MongoDB Atlas free tier too small? Compare free database alternatives: Supabase, Neon, CockroachDB, Turso, Xata, PocketBase, Convex, and more. Catalogue dates August to September 2026.

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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 stable

Postgres development platform: database, Auth, Storage, Realtime and Edge Functions. The Free plan is $0: unlimited API requests, 50,000 monthly active users, a 500 MB database on a shared CPU with 500 MB RAM, 5 GB egress plus 5 GB cached egress, 1 GB file storage, 500,000 Edge Function invocations, and Realtime with 200 concurrent connections and 2 million messages a month. Free projects are paused after 1 week of inactivity, with a limit of 2 active projects. Pro starts at $25 a month for the first project and includes $10 a month of compute credits, enough for one Micro instance.

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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, 5 GB of Object Storage, and Functions (10 active capacity-hours, 400 waiting capacity-hours, 1M invocations)

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CockroachDB Trial risky 2026-09-15 removed

Distributed SQL database. No free plan for new deployments since 2026-09-15, when CockroachDB moved new clusters to Cockroach Continuum pricing. New Cloud organizations get a 30-day free trial with $400 in credit; Standard is $0.092 per vCPU-hour. Clusters created before 2026-09-15 stay on their existing plans during their current term.

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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

Spark plan, no payment method needed: Auth (50K MAU), Firestore (1 GiB stored, 50K reads/day, 20K writes/day, 20K deletes/day), Hosting (10 GB storage, 360 MB/day transfer), and no-cost Analytics, Crashlytics and Cloud Messaging. Cloud Functions and Cloud Storage need the Blaze plan.

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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 2026-06-29 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 and are deleted after 90 days paused

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Xata Free stable

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 dependenciesThe page we cite for this offer states no amount, tier or rate we can read when we last looked, on 2026-09