---
title: "Vertical Scaling — Database Glossary | Xata"
description: "Increasing database capacity by upgrading to a larger instance with more CPU, RAM, or faster storage. PostgreSQL scales vertically to large instance siz..."
source: "https://xata.io/glossary/vertical-scaling"
---

# Vertical Scaling

Cloud & Deployment

Increasing database capacity by upgrading to a larger instance with more CPU, RAM, or faster storage. PostgreSQL scales vertically to large instance sizes — OpenAI runs single PostgreSQL primaries handling millions of queries per second. Simple but has upper limits.

Related terms

[Horizontal Scaling](/glossary/horizontal-scaling)

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