FATAL: Password authentication failed

A FATAL: Password authentication failed error means Postgres rejected your credentials. Check the username before the password, because the username is the more common mistake.

Check the username first#

The username depends on how you connect:

• Direct connections and the dedicated pooler use postgres.
• Shared pooler connections use postgres.[PROJECT-REF].

Supplying the wrong one usually produces Tenant or user not found rather than this error, but a valid username with the wrong password lands here.

Check the password#

Reserved characters in a password have to be percent-encoded when they appear in a connection string. This covers &, #, ?, and spaces, among others. A password that works in a GUI field can fail in a URI for this reason alone.

If you don't have the password, reset it in Database settings.

Repeated failures cause a different error#

Repeated authentication failures from the same address get that address banned. Once banned, connections stop failing with this error and start failing with connection refused instead.

If your error changes from authentication failed to connection refused while you're testing credentials, you're banned rather than locked out. That page has the unban procedure.