Estuary Supabase capture fails through the pooler: use direct connection

TL;DR

When setting up an Estuary capture from Supabase, never use the pooled connection string: get the direct connection hostname with the pooler checkbox off, provision a dedicated IPv4 address, and confirm wal_level=logical with a REPLICATION role.

Steps

1. When setting up an Estuary capture from Supabase, never use the pooled connection string: get the direct connection hostname with the pooler checkbox off, provision a dedicated IPv4 address, and confirm wallevel=logical with a REPLICATION role. If a second capture is added from the same database, give it its own replication slot instead of sharing the default flowslot. In restricted setups create the publication and watermarks table manually with the SQL from the docs page before publishing the capture.

When to use

You are seeing this: In restricted setups create the publication and watermarks table manually with the SQL from the docs page before publishing the capture. Use this skill when you run into "Estuary Supabase capture fails through the pooler: use direct connection".

When not to use

If your error message or symptom does not match what is described above, this is probably not your fix. Search for your exact error text instead of forcing this one to fit.

Versions

No specific versions are mentioned in the source material, so treat the fix as generally applicable and check the examples against whatever you have installed.

Why this happens

The original report does not dig into a root cause. It documents the symptom and the fix that resolved it.

Source: Official docs (Supabase capture connector page): Estuary's Postgres CDC capture connector cannot connect through Supabase's connection pooler, because the pooler does not support the replication features the connector relies on. Agents wiring up a Supabase capture with the default pooled connection string from the Supabase dashboard will fail. The docs require a direct connection hostname, found in Settings > Database with the Display connection pooler checkbox unchecked, plus a dedicated IPv4 address for the project. The usual prerequisites also apply: wal_level=logical, a user role with the REPLICATION attribute, a replication slot (one per capture), a publication, and a watermarks table the user can write to.

Verified resolution: When setting up an Estuary capture from Supabase, never use the pooled connection string: get the direct connection hostname with the pooler checkbox off, provision a dedicated IPv4 address, and confirm wallevel=logical with a REPLICATION role. If a second capture is added from the same database, give it its own replication slot instead of sharing the default flowslot. In restricted setups create the publication and watermarks table manually with the SQL from the docs page before publishing the capture.

Source URL: https://docs.estuary.dev/reference/Connectors/capture-connectors/PostgreSQL/Supabase/