Published 2026-04-09 · Not yet reviewed · 25 services compared · Figures compiled 2026-04-09, not re-checked since · 20 pricing changes tracked
The database landscape in April 2026: 25 services across five categories — managed PostgreSQL, serverless/edge, document/NoSQL, cloud provider, and specialized (vector, graph, time-series, cache). The market is volatile: PlanetScale killed its free tier (April 2024), Supabase tightened pause policies, Neon pivoted to usage-based pricing post-Databricks acquisition, and Aurora PostgreSQL joined the AWS free tier.
Key trends: PostgreSQL has won the developer database war — Supabase, Neon, CockroachDB, and Aurora all offer PostgreSQL-compatible free tiers. Edge/serverless databases (Turso, D1) are the fastest-growing category. Vector databases (Weaviate, Zilliz) are essential for AI applications but most only offer limited free tiers. The biggest shift: managed databases are converging on usage-based pricing, making costs harder to predict but scaling more efficient.
This guide covers: pricing tables, category breakdowns, storage and connection analysis, cost comparison for solo developers and teams, hidden costs, and best-for-use-case recommendations — compiled by hand from vendor pricing pages.
All prices verified as of April 2026. Hover rows to highlight. Click service names for full vendor profiles with free tier details.
| Service | Type | Free Storage | Free Connections | Paid From | Model |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Supabase | PostgreSQL | 500 MB | Unlimited (pooled) | $25/mo (Pro) | Per-project |
| Neon | PostgreSQL (Serverless) | 512 MB | Unlimited (pooled) | $19/mo (Launch) | Usage-based |
| CockroachDB | PostgreSQL-compatible (Distributed) | 10 GiB | Unlimited | $0 (usage-based) | Usage-based (RUs) |
| Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL | PostgreSQL (Managed) | 20 GiB | Standard | $0.073/hr (db.t3.medium) | Per-instance-hour |
| Nile | PostgreSQL (Multi-tenant) | 10 GiB | Unlimited | $30/mo (Pro) | Per-project |
| Turso | SQLite (libSQL, Edge) | 9 GB total | Unlimited | $29/mo (Scaler) | Usage-based |
| Cloudflare D1 | SQLite (Edge) | 5 GB | N/A (HTTP) | $0.75/M reads (pay-as-you-go) | Usage-based |
| Upstash | Redis + Kafka + QStash | 256 MB (Redis) | N/A (HTTP) | $0.2/100K commands | Per-command |
| Convex | Document (Reactive) | 512 MB | Unlimited (WebSocket) | $25/mo (Pro) | Per-project |
| PlanetScale | MySQL (Vitess) | REMOVED | N/A | $39/mo (Scaler) | Usage-based |
| Prisma Accelerate | Connection pooler + Cache | N/A (proxy) | 1,000 queries/day | $49/mo (Pro) | Per-query |
| MongoDB Atlas | Document (MongoDB) | 512 MB | 500 | $0.08/hr (M10) | Per-cluster |
| Firebase Firestore | Document (NoSQL) | 1 GiB | 50K reads/day | $0.06/100K reads | Per-operation |
| Couchbase Capella | Document + Key-Value | Shared | Unlimited | $0.093/hr | Per-node-hour |
| SurrealDB Cloud | Multi-model (Document/Graph/SQL) | 1 GiB | Unlimited | Usage-based | Usage-based |
| Amazon DynamoDB | Key-Value / Document | 25 GB | N/A (HTTP) | $0.25/M WCU | Per-capacity-unit |
| Google Cloud BigQuery | Analytical (Data Warehouse) | 10 GiB | N/A (HTTP) | $5/TiB queried | Per-query-volume |
| Cloudflare KV | Key-Value (Edge) | 1 GB | N/A (HTTP) | $0.50/M reads | Per-operation |
| Redis Cloud | In-Memory (Redis) | 30 MB | 30 | $7/mo (Essentials) | Per-plan |
| Neo4j AuraDB | Graph | 200K nodes, 400K relationships | Unlimited | $15/mo (Pro) | Per-instance |
| InfluxDB Cloud | Time-Series | Unlimited cardinality | Unlimited | $0 (usage-based) | Usage-based |
| Weaviate | Vector | Sandbox (limited) | Unlimited | $25/mo (Serverless) | Per-dimension-stored |
| Zilliz Cloud | Vector (Milvus) | 2 collections | Unlimited | Usage-based | Per-CU |
| Momento | Cache + Topics (Serverless) | N/A (cache) | N/A (HTTP) | $0.50/GiB transfer | Per-transfer |
| Hasura Cloud | GraphQL Engine (over Postgres) | N/A (connects to your DB) | Unlimited requests | $5/active model/mo (DDN Base) | Per-model |
Databases fall into five distinct categories, each optimized for different data models, access patterns, and deployment targets.
