Create your first Timescale Cloud service

Timescale Cloud is the modern PostgreSQL data platform for all your applications. It enhances PostgreSQL to handle time series, events, real-time analytics, and vector search—all in a single database alongside transactional workloads.

You get one system that handles live data ingestion, late and out-of-order updates, and low latency queries, with the performance, reliability, and scalability your app needs. Ideal for IoT, crypto, finance, SaaS, and a myriad other domains, Timescale Cloud allows you to build data-heavy, mission-critical apps while retaining the familiarity and reliability of PostgreSQL.

A Timescale Cloud service is a single optimized 100% PostgreSQL database instance that you use as is, or extend with the capabilities specific to your business needs:

Time-series and analytics: PostgreSQL with TimescaleDB. The PostgreSQL you know and love, supercharged with functionality for storing and querying time-series data at scale for real-time analytics and other use cases. Get faster time-based queries with hypertables, continuous aggregates, and columnar storage. Save on storage with native compression, data retention policies, and bottomless data tiering to Amazon S3.
AI and vector: PostgreSQL with vector extensions. Use PostgreSQL as a vector database with purpose built extensions for building AI applications from start to scale. Get fast and accurate similarity search with the pgvector and pgvectorscale extensions. Create vector embeddings and perform LLM reasoning on your data with the PostgreSQLAI_SHORT extension.
PostgreSQL: the trusted industry-standard RDBMS. Ideal for applications requiring strong data consistency, complex relationships, and advanced querying capabilities. Get ACID compliance, extensive SQL support, JSON handling, and extensibility through custom functions, data types, and extensions. Timescale Cloud continuously monitors your services and prevents common PostgreSQL out-of-memory crashes.

All Timescale Cloud services include the tooling you expect for production and developer environments: live migration, automatic backups and PITR, high availability, read replicas, data forking, connection pooling, tiered storage, usage-based storage, secure in-Timescale Console SQL editing, service metrics and insights, streamlined maintenance, and much more.

You manage your Timescale Cloud services and interact with your data in Timescale Console using the following modes:

Ops mode	Data mode

You use the ops mode to: Ensure data security with high availability and read replicas Save money using compressed and tiered storage Enable PostgreSQL extensions to add extra functionality Increase security using VPCs Perform day-to-day administration	Powered by PopSQL, you use the data mode to: Write queries with autocomplete Visualize data with charts and dashboards Schedule queries and dashboards for alerts or recurring reports Share queries and dashboards

To start using Timescale Cloud for your data:

Create a Timescale account: register to get access to Timescale Console as a centralized point to administer and interact with your data.
Create a Timescale Cloud service: that is, a PostgreSQL database instance, powered by TimescaleDB, built for production, and extended with cloud features like transparent data tiering to object storage.
Connect to your Timescale Cloud service: to run queries, add and migrate your data from other sources.

Create a Timescale Cloud account

You create a Timescale Cloud account to manage your services and data in a centralized and efficient manner in Timescale Console. From there, you can create and delete services, run queries, manage access and billing, integrate other services, contact support, and more.

Create a Timescale Cloud service

Now that you have an active Timescale Cloud account, you create and manage your services in Timescale Console. When you create a service, you effectively create a blank PostgreSQL database with additional Timescale Cloud features available under your pricing plan. You then add or migrate your data into this database.

In the service creation page, choose the PostgreSQL capability or add Time-series and analytics and AI and Vector capabilities. Click Save and continue.
Follow the next steps in Create a service to configure the region, compute size, environment, availability, connectivity, and service name. Then click Create service.
Your service is constructed and ready to use in a few seconds.
Click Download the config and store the configuration information you need to connect to this service in a secure location.
This file contains the passwords and configuration information you need to connect to your service using the Timescale Console data mode, from the command line, or using third-party database administration tools.

If you choose to go directly to the service overview, Connect to your service shows you how to connect.

Connect to your service

To run queries and perform other operations, connect to your service:

Check your service is running correctly
In Timescale Console, check that your service is marked as Running.
Connect to your service
Connect using SQL editor in Timescale Console or with psql in the command line:

You can also use the powerful data mode to connect and run queries on your service.

Quick recap. You:

Manage your services in the ops mode in Timescale Console: add read replicas and enable high availability, configure compression, change parameters, and so on.
Analyze your data in the data mode in Timescale Console: write queries with autocomplete, save them in folders, share them, create charts/dashboards, and much more.
Store configuration and security information in your config file.

What next? Try the main features offered by Timescale, see the use case tutorials, interact with the data in your Timescale Cloud service using your favorite programming language, integrate your Timescale Cloud service with a range of third-party tools, plain old Use Timescale, or dive into the API.