How to measure the postgres size of table?

To measure the postgres size of table -

PostgreSQL provides a number of Database Object Size Functions. I packed the most interesting ones in this query and added some Statistics Access Functions at the bottom. (The additional module pgstattuple provides more useful functions, yet.)

This is going to show that different methods to measure the "size of a row" lead to very different results. It all depends on what you want to measure, exactly.

This query requires Postgres 9.3 or later. For older versions see below.

Using a VALUES expression in a LATERAL subquery, to avoid spelling out calculations for every row.

Replace public.tbl with your optionally schema-qualified table name to get a compact view of collected row size statistics. You could wrap this into a plpgsql function for repeated use, hand in the table name as parameter and use EXECUTE ...

SELECT l.metric, l.nr AS bytes
     , CASE WHEN is_size THEN pg_size_pretty(nr) END AS bytes_pretty
     , CASE WHEN is_size THEN nr / NULLIF(x.ct, 0) END AS bytes_per_row
FROM  (
   SELECT min(tableoid)        AS tbl      -- = 'public.tbl'::regclass::oid
        , count(*)             AS ct
        , sum(length(t::text)) AS txt_len  -- length in characters
   FROM   public.tbl t                     -- provide table name *once*
   ) x
CROSS  JOIN LATERAL (
   VALUES
     (true , 'core_relation_size'               , pg_relation_size(tbl))
   , (true , 'visibility_map'                   , pg_relation_size(tbl, 'vm'))
   , (true , 'free_space_map'                   , pg_relation_size(tbl, 'fsm'))
   , (true , 'table_size_incl_toast'            , pg_table_size(tbl))
   , (true , 'indexes_size'                     , pg_indexes_size(tbl))
   , (true , 'total_size_incl_toast_and_indexes', pg_total_relation_size(tbl))
   , (true , 'live_rows_in_text_representation' , txt_len)
   , (false, '------------------------------'   , NULL)
   , (false, 'row_count'                        , ct)
   , (false, 'live_tuples'                      , pg_stat_get_live_tuples(tbl))
   , (false, 'dead_tuples'                      , pg_stat_get_dead_tuples(tbl))
   ) l(is_size, metric, nr);
Result:
              metric               | bytes    | bytes_pretty | bytes_per_row
-----------------------------------+----------+--------------+---------------
 core_relation_size                | 44138496 | 42 MB        |            91
 visibility_map                    |        0 | 0 bytes      |             0
 free_space_map                    |    32768 | 32 kB        |             0
 table_size_incl_toast             | 44179456 | 42 MB        |            91
 indexes_size                      | 33128448 | 32 MB        |            68
 total_size_incl_toast_and_indexes | 77307904 | 74 MB        |           159
 live_rows_in_text_representation  | 29987360 | 29 MB        |            62
 ------------------------------    |          |              |
 row_count                         |   483424 |              |
 live_tuples                       |   483424 |              |
 dead_tuples                       |     2677 |              |
For older versions (Postgres 9.2 or older):
WITH x AS (
   SELECT count(*)               AS ct
        , sum(length(t::text))   AS txt_len  -- length in characters
        , 'public.tbl'::regclass AS tbl      -- provide table name as string
   FROM   public.tbl t                       -- provide table name as name
   ), y AS (
   SELECT ARRAY [pg_relation_size(tbl)
               , pg_relation_size(tbl, 'vm')
               , pg_relation_size(tbl, 'fsm')
               , pg_table_size(tbl)
               , pg_indexes_size(tbl)
               , pg_total_relation_size(tbl)
               , txt_len
             ] AS val
        , ARRAY ['core_relation_size'
               , 'visibility_map'
               , 'free_space_map'
               , 'table_size_incl_toast'
               , 'indexes_size'
               , 'total_size_incl_toast_and_indexes'
               , 'live_rows_in_text_representation'
             ] AS name
   FROM   x
   )
SELECT unnest(name)                AS metric
     , unnest(val)                 AS bytes
     , pg_size_pretty(unnest(val)) AS bytes_pretty
     , unnest(val) / NULLIF(ct, 0) AS bytes_per_row
FROM   x, y
UNION ALL SELECT '------------------------------', NULL, NULL, NULL
UNION ALL SELECT 'row_count', ct, NULL, NULL FROM x
UNION ALL SELECT 'live_tuples', pg_stat_get_live_tuples(tbl), NULL, NULL FROM x
UNION ALL SELECT 'dead_tuples', pg_stat_get_dead_tuples(tbl), NULL, NULL FROM x;
Same result.
You could optimize column order to save some bytes per row, currently wasted to alignment padding:
integer                  | not null default nextval('core_page_id_seq'::regclass)
integer                  | not null default 0
character varying(255)   | not null
character varying(64)    | not null
text                     | default '{}'::text
character varying(255)   | 
text                     | default '{}'::text
text                     |
timestamp with time zone |
timestamp with time zone |
integer                  |
integer                  |

This saves between 8 and 18 bytes per row. I call it Column Tetris.