Fully managed PostgreSQL services with serverless scaling, branching, and modern DX. The default choice for most applications in 2026.
500 MB Postgres database, 50K monthly active users (Auth), 1 GB file storage, 5 GB bandwidth, 500K edge function invocations, 200 concurrent realtime connections, 2 free projects. Includes Auth, Storage, Realtime, and Edge Functions. Full PostgREST API, pgvector for embeddings, branching on paid plans.
512 MB storage, 0.25 compute units (CU), unlimited projects and databases, connection pooling via PgBouncer, autoscaling to zero. Post-Databricks acquisition: moved to fully usage-based pricing (Jan 2026). Branching included on all plans. Built-in connection pooler.
10 GiB storage, 50M Request Units/month on Serverless plan. PostgreSQL-compatible wire protocol. Automatic sharding and replication. Multi-region on paid plans. Single-region free cluster with 3-node high availability. SQL API compatible with most PostgreSQL drivers.
Aurora PostgreSQL Serverless added to AWS Free Tier (March 2026). 750 hours/month of db.t3.micro (or Serverless v2 equivalent), 20 GiB storage, 20 GiB backup. 12-month free tier for new AWS accounts. Full PostgreSQL compatibility with Aurora performance (3-5x faster).
10 GiB storage, unlimited tenants, built-in tenant isolation for SaaS applications. PostgreSQL-compatible with virtual tenant databases — each tenant gets logical isolation without separate instances. AI-native embeddings and vector search included.
Databases designed for serverless and edge computing. No connection management, scale to zero, and global distribution.
9 GB total storage, 500 databases, 1 billion row reads/month, 25 million row writes/month. Built on libSQL (SQLite fork). Embedded replicas for zero-latency reads at the edge. Databases replicate to 26+ locations. No cold starts — SQLite is always fast.
5 GB storage, 5 million rows read/day, 100,000 rows written/day. SQLite-based database running on Cloudflare's edge network. Works best with Workers. Automatic replication across Cloudflare's network. Point-in-time recovery on paid plans.
Redis: 256 MB, 10,000 commands/day, 1 database. QStash: 500 messages/day, 3 retries. Kafka: removed from free tier. REST-based Redis — works in serverless/edge environments where TCP connections are unavailable. Global replication on paid plans.
512 MB database + file storage, 2 free projects, automatic real-time sync, built-in auth, serverless functions, cron jobs, file storage. TypeScript-first with end-to-end type safety. Automatic caching and reactivity — queries re-run when data changes.
Free tier REMOVED (April 2024). PlanetScale eliminated the Hobby plan entirely — all free databases were deleted after a 30-day grace period. Previously offered 5 GB storage, 1 billion row reads/month. Now minimum is Scaler at $39/month. Vitess-based MySQL with branching and deploy requests.
1,000 cached queries/day, global edge caching, connection pooling for serverless. Not a database — sits in front of your existing database to provide connection pooling (essential for serverless) and edge caching. Works with any Prisma-supported database.
Document-oriented databases for flexible schemas. Best for rapid prototyping, mobile apps, and content management.
512 MB storage, shared M0 cluster, 500 connections, 100 operations/second max. Includes Atlas Search (full-text), Charts (visualization), App Services (serverless functions), and Triggers. Available on AWS, GCP, and Azure. MongoDB drivers for every major language.
1 GiB storage, 50,000 reads/day, 20,000 writes/day, 20,000 deletes/day, 10 GiB/month network egress. Part of Firebase Spark (free) plan. Real-time sync, offline support, security rules. Note: Cloud Storage was REMOVED from Spark plan (Feb 2026).
