PlanetScale: Postgres DELETE commands add work, not reclaim space; DROP TABLE and TRUNCATE scale better for large-scale data removal by avoiding dead tuples, vacuum debt, and replication overhead.

The only scalable delete in Postgres is DROP TABLE — PlanetScale

Tom Pang | June 11, 2026Counterintuitively, large DELETEs add work to the database.From experience we can plainly claim the following: the most scalable Postgres data-deletion strategies revolve around deleting entire tables.Individual row DELETE is fine at a small scale. However, big batch DELETE operations don't immediately free up physical disk space, add write and replication overhead, and are ultimately not good for large scale row cleanup.If your application needs to delete large amounts o...