Wiki / Configuration Parameters
random_page_cost
Sets the planner's estimate of the cost of a non-sequentially-fetched disk page. The default is 4.0. This value can be overridden for tables and indexes in a particular tablespace by setting the tablespace parameter of the same name (see ALTER TABLESPACE). Reducing this value relative to seq_page_cost will cause the system to prefer index scans; raising it will make index scans look relatively more expensive. You can raise or lower both values together to change the importance of disk I/O costs relative to CPU costs, which are described by the following parameters. Random access to durable storage is normally much more expensive than four times sequential access. However, a lower default is used (4.0) because the majority of random accesses to storage, such as indexed reads, are assumed to be in cache. Also, the latency of network-attached storage tends to reduce the relative overhead of random access. If you believe caching is less frequent than the default value reflects, and network latency is minimal, you can increase random_page_cost to better reflect the true cost of random storage reads. Storage that has a higher random read cost relative to sequential, like magnetic disks, might also be better modeled with a higher value for random_page_cost. Correspondingly, if your data is likely to be completely in cache, such as when the database is smaller than the total server memory, or network latency is high, decreasing random_page_cost might be appropriate. Tip Although the system will let you set random_page_cost to less than seq_page_cost, it is not physically sensible to do so. However, setting them equal makes sense if the database is entirely cached in RAM, since in that case there is no penalty for touching pages out of sequence. Also, in a heavily-cached database you should lower both values relative to the CPU parameters, since the cost of fetching a page already in RAM is much smaller than it would normally be.
English manual coverage begins with PostgreSQL 7.4. Source history and runtime observations have their own recorded version boundaries.
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- boot val
- 4
- category
- Query Tuning / Planner Cost Constants
- context
- user
- documented
- true
- enumvals
- Unknown
- extra desc
- Unknown
- lang
- en
- max val
- 1.79769e+308
- metadata version
- 18
- min val
- 0
- name
- random_page_cost
- short desc
- Sets the planner's estimate of the cost of a nonsequentially fetched disk page.
- source
- pg-settings-source-snapshot
- unit
- Unknown
- vartype
- real
Definition PG 18
Sets the planner's estimate of the cost of a non-sequentially-fetched disk page. The default is 4.0. This value can be overridden for tables and indexes in a particular tablespace by setting the tablespace parameter of the same name (see ALTER TABLESPACE). Reducing this value relative to seq_page_cost will cause the system to prefer index scans; raising it will make index scans look relatively more expensive. You can raise or lower both values together to change the importance of disk I/O costs relative to CPU costs, which are described by the following parameters. Random access to durable storage is normally much more expensive than four times sequential access. However, a lower default is used (4.0) because the majority of random accesses to storage, such as indexed reads, are assumed to be in cache. Also, the latency of network-attached storage tends to reduce the relative overhead of random access. If you believe caching is less frequent than the default value reflects, and network latency is minimal, you can increase random_page_cost to better reflect the true cost of random storage reads. Storage that has a higher random read cost relative to sequential, like magnetic disks, might also be better modeled with a higher value for random_page_cost. Correspondingly, if your data is likely to be completely in cache, such as when the database is smaller than the total server memory, or network latency is high, decreasing random_page_cost might be appropriate. Tip Although the system will let you set random_page_cost to less than seq_page_cost, it is not physically sensible to do so. However, setting them equal makes sense if the database is entirely cached in RAM, since in that case there is no penalty for touching pages out of sequence. Also, in a heavily-cached database you should lower both values relative to the CPU parameters, since the cost of fetching a page already in RAM is much smaller than it would normally be.
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center · PostgreSQL 18 · wiki-repair-20261023:fc228995c7fc397618d47480441ebdbc03bf49de4772852d45c15c606514a120
Text language: en · wiki-repair-20261023:fc228995c7fc397618d47480441ebdbc03bf49de4772852d45c15c606514a120