Free tier cluster with shared resources. Couchbase Capella is a managed Couchbase service with SQL++ query language, full-text search, key-value access, and mobile sync (via Couchbase Lite). Multi-model: document, key-value, and search in one platform.
1 GiB storage on free tier. Multi-model database — document, graph, and relational in one. SurrealQL query language with SQL-like syntax. Real-time subscriptions, authentication, and permissions built in. Newer entrant but growing rapidly.
Database services from major cloud platforms. Best when you are already invested in that ecosystem.
25 GB storage, 25 Write Capacity Units, 25 Read Capacity Units (Always Free). Enough for ~200 million requests/month with on-demand pricing. Global tables, streams, and point-in-time recovery available. Fully managed NoSQL with single-digit millisecond latency at any scale.
10 GiB storage, 1 TiB queries/month (Always Free). Serverless data warehouse — no infrastructure management. Standard SQL, ML models via BigQuery ML, real-time analytics via streaming inserts. Integrates with all GCP services and most BI tools.
1 GB storage, 100,000 reads/day, 1,000 writes/day on Workers free plan. Eventually consistent global key-value store optimized for read-heavy workloads. Distributed across Cloudflare's 300+ data centers. Best for configuration, feature flags, and caching.
Purpose-built databases for specific data models: vectors (AI/ML), graphs (relationships), time-series (metrics), caching (performance), and GraphQL.
30 MB dataset size, 30 connections on free tier. Managed Redis with persistence, replication, and high availability on paid plans. Supports Redis modules (Search, JSON, TimeSeries, Graph, Bloom) on paid tiers. Available on AWS, GCP, and Azure.
200,000 nodes, 400,000 relationships on free tier. Managed Neo4j graph database with Cypher query language. Includes Graph Data Science library (limited) and Bloom visualization. Single database on free tier. Available on AWS, GCP, and Azure.
Free plan with limited write and query rates. Purpose-built time-series database for metrics, events, and IoT data. InfluxQL and Flux query languages. Built-in dashboarding, alerting, and downsampling. InfluxDB 3.0 (new engine) in preview.
Free sandbox cluster with limited resources and 14-day data retention. AI-native vector database for semantic search, RAG, and generative AI applications. Supports hybrid search (vector + keyword), multi-tenancy, and 20+ ML model integrations.
Free tier with 2 collections and limited storage on Zilliz Cloud Serverless. Managed Milvus — the most widely deployed open-source vector database. Supports ANN search, hybrid search, multi-vector, and filtering. GPU-accelerated indexing on paid plans.
5 GiB data transfer/month free. Serverless caching (Cache) and pub/sub messaging (Topics). No connections to manage — HTTP-based. Compatible with Redis and Memcached protocols. Instant provisioning, no clusters to configure.
Hasura DDN Free plan: unlimited API requests, unlimited concurrent users, unlimited models at any scale. Restrictions: 1 supergraph developer, 15-minute observability retention. Full GraphQL API (filtering, pagination, sorting, aggregations) with database/code/API connectors, CI/CD tools, and breaking change detection. Not a database itself — auto-generates a GraphQL API over your existing PostgreSQL database.
Free tiers vary wildly. Here is the honest breakdown of what you get at zero cost and when you will outgrow it.
