MongoDB Atlas free tier too small? Compare free database alternatives: Supabase, Neon, CockroachDB, Turso, Xata, PocketBase, Convex, and more. Verified 2026 free tier limits.

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MongoDB Alternatives

MongoDB Atlas is the most popular hosted document database, but its free tier comes with hard limits: 512 MB storage on a shared M0 cluster, no backups, limited connections, and no Atlas Search on free clusters. Developers building side projects hit these limits fast — a modest collection of user data and logs can fill 512 MB in weeks.

The bigger issue is the SSPL license. MongoDB switched from AGPL to the Server Side Public License in 2018, which effectively prevents cloud providers and many companies from offering MongoDB-as-a-service. This has accelerated the shift toward Postgres-based alternatives (Supabase, Neon, Xata) and edge-native databases (Turso, Cloudflare D1) that offer more generous free tiers with truly open-source licenses.

The database landscape in 2026 offers compelling alternatives across every use case: serverless Postgres with branching (Neon), distributed SQL (CockroachDB), edge SQLite (Turso, D1), reactive backends (Convex), and full BaaS platforms (Supabase, Firebase, Appwrite). Most offer significantly more free storage than MongoDB Atlas.

Top Alternatives

Supabase Free caution discovered 2026-09-03 restructured

Superseded: As of 2026-09-03, supabase.com/pricing reads: The free tier includes unlimited API requests, 50,000 monthly active users, 500 MB database size, 5 GB egress, 1 GB file storage. Free projects are paused after 1 week of inactivity. Paid plans include $10/mo in compute credits. We are not publishing our stored Supabase terms beside it — our own pricing change record, discovered 2026-09-03, names them as the previous ones. Read what we recorded ↓

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Neon Free stable

Serverless Postgres with branching — free tier includes 100 CU-hours/month per project, 0.5 GB storage per project, up to 100 projects, 10 branches per project, Neon Auth (60K MAU), auto-scaling up to 2 CU, scale-to-zero

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CockroachDB Basic stable

Free serverless distributed SQL — 50M Request Units + 10 GiB storage/month, scales to zero

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Turso Free stable

Edge SQLite — 100 databases, 5 GB storage, 500M rows read/month, 10M rows written/month free

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Firebase Spark stable

Full BaaS — Auth (50K MAU), Firestore (1 GiB storage, 50K reads/day), Cloud Functions (2M invocations/month), Hosting, Analytics, Crashlytics all free

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Convex Free stable

Reactive backend — 1M function calls/month, 0.5 GB database + vector storage, 1 GB file storage, real-time sync

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Appwrite Cloud Free caution discovered 2026-09-05 reduced

Open-source BaaS — 75K MAU, 2 GB storage, 750K function executions/month, 5 GB bandwidth, 1 database, 1 bucket and 2 functions per project. Limit of 2 projects. Projects pause after 1 week of inactivity

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Xata Free caution 2026-04-19 model change

Open-source Postgres platform (Apache 2.0) with copy-on-write branching and scale-to-zero. Self-hosted on Kubernetes — free forever. Managed platform is now paid (compute + storage billed hourly); 14-day free trial with $100 credit on the commercial tier.

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Cloudflare D1 Free stable

SQLite at the edge — 5M rows read/day, 100K rows written/day, 5 GB total storage. Resets daily at midnight UTC

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PocketBase Free

Open-source backend in a single Go binary — SQLite database, real-time subscriptions, built-in auth (email, OAuth2), file storage (S3-compatible), REST API. Completely free and self-hosted, no vendor lock-in. Single executable, no dependencies

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Free Tier Comparison

What you actually get for free on each database. MongoDB Atlas gives you 512 MB on a shared cluster — most alternatives offer 5-15x more storage.

Database Free Storage Type Backups Self-Hosted Best For
MongoDB Atlas 512 MB Document No SSPL Document queries + aggregation pipeline
Supabase 500 MB Postgres No Yes (Apache 2.0) Full BaaS — auth + storage + realtime
Neon 512 MB Serverless Postgres 7-day history Yes (Apache 2.0) Branching + scale-to-zero Postgres
CockroachDB 10 GiB Distributed SQL Yes Yes (BSL) Multi-region + horizontal scale
Turso 5 GB SQLite (libSQL) No Yes (MIT) Edge-native + embedded replicas
Xata Unlimited* Open-source Postgres Self-managed Yes (Apache 2.0) Copy-on-write branching + scale-to-zero
Cloudflare D1 5 GB SQLite (edge) No No Edge Workers integration + zero egress
PocketBase Unlimited* SQLite Manual Yes (MIT) Single binary backend — zero dependencies
Convex 512 MB Document (reactive) Yes No Real-time sync + serverless functions
Firebase 1 GiB Document (Firestore) No No Google ecosystem + mobile SDKs
Appwrite 2 GB Document No Yes (BSD) Open-source BaaS — auth + functions + storage

*PocketBase and Xata (post-April-2026 open-source pivot) are fully free when self-hosted — actual limits depend on your hardware. CockroachDB leads managed free offerings at 10 GiB. Turso and D1 provide 5 GB of edge SQLite.

Quick Comparison

Tool Free Tier Details Stability
Supabase Free As of 2026-09-03, supabase.com/pricing reads: The free tier includes unlimited API requests, 50,000 monthly active users, 500 MB… Our stored Supabase terms are superseded and withheld. caution
discovered 2026-09-03 restructured
Neon Free Serverless Postgres with branching — free tier includes 100 CU-hours/month per project, 0.5 GB storage per project, up t... stable
CockroachDB Basic Free serverless distributed SQL — 50M Request Units + 10 GiB storage/month, scales to zero stable
Turso Free Edge SQLite — 100 databases, 5 GB storage, 500M rows read/month, 10M rows written/month free stable
Firebase Spark Full BaaS — Auth (50K MAU), Firestore (1 GiB storage, 50K reads/day), Cloud Functions (2M invocations/month), Hosting, A... stable
Convex Free Reactive backend — 1M function calls/month, 0.5 GB database + vector storage, 1 GB file storage, real-time sync stable
Appwrite Cloud Free Open-source BaaS — 75K MAU, 2 GB storage, 750K function executions/month, 5 GB bandwidth, 1 database, 1 bucket and 2 fun... caution
discovered 2026-09-05 reduced
Xata Free Open-source Postgres platform (Apache 2.0) with copy-on-write branching and scale-to-zero. Self-hosted on Kubernetes — f... caution
2026-04-19 model change
Cloudflare D1 Free SQLite at the edge — 5M rows read/day, 100K rows written/day, 5 GB total storage. Resets daily at midnight UTC stable
PocketBase Free Open-source backend in a single Go binary — SQLite database, real-time subscriptions, built-in auth (email, OAuth2), fil... —

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