Show the disk size of a table
Read-only
What do risk levels mean?
- Read-only
- Inspects state without changing anything.
- Low risk
- Reversible with a routine follow-up command.
- Medium risk
- Changes state; undo path documented.
- Destructive
- Deletes or overwrites; confirmation required.
Reports the total disk space used by a table including its indexes and TOAST data, so you can identify which tables consume the most storage.
postgresqlsizestorageinspect
Parameters
Name of the table to measure.
Commands
Display the total on-disk size of the table and its indexes
psql -c "SELECT pg_size_pretty(pg_total_relation_size('<table_name>')) AS total_size;"Verification
psql -c "SELECT pg_size_pretty(pg_total_relation_size('<table_name>'));"A human-readable size string like "128 MB" is printed.
Undo
Not undoable
This recipe only reads storage metadata and changes nothing.
Pitfalls
- The table must exist and be in the search path; use schema-qualified names when needed.
- The reported size includes dead tuples not yet vacuumed; run VACUUM first for an accurate live-tuple count.
- Very large tables with many partitions report the size of the parent relation only; sum children separately.