phpman > man > CREATE_ROLE(7)

CREATE ROLE(7)                     PostgreSQL 14.23 Documentation                     CREATE ROLE(7)



NAME
       CREATE_ROLE - define a new database role

SYNOPSIS
       CREATE ROLE name [ [ WITH ] option [ ... ] ]

       where option can be:

             SUPERUSER | NOSUPERUSER
           | CREATEDB | NOCREATEDB
           | CREATEROLE | NOCREATEROLE
           | INHERIT | NOINHERIT
           | LOGIN | NOLOGIN
           | REPLICATION | NOREPLICATION
           | BYPASSRLS | NOBYPASSRLS
           | CONNECTION LIMIT connlimit
           | [ ENCRYPTED ] PASSWORD 'password' | PASSWORD NULL
           | VALID UNTIL 'timestamp'
           | IN ROLE role_name [, ...]
           | IN GROUP role_name [, ...]
           | ROLE role_name [, ...]
           | ADMIN role_name [, ...]
           | USER role_name [, ...]
           | SYSID uid

DESCRIPTION
       CREATE ROLE adds a new role to a PostgreSQL database cluster. A role is an entity that can
       own database objects and have database privileges; a role can be considered a “user”, a
       “group”, or both depending on how it is used. Refer to Chapter 22 and Chapter 21 for
       information about managing users and authentication. You must have CREATEROLE privilege or be
       a database superuser to use this command.

       Note that roles are defined at the database cluster level, and so are valid in all databases
       in the cluster.

PARAMETERS
       name
           The name of the new role.

       SUPERUSER
       NOSUPERUSER
           These clauses determine whether the new role is a “superuser”, who can override all
           access restrictions within the database. Superuser status is dangerous and should be used
           only when really needed. You must yourself be a superuser to create a new superuser. If
           not specified, NOSUPERUSER is the default.

       CREATEDB
       NOCREATEDB
           These clauses define a role's ability to create databases. If CREATEDB is specified, the
           role being defined will be allowed to create new databases. Specifying NOCREATEDB will
           deny a role the ability to create databases. If not specified, NOCREATEDB is the default.

       CREATEROLE
       NOCREATEROLE
           These clauses determine whether a role will be permitted to create, alter, drop, comment
           on, change the security label for, and grant or revoke membership in other roles. See
           role creation for more details about what capabilities are conferred by this privilege.
           If not specified, NOCREATEROLE is the default.

       INHERIT
       NOINHERIT
           These clauses determine whether a role “inherits” the privileges of roles it is a member
           of. A role with the INHERIT attribute can automatically use whatever database privileges
           have been granted to all roles it is directly or indirectly a member of. Without INHERIT,
           membership in another role only grants the ability to SET ROLE to that other role; the
           privileges of the other role are only available after having done so. If not specified,
           INHERIT is the default.

       LOGIN
       NOLOGIN
           These clauses determine whether a role is allowed to log in; that is, whether the role
           can be given as the initial session authorization name during client connection. A role
           having the LOGIN attribute can be thought of as a user. Roles without this attribute are
           useful for managing database privileges, but are not users in the usual sense of the
           word. If not specified, NOLOGIN is the default, except when CREATE ROLE is invoked
           through its alternative spelling CREATE USER.

       REPLICATION
       NOREPLICATION
           These clauses determine whether a role is a replication role. A role must have this
           attribute (or be a superuser) in order to be able to connect to the server in replication
           mode (physical or logical replication) and in order to be able to create or drop
           replication slots. A role having the REPLICATION attribute is a very highly privileged
           role, and should only be used on roles actually used for replication. If not specified,
           NOREPLICATION is the default. You must be a superuser to create a new role having the
           REPLICATION attribute.

       BYPASSRLS
       NOBYPASSRLS
           These clauses determine whether a role bypasses every row-level security (RLS) policy.
           NOBYPASSRLS is the default. You must be a superuser to create a new role having the
           BYPASSRLS attribute.

           Note that pg_dump will set row_security to OFF by default, to ensure all contents of a
           table are dumped out. If the user running pg_dump does not have appropriate permissions,
           an error will be returned. However, superusers and the owner of the table being dumped
           always bypass RLS.

       CONNECTION LIMIT connlimit
           If role can log in, this specifies how many concurrent connections the role can make. -1
           (the default) means no limit. Note that only normal connections are counted towards this
           limit. Neither prepared transactions nor background worker connections are counted
           towards this limit.

       [ ENCRYPTED ] PASSWORD 'password'
       PASSWORD NULL
           Sets the role's password. (A password is only of use for roles having the LOGIN
           attribute, but you can nonetheless define one for roles without it.) If you do not plan
           to use password authentication you can omit this option. If no password is specified, the
           password will be set to null and password authentication will always fail for that user.
           A null password can optionally be written explicitly as PASSWORD NULL.

               Note
               Specifying an empty string will also set the password to null, but that was not the
               case before PostgreSQL version 10. In earlier versions, an empty string could be
               used, or not, depending on the authentication method and the exact version, and libpq
               would refuse to use it in any case. To avoid the ambiguity, specifying an empty
               string should be avoided.
           The password is always stored encrypted in the system catalogs. The ENCRYPTED keyword has
           no effect, but is accepted for backwards compatibility. The method of encryption is
           determined by the configuration parameter password_encryption. If the presented password
           string is already in MD5-encrypted or SCRAM-encrypted format, then it is stored as-is
           regardless of password_encryption (since the system cannot decrypt the specified
           encrypted password string, to encrypt it in a different format). This allows reloading of
           encrypted passwords during dump/restore.

