Subject: table bloat very fast and free space can not be reused

From: James Pang <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 19 Apr 2026 09:28:31 +0800

experts:
     source database v14 ,  pglogical extension 2.4.5 replication to new
17, source table very frequent UPDATEs /DELETES /INSERTS and has two text
and jsonb. in source database, application update/delete/insert through
SQL, table size did not increased quickly. but in target pg v17 , by
pglogical apply, we found table increased very quickly , table size got
doubled in days.
    Vacuum analyze did not help , only vacuum full can help. pgstattuple
show most of space are free space , that much more than source.  it looks
like these replicate DML always asking new pages instead of reuse existing
freespace.

Thanks,

James

---

From: Christophe Pettus <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 18 Apr 2026 20:56:52 -0700

> On Apr 18, 2026, at 18:28, James Pang <[email-masked]> wrote:
> 
> experts:
>      source database v14 ,  pglogical extension 2.4.5 replication to new 17, source table very frequent UPDATEs /DELETES /INSERTS and has two text and jsonb. in source database, application update/delete/insert through SQL, table size did not increased quickly. but in target pg v17 , by pglogical apply, we found table increased very quickly , table size got doubled in days.  
>     Vacuum analyze did not help , only vacuum full can help. pgstattuple show most of space are free space , that much more than source.  it looks like these replicate DML always asking new pages instead of reuse existing freespace. 
>     Thanks,
> 
> James

Hello,

1. First, are you *sure* that the free space is the source of the bloat, and not dead tuples?  Could you share the queries you ran to detrmine this?

2. Have you set fillfactor to anything besides 100 on either the source or the destination?

3. You might consider using in-core logical replication rather than pglogical for this.  By PostgreSQL v14, in-core logical replication is likely a better choice.

Best,
-- Christophe

---

From: James Pang <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 19 Apr 2026 15:22:51 +0800

1. we use default fill factor in both source and target, sorry, we have two
environment, v14-->v17,  v16-->v17. both see similar issue.
2. any key difference between in-core and pglogical extension to apply
UPDATEs? we want to use pglogical extension conflict resolution, it's a
bi-directional replication(when workload on source v16 it replicate data to
v17, when it running on v17, so it can replication back to v16)
3. free space is high in source and target, but the size of freespace show
big difference

we found this issue , and try to vacuum full several time on v17, but after
vacuum full , it bloating very quickly.you see total toast size
much more than source (workload is still running),  target v17(by pglogical)

xxx=> select * from pgstattuple('xxxx');
 table_len | tuple_count | tuple_len | tuple_percent | dead_tuple_count |
dead_tuple_len | dead_tuple_percent | free_space | free_percent
-----------+-------------+-----------+---------------+------------------+----------------+--------------------+------------+--------------
 191160320 |       81911 | 107823097 |          56.4 |             1439 |
     2020471 |               1.06 |   79614944 |        41.65
(1 row)

xxx=>  select * from pgstattuple('pg_toast.pg_toast_xxxxx');
 table_len | tuple_count | tuple_len | tuple_percent | dead_tuple_count |
dead_tuple_len | dead_tuple_percent | free_space | free_percent
-----------+-------------+-----------+---------------+------------------+----------------+--------------------+------------+--------------
 905928704 |      117924 | 169760027 |         18.74 |             6330 |
     9336459 |               1.03 |  722476480 |        79.75
(1 row)

target v17
xxxx=>  select * from pgstattuple('xxxxxx');
 table_len | tuple_count | tuple_len | tuple_percent | dead_tuple_count |
dead_tuple_len | dead_tuple_percent | free_space | free_percent
-----------+-------------+-----------+---------------+------------------+----------------+--------------------+------------+--------------
 194191360 |       81905 | 106028087 |          54.6 |             4004 |
     5801923 |               2.99 |   80468096 |        41.44
(1 row)

xxxx=>  select * from pgstattuple('pg_toast.pg_toast_xxxxx');
 table_len  | tuple_count | tuple_len | tuple_percent | dead_tuple_count |
dead_tuple_len | dead_tuple_percent | free_space | free_percent
------------+-------------+-----------+---------------+------------------+----------------+--------------------+------------+--------------
 1666334720 |      117921 | 169758344 |         10.19 |             9302 |
      13732019 |               0.82 | 1475454612 |        88.54
(1 row)

James

Christophe Pettus <[email-masked]> 於 2026年4月19日週日 上午11:56寫道：

> 1. First, are you *sure* that the free space is the source of the bloat,
> and not dead tuples?  Could you share the queries you ran to detrmine this?
>
> 3. You might consider using in-core logical replication rather than
> pglogical for this.  By PostgreSQL v14, in-core logical replication is
> likely a better choice.
>
> Best,
> -- Christophe

---

From: Kristjan Mustkivi <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 19 Apr 2026 14:43:47 +0300

>     Vacuum analyze did not help , only vacuum full can help. pgstattuple show most of space are free space , that much more than source.  it looks like these replicate DML always asking new pages i…

Hi,

We have had the exact same problem in the past - a large json column
getting very frequent updates (hundreds even thousand per minute) on
the source and the replica side table bloating up. No amount of tuning
attempts made any difference (conversion of json to text, different
table specific autovacuum settings etc). Eventually, the table was
taken out of the replication and later on made UNLOGGED which also
freed up a giant swathes of storage from WAL written. Such design was
then called an antipattern and has not been allowed since.

With best regards,

Kristjan

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From: Rick Otten <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 20 Apr 2026 10:39:24 -0400

> then called an antipattern and has not been allowed since.

 Which design is an antipattern?  Using json for volatile data sets or
unlogging the table?

Does `pg_repack` help?  I know it probably isn't practical to run it every
couple of days.  It also can sometimes causes headaches when repacking a
table with a ton of logical replication activity, but it might be a tool to
consider if you haven't already.   If you can partition the table with the
crazy amount of json changes, you don't have to repack all the partitions,
you might be able to repack just the older ones with the worst bloat.

---

From: Kristjan Mustkivi <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 21 Apr 2026 11:33:53 +0300

On Mon, Apr 20, 2026 at 5:39 PM Rick Otten <[email-masked]> wrote:
>
>  Which design is an antipattern?  Using json for volatile data sets or unlogging the table?

For us, a large (i.e spilling over to TOAST) json blob in a table
where this json blob (or text, does not matter) gets very frequent
(hundreds and thousands of) updates per minute.

> Does `pg_repack` help?  I know it probably isn't practical to run it every couple of days.  It also can sometimes causes headaches when repacking a table with a ton of logical replication activity, but it might be a tool to consider if you haven't already.   If you can partition the table with the crazy amount of json changes, you don't have to repack all the partitions, you might be able to repack just the older ones with the worst bloat.

This feels like a complexity I personally would like to avoid. Far
more preferable is to get rid of the json. Split the large json into a
normalized table design based on the most useful/frequent patterns.

Br,
-- 
Kristjan Mustkivi

Email: [email-masked]