PostgreSQL character varying length limit

Question

I am using character varying data type in PostgreSQL. I was not able to find this information in PostgreSQL manual. What is max limit of characters in character varying data type?

Answer 1

Referring to the documentation, there is no explicit limit given for the varchar(n) type definition. But:

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In any case, the longest possible character string that can be stored is about 1 GB. (The maximum value that will be allowed for n in the data type declaration is less than that. It wouldn't be very useful to change this because with multibyte character encodings the number of characters and bytes can be quite different anyway. If you desire to store long strings with no specific upper limit, use text or character varying without a length specifier, rather than making up an arbitrary length limit.)

Also note this:

Tip: There is no performance difference among these three types, apart from increased storage space when using the blank-padded type, and a few extra CPU cycles to check the length when storing into a length-constrained column. While character(n) has performance advantages in some other database systems, there is no such advantage in PostgreSQL; in fact character(n) is usually the slowest of the three because of its additional storage costs. In most situations text or character varying should be used instead.

Answer 2

From documentation:

In any case, the longest possible character string that can be stored is about 1 GB.