       VALID UNTIL 'timestamp'
           The VALID UNTIL clause sets a date and time after which the role's password is no longer
           valid. If this clause is omitted the password will be valid for all time.

       IN ROLE role_name
           The IN ROLE clause lists one or more existing roles to which the new role will be
           immediately added as a new member. (Note that there is no option to add the new role as
           an administrator; use a separate GRANT command to do that.)

       IN GROUP role_name
           IN GROUP is an obsolete spelling of IN ROLE.

       ROLE role_name
           The ROLE clause lists one or more existing roles which are automatically added as members
           of the new role. (This in effect makes the new role a “group”.)

       ADMIN role_name
           The ADMIN clause is like ROLE, but the named roles are added to the new role WITH ADMIN
           OPTION, giving them the right to grant membership in this role to others.

       USER role_name
           The USER clause is an obsolete spelling of the ROLE clause.

       SYSID uid
           The SYSID clause is ignored, but is accepted for backwards compatibility.

NOTES
       Use ALTER ROLE to change the attributes of a role, and DROP ROLE to remove a role. All the
       attributes specified by CREATE ROLE can be modified by later ALTER ROLE commands.

       The preferred way to add and remove members of roles that are being used as groups is to use
       GRANT and REVOKE.

       The VALID UNTIL clause defines an expiration time for a password only, not for the role per
       se. In particular, the expiration time is not enforced when logging in using a
       non-password-based authentication method.

       The INHERIT attribute governs inheritance of grantable privileges (that is, access privileges
       for database objects and role memberships). It does not apply to the special role attributes
       set by CREATE ROLE and ALTER ROLE. For example, being a member of a role with CREATEDB
       privilege does not immediately grant the ability to create databases, even if INHERIT is set;
       it would be necessary to become that role via SET ROLE before creating a database.

       The INHERIT attribute is the default for reasons of backwards compatibility: in prior
       releases of PostgreSQL, users always had access to all privileges of groups they were members
       of. However, NOINHERIT provides a closer match to the semantics specified in the SQL
       standard.

       Be careful with the CREATEROLE privilege. There is no concept of inheritance for the
       privileges of a CREATEROLE-role. That means that even if a role does not have a certain
       privilege but is allowed to create other roles, it can easily create another role with
       different privileges than its own (except for creating roles with superuser privileges). For
       example, if the role “user” has the CREATEROLE privilege but not the CREATEDB privilege,
       nonetheless it can create a new role with the CREATEDB privilege. Therefore, regard roles
       that have the CREATEROLE privilege as almost-superuser-roles.

       PostgreSQL includes a program createuser(1) that has the same functionality as CREATE ROLE
       (in fact, it calls this command) but can be run from the command shell.

       The CONNECTION LIMIT option is only enforced approximately; if two new sessions start at
       about the same time when just one connection “slot” remains for the role, it is possible that
       both will fail. Also, the limit is never enforced for superusers.

       Caution must be exercised when specifying an unencrypted password with this command. The
       password will be transmitted to the server in cleartext, and it might also be logged in the
       client's command history or the server log. The command createuser(1), however, transmits the
       password encrypted. Also, psql(1) contains a command \password that can be used to safely
       change the password later.

EXAMPLES
       Create a role that can log in, but don't give it a password:

           CREATE ROLE jonathan LOGIN;

       Create a role with a password:

           CREATE USER davide WITH PASSWORD 'jw8s0F4';

       (CREATE USER is the same as CREATE ROLE except that it implies LOGIN.)

       Create a role with a password that is valid until the end of 2004. After one second has
       ticked in 2005, the password is no longer valid.

           CREATE ROLE miriam WITH LOGIN PASSWORD 'jw8s0F4' VALID UNTIL '2005-01-01';

       Create a role that can create databases and manage roles:

           CREATE ROLE admin WITH CREATEDB CREATEROLE;

COMPATIBILITY
       The CREATE ROLE statement is in the SQL standard, but the standard only requires the syntax

           CREATE ROLE name [ WITH ADMIN role_name ]

       Multiple initial administrators, and all the other options of CREATE ROLE, are PostgreSQL
       extensions.

       The SQL standard defines the concepts of users and roles, but it regards them as distinct
       concepts and leaves all commands defining users to be specified by each database
       implementation. In PostgreSQL we have chosen to unify users and roles into a single kind of
       entity. Roles therefore have many more optional attributes than they do in the standard.

       The behavior specified by the SQL standard is most closely approximated by giving users the
       NOINHERIT attribute, while roles are given the INHERIT attribute.

SEE ALSO
       SET ROLE (SET_ROLE(7)), ALTER ROLE (ALTER_ROLE(7)), DROP ROLE (DROP_ROLE(7)), GRANT(7),
       REVOKE(7), createuser(1)



PostgreSQL 14.23                                2026                                  CREATE ROLE(7)