all unauthenticated readers.
min_instance_count	1 for always-warm	Medium	Scale-to-zero (0) adds a cold-start delay on the first request after idle.
WF_OPEN_REGISTRATION	false after first admin	Medium	Leaving registration open lets anyone with the URL 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. WriteFreely-specific application configuration shared with the GKE variant is described in WriteFreely_Common.

Related guides

• Hands-on lab: WriteFreely on Cloud Run — deploy it step by step, with the console screens and commands at each stage.
• WriteFreely on GKE Autopilot — the same application on Kubernetes, for when you need the other deployment target.
• WriteFreely Common — Shared Application Configuration — the configuration shared by both deployment targets.
• Deployed alongside Ghost on Google Cloud Run, Castopod on Google Cloud Run, PeerTube on Google Cloud Run, GoToSocial on Google Cloud Run in the Creator & Media Publishing solution.