Supabase CLI: "failed SASL auth" or "invalid SCRAM server-final-message"

Last edited: 11/4/2025

When executing supabase db push or supabase link or any other authenticated actions from the Supabase CLI, you might encounter an authentication error with messages such as failed SASL auth (invalid SCRAM server-final-message received from server).

Why This Occurs: This typically indicates an authentication failure where the database connection pooler (Supavisor) in certain scenarios may be incorrectly caching credentials for the internal Supabase role cli_login_postgres used for password-less flows with the CLI. This can lead to the your IP being temporarily banned from repeated failed attempts to connect.

To resolve this, consider one of the following solutions:

  1. Check Network Bans:

    • Navigate to your project's Database Settings page.
    • Review any listed IP addresses that are blocked. Remove any entries that correspond to your current connection and then try the CLI action again.

  2. Use the old Password-Based authentication flow instead:

    • Provide your database password directly through an environment variable when running the CLI command.
    1
    SUPABASE_DB_PASSWORD=<your-database-password> supabase db push

  3. Skip the Pooler and connect directly to the database with the Supabase CLI (Requires IPv6):

    • If your network supports IPv6, you can use the beta CLI version with the --skip-pooler flag to bypass the connection pooler to avoid this particular issue.
    1
    2
    npx supabase@beta link --skip-poolernpx supabase@beta db push