PostgreSQL Gotcha: ERROR: no partition of relation found for row—And How to Never See It Again

TL;DR: If you're seeing ERROR: no partition of relation found for row—You’re fighting Postgres partitions. Unless you love maintaining partition logic, skip it.

Timescale hypertables give you:
✅ Inserts that never fail on missing partitions
✅ Better performance at scale
✅ Zero scheduler logic to manage

If you’re working with PostgreSQL partitioned tables and hit:

ERROR: no partition of relation “your_table” found for row

You’re not alone. This is a common but frustrating failure in declarative partitioning—and yes, your insert was rejected. Let’s break down why this happens, how you can work around it, and how to avoid it entirely with Timescale hypertables.

What This Error Actually Means

PostgreSQL’s declarative partitioning works like this:

• You define a parent table

• You define child partitions (often by time)

• Postgres routes incoming inserts to the correct partition—if one exists

If it doesn’t? You get this error.

Example:

INSERT INTO metrics (time, value) VALUES ('2025-04-10', 42);

If there’s no partition that covers 2025-04-10, Postgres throws:

ERROR: no partition of relation "metrics" found for row

That row? Gone unless you handle the error manually.

⚠️ This also happens in Amazon RDS and Aurora Postgres—you’ll hit it there too.

Common Workarounds (and Why They’re Painful)

Option 1: Schedule partition creation

You can write jobs that pre-create partitions ahead of time. But it's not the best strategy because:

• Requires constant upkeep

• Can cause locking during creation

• Doesn’t handle out-of-order inserts (e.g., late telemetry)

Option 2: Use a DEFAULT partition

This acts like a catch-all—but:

• You’ll have to move the data later

• It grows forever, which slows queries over time

The Better Way: Timescale Hypertables

If your table is time-based (metrics, events, logs, etc.), use a Timescale hypertable.

A hypertable:

• Looks and feels like a normal Postgres table

• Auto-partitions behind the scenes (called chunks)

• Accepts inserts without errors—no matter the timestamp

• Avoids locking, overhead, and scheduling logic

Example

-- Create a table
CREATE TABLE metrics (
  time TIMESTAMPTZ NOT NULL,
  value DOUBLE PRECISION
);

-- Convert to a hypertable
SELECT create_hypertable('metrics', 'time');

Done. Inserts are automatically routed to the right chunk. No more partition babysitting.

Real-World Benefits

📊 Real-World Benefits

Bonus: Compression, Rollups, Scale

Hypertables don’t just solve partitioning pain. You also get:

• Built-in compression (up to 95%+)

• Continuous aggregates for rollups

• Native support for 100s of millions of rows per day

And it’s still just PostgreSQL.

TL;DR

If you're seeing:

ERROR: no partition of relation found for row

You’re fighting Postgres partitions. Unless you love maintaining partition logic, skip it.

Timescale hypertables give you:
✅ Inserts that never fail on missing partitions
✅ Better performance at scale
✅ Zero scheduler logic to manage

👇 Try It for Yourself

Want to never worry about partitions again?

You can spin up a hypertable on Timescale Cloud in minutes (30-day free trial, no credit card).

Or run TimescaleDB locally with the open-source extension.

Have questions? Want schema tips or benchmarks? Drop a comment—happy to help.