| Service | Free Tier Type | Free Storage | When You Hit the Wall |
|---|---|---|---|
| Supabase | Generous free tier | 500 MB | Months of active development |
| Neon | Generous free tier | 512 MB | Months of active development |
| CockroachDB | Generous free tier | 10 GiB | Months of active development |
| Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL | Limited free tier | 20 GiB | 1–4 weeks for active project |
| Nile | Generous free tier | 10 GiB | Months of active development |
| Turso | Generous free tier | 9 GB total | Months of active development |
| Cloudflare D1 | Generous free tier | 5 GB | Months of active development |
| Upstash | Limited free tier | 256 MB (Redis) | 1–4 weeks for active project |
| Convex | Generous free tier | 512 MB | Months of active development |
| PlanetScale | FREE TIER REMOVED | REMOVED | Day 1 — no free tier |
| Prisma Accelerate | Limited free tier | N/A (proxy) | 1–4 weeks for active project |
| MongoDB Atlas | Generous free tier | 512 MB | Months of active development |
| Firebase Firestore | Generous free tier | 1 GiB | Months of active development |
| Couchbase Capella | Limited free tier | Shared | 1–4 weeks for active project |
| SurrealDB Cloud | Limited free tier | 1 GiB | 1–4 weeks for active project |
| Amazon DynamoDB | Generous free tier | 25 GB | Months of active development |
| Google Cloud BigQuery | Generous free tier | 10 GiB | Months of active development |
| Cloudflare KV | Generous free tier | 1 GB | Months of active development |
| Redis Cloud | Limited free tier | 30 MB | 1–4 weeks for active project |
| Neo4j AuraDB | Generous free tier | 200K nodes, 400K relationships | Months of active development |
| InfluxDB Cloud | Limited free tier | Unlimited cardinality | 1–4 weeks for active project |
| Weaviate | Trial / Sandbox only | Sandbox (limited) | End of trial / sandbox expiry |
| Zilliz Cloud | Limited free tier | 2 collections | 1–4 weeks for active project |
| Momento | Limited free tier | N/A (cache) | 1–4 weeks for active project |
| Hasura Cloud | Limited free tier | N/A (connects to your DB) | 1–4 weeks for active project |
What does each database cost for a solo developer or small project versus a team of 5–10?
| Service | Solo / Small /mo | Team /mo | Key Cost Factor |
|---|---|---|---|
| Supabase | $0 | $25/project | Free projects pause after 1 week of inactivity (tightened Feb 2026). 2-project l... |
| Neon | $0 | $19+ | 0.25 CU is limited for concurrent queries. Fully usage-based model post-Databric... |
| CockroachDB | $0 | $0–50+ | Request Unit pricing is hard to predict — depends on query complexity, data size... |
| Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL | $0 (year 1) | $50–200+ | 12-month free tier only — costs jump significantly after. db.t3.micro is minimal... |
| Nile | $0 | $30+ | Newer service with smaller ecosystem. Tenant isolation adds overhead vs raw Post... |
| Turso | $0 | $29+ | SQLite semantics differ from PostgreSQL — no concurrent writers. 25M row writes/... |
| Cloudflare D1 | $0 | $0–5 | Tightly coupled to Cloudflare Workers — not a general-purpose database. Daily (n... |
| Upstash | $0–5 | $10–50+ | 10K commands/day is tight for production use. Per-command pricing can spike with... |
| Convex | $0 | $25+ | Proprietary query language (not SQL). Vendor lock-in — no standard protocol for ... |
| PlanetScale | $39 | $39+ | No free option at all. The $39/mo Scaler plan includes 10 GB storage and 1B row ... |
| Prisma Accelerate | $0 | $49+ | 1,000 queries/day is very limited. Requires Prisma ORM — doesn't work with other... |
| MongoDB Atlas | $0 | $57+ (M10) | M0 free tier has no backups, no VPC peering, limited to 100 ops/sec. Jump from f... |
| Firebase Firestore | $0 | $0–25+ | Per-operation pricing adds up fast — reading a list of 100 items costs 100 reads... |
| Couchbase Capella | $0 | $67+ | Free tier is minimal shared resources. Paid clusters start at 3 nodes minimum. M... |
| SurrealDB Cloud | $0 | TBD | Relatively new cloud service — stability and ecosystem are still maturing. Surre... |
| Amazon DynamoDB | $0 | $0–25+ | Capacity unit pricing is confusing — WCUs and RCUs differ based on item size and... |
| Google Cloud BigQuery | $0 | $0–50+ | Per-TiB pricing rewards narrow queries but punishes SELECT *. Streaming inserts ... |
| Cloudflare KV | $0 | $0–5 | Eventually consistent — writes take up to 60 seconds to propagate globally. 1,00... |
| Redis Cloud | $0–7 | $7–50+ | 30 MB is extremely small — barely enough for caching. Redis license changed to S... |
| Neo4j AuraDB | $0 | $15+ | 200K nodes is enough for development but limiting for production graph applicati... |
| InfluxDB Cloud | $0 | $0–50+ | Write and query rate limits on free tier can throttle during spikes. Flux query ... |
| Weaviate | $25+ | $25–100+ | Sandbox is trial-only — 14-day data retention. Serverless tier starts at $25/mo.... |
| Zilliz Cloud | $0 | Usage-based | 2-collection limit on free tier is restrictive. CU-based pricing is opaque. Milv... |
| Momento | $0 | $0–10+ | 5 GiB transfer can be consumed quickly with chatty applications. Per-transfer pr... |
| Hasura Cloud | $0 | $5+ | Single supergraph developer on free means team collaboration requires DDN Base (... |
The sticker price rarely tells the full story. Here are database costs that catch teams off guard.
