# Finding and Reclaiming Unused PostgreSQL Index Space

DevFeed: [Finding and Reclaiming Unused PostgreSQL Index Space](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/the-unexpected-find-that-freed-20gb-of-unused-index-space-33927.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://hakibenita.com/postgresql-unused-index-size>)

Author: Haki Benita

Published: 2021-01-31T22:00:00Z

Content type: article

Language: en

Sources: [Haki Benita](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/haki-benita.md>)

Topics: [PostgreSQL](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/postgresql.md>), [database monitoring](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/database-monitoring.md>), [Databases](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/databases.md>)

Tags: [articles](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/articles.md>), [database-monitoring](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/database-monitoring.md>), [databases](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/databases.md>), [django](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/django.md>), [indexes](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/indexes.md>), [orm](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/orm.md>), [postgresql](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/postgresql.md>), [query](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/query.md>), [statistics](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/statistics.md>), [storage](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/storage.md>)

## AI overview

The article explains how to identify potentially unused PostgreSQL indexes, assess whether they can safely be removed, and reset statistics counters before rechecking usage. It reports freeing more than 70GB of space overall, including about 20GB from unused indexed values, without dropping indexes or deleting data.

## Source excerpt

In this article I describe the process we took to identify potential free space, and one surprising find that helped up clear up ~10GB of unused indexed values!