Elementor Site’s Database get huge, and how to get fix the postmeta issue.

If you’ve noticed that your WordPress database is getting too large , primarily the wp_postmeta table. Many Elementor users run into this issue without realizing what’s causing it.

In one recent case, a website’s wp_postmeta table had ballooned to 152 MB, while a similar site with the same content was only around 2 MB. After some digging, i found the actual issue: _elementor_inline_svg.

What is _elementor_inline_svg?

When you use use Elementor to design pages, and you add SVG icons or images directly into widgets, Elementor saves the raw SVG code in the database. It stores this in the wp_postmeta table under a key called _elementor_inline_svg.

it lets Elementor render those SVGs exactly as you pasted them — but it comes with a price: SVGs can get really large, especially if:

• The SVG was exported from tools like Illustrator or Figma without optimization
• You pasted raw SVG code instead of uploading a file
• The file includes embedded fonts or metadata

In some cases, just a few SVGs can take up over 100 MB of space in your database!

The real problem:

• Longer database queries
• Slower admin performance
• Unable to push to Git, unless we use LFS

The Fix:

Run this query:

SELECT meta_key, COUNT(*) as entries, 
ROUND(SUM(CHAR_LENGTH(meta_value))/1024/1024, 2) as size_mb
FROM wp_postmeta
GROUP BY meta_key
ORDER BY size_mb DESC
LIMIT 10;

If _elementor_inline_svg is at the top with a big size (e.g., 100MB+), it’s your main issue.

Run the clean query:

Please do take backup 1st and then run:

DELETE FROM wp_postmeta
WHERE meta_key = '_elementor_inline_svg';

Prevent It From Happening Again:

• Avoid pasting full SVG code directly into Elementor
• Upload optimised SVG files instead
• Use icon libraries like Font Awesome or Line Awesome
• Use a plugin like WP Optimize to clean the database regularly…

Should you have any issues, just drop a comment and would love to help you out!

Cheers!