Traditional databases charge per-connection. MongoDB Atlas free tier: 500 connections. Redis Cloud: 30 connections. In serverless environments, each function invocation opens a connection — without pooling, you will exhaust limits instantly. Supabase and Neon include built-in connection pooling; others require PgBouncer or similar.
Supabase pauses free projects after 1 week of inactivity (tightened Feb 2026). Neon scales to zero (fast wake-up but not instant). This means free-tier databases are unsuitable for always-on production use. If uptime matters, budget for a paid tier or choose a service without pausing (CockroachDB, DynamoDB).
Firestore charges per document read — loading a list of 100 items costs 100 reads. DynamoDB charges per Request Unit (RU) where complex queries consume more. CockroachDB charges per Request Unit where pricing depends on query complexity. These models reward efficient queries but punish exploration during development.
Cloud-provider databases (Aurora, DynamoDB, BigQuery) charge standard cloud egress rates. Supabase shares 5 GB egress across all services (database + storage + functions). High-traffic applications can hit egress limits before storage limits. Edge databases (Turso, D1) include replication but may charge for cross-region reads.
Migrating from Firestore, DynamoDB, or Convex requires rewriting queries and data access layers. PostgreSQL-compatible databases (Supabase, Neon, CockroachDB) minimize this risk — pg_dump works across all of them. PlanetScale users learned this lesson the hard way when the free tier was removed with 30 days notice.
Database pricing is the most volatile category in developer tools. See full change timeline for all tracked changes.
| Date | Vendor | Change | Impact |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sep 1, 2026 | Turso | The free tier now offers 500 Million rows read/month and 10 Million rows written/month, matching previously. The free tier now includes 5GB of storage. Previously 5GB. | LOW |
| Aug 28, 2026 | Weaviate | The free tier now has specific limits: 100,000 objects, 1 GB memory, 10 GB disk, 1 collection, up to 3 tenants, 2,000 embedding requests/day, and 1,000 Query Agent requests/month. The cloud offering is now structured into 'Free', 'Flex', and 'Premium' tiers. | MEDIUM |
| Aug 28, 2026 | InfluxDB Cloud | The free tier details have changed. A free tier exists with Cloud Serverless, it now offers a $250 free credit and usage-based pricing ($0.0025/MB written, $0.012 per 100 query executions, $0.002/GB-hour storage, $0.09/GB transferred out). There is also a free open-source option, InfluxDB 3 Core, with no license required. | HIGH |
| Apr 19, 2026 | Xata | Xata pivoted to open source (Apache 2.0) in April 2026. SaaS free tier (15 GB storage, 75 req/s, 10 branches, daily backups) retired. Free-forever usage now requires self-hosting on Kubernetes; the managed platform is paid with a 14-day free trial and $100 credit. | HIGH |
| Apr 19, 2026 | Hasura Cloud | Hasura DDN Free plan replaced the legacy Hasura Cloud free tier (60 req/min, 1 GB passthrough). Free tier now offers unlimited API requests, unlimited concurrent users, and unlimited models at any scale. Restrictions: 1 supergraph developer and 15-minute observability retention. | HIGH |
| Apr 12, 2026 | Xata Lite | Xata Lite returned HTTP 410 Gone. Service has been discontinued. | HIGH |
| Apr 12, 2026 | SurrealDB Cloud | Free tier memory reduced from 1 GB to 512 MB | LOW |
| Mar 30, 2026 | Google Developer Program annual subscription ending March 30. Replaced by Google AI Pro ($10/mo) and AI Ultra ($100/mo) tiers with bundled cloud credits and AI model access. | HIGH | |
