Migrate from Render
Move a Render web service and its Postgres onto InstaCloud.
A web service becomes an InstaCloud compute service, Render Postgres becomes a postgres service, and your environment variables become project secrets. A DATABASE_URL that fromDatabase filled in becomes a binding rather than a copied string. This guide takes you from a running Render service to the same app on InstaCloud, with its data. Your coding agent does most of it.
InstaCloud offers:
- Postgres with real branching. A branch opens as a copy-on-write clone holding all of the parent's data, at its own connection string, so a feature or an agent task can run migrations nowhere near production.
- Built for coding agents. A CLI and an MCP server your agent drives directly, with an approval gate on the actions that matter.
- Flexible deployments. A GitHub repo with no Dockerfile needed, your own Dockerfile, or an image from any registry.
- Managed services alongside. Postgres, Redis, MySQL, MongoDB, and object storage in one project.
- Real support. An active community on Discord.
Migration steps
We will migrate Render's own Django example, a Python web service with a Postgres database. The interesting part of its render.yaml, abridged. The full file also carries plan, databaseName, user and a startCommand:
databases:
- name: mysitedb
services:
- type: web
name: mysite
runtime: python
buildCommand: "./build.sh"
envVars:
- key: DATABASE_URL
fromDatabase:
name: mysitedb
property: connectionString
- key: SECRET_KEY
generateValue: true
- key: WEB_CONCURRENCY
value: 4
1. Point a coding agent at your Render app
Your agent reads the service straight from Render's API, so it needs your repo name and a Render API key, not a checkout. Give it the skill first:
npx -y insta@latest agent setup
That installs the insta CLI, the insta skill, and the MCP server for every coding agent on this machine. The skill is what knows how to read a render.yaml and turn it into services.
2. Create a project
insta project create mysite
Or click Create Project in the console. A new project starts empty.
3. Ask your agent to migrate
Get a Render API key first, under Account Settings → API Keys in the Render dashboard. Your agent needs it to read your environment variables, which the Render CLI has no command for.
Migrate my Render service mysite and its Postgres database mysitedb to InstaCloud. The repo is render-examples/django, and my Render API key is in RENDER_API_KEY. Follow the insta skill's migration runbook, and stop before sending traffic to it.
It will ask you to approve anything that touches production, and it will ask you to scale Render to zero at the right moment, since only you can do that.
Leave the Render service suspended rather than deleted, so you can go back to it.
Limitations
A few things are not here yet. Limitations covers the ones people hit most, and is worth the minute before you commit. Stuck anywhere? Come to Discord.