| Mar 25, 2026 | Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL | Aurora PostgreSQL Serverless added to AWS Free Tier — managed PostgreSQL-compatible database now available at no cost with up to 4 ACUs per cluster and 1 GB storage. Part of AWS Free Plan (6 months + credits) | HIGH |
| Mar 22, 2026 | Neo4j AuraDB | Data correction — previous entry incorrectly reduced limits to 50K nodes/175K relationships. Actual free tier is 200,000 nodes and 400,000 relationships per Neo4j AuraDB FAQ | LOW |
| Mar 19, 2026 | Firebase | Firebase Studio (formerly Project IDX) shut down March 19, 2026. Cloud IDE and AI code generation features discontinued. Existing projects accessible until March 2027 for migration | MEDIUM |
| Feb 4, 2026 | Cloudflare | Queues added to Workers free plan — message queuing now free | MEDIUM |
| Feb 3, 2026 | Firebase | Cloud Storage for Firebase now requires the pay-as-you-go Blaze plan, in effect from February 3, 2026. Projects on the no-cost Spark plan lose access to all Cloud Storage buckets, including default buckets; console access redirects to an upgrade page and API calls return 402 or 403. Provisioning a new default bucket also requires Blaze. | HIGH |
| Feb 1, 2026 | Supabase | Project pause policy tightened — inactive projects now pause after 1 week | MEDIUM |
| Jan 27, 2026 | Google Developer Program Premium merged into Google One AI Pro ($19.99/mo, includes $10 Cloud credits) and AI Ultra ($100 Cloud credits). Developer benefits now bundled into consumer AI subscriptions | MEDIUM | |
| Jan 15, 2026 | Neon | Moved to fully usage-based pricing model post-Databricks acquisition — free tier storage now per-project, projects increased 10→100, branches capped at 10 per project, Neon Auth added | MEDIUM |
| Jan 7, 2026 | Cloudflare Durable Objects | SQLite storage billing began for Durable Objects — previously free during beta | LOW |
| Jan 1, 2026 | Google Cloud | Google for Startups Cloud Program now offers up to $350K GCP credits for AI-first startups, plus $10K Anthropic (Claude) partner credits via Model Garden | HIGH |
| Apr 8, 2024 | PlanetScale | PlanetScale removed free Hobby plan entirely. All databases on free tier deleted after 30-day grace period. Minimum plan now Scaler at $39/month | HIGH |
| Mar 20, 2024 | Redis | Redis switched from BSD license to dual SSPL/RSALv2 license, effectively ending open-source status. Triggered creation of Valkey fork by Linux Foundation. Redis Cloud pricing unchanged but community trust impacted | HIGH |
Supabase — 500 MB Postgres with Auth, Storage, Edge Functions, and Realtime included. The most batteries-included free database. Or CockroachDB for 10 GiB storage with distributed PostgreSQL.
Turso (9 GB, 500 databases, edge replicas) or Cloudflare D1 (5 GB, integrated with Workers). Both use SQLite — zero cold starts, global distribution, no connection management.
Supabase or Convex. Supabase for PostgreSQL with instant APIs. Convex for real-time reactive apps with TypeScript-first DX and zero config.
Supabase (pgvector, included free) for basic vector search. Weaviate or Zilliz Cloud (Milvus) for production vector search with ML integrations. Turso for low-latency RAG retrieval at the edge.
CockroachDB for distributed PostgreSQL with automatic sharding. DynamoDB for single-digit millisecond latency at any scale (25 GB free). Firebase Firestore for real-time mobile sync.
Any PostgreSQL-compatible database: Supabase, Neon, CockroachDB, or Aurora PostgreSQL. pg_dump works across all — migration is a single command.
Nile — purpose-built for multi-tenant SaaS with virtual tenant databases and built-in isolation. 10 GiB free. The only database with first-class tenant primitives.
Compare database pricing, search free tiers, and track pricing changes — all from your AI coding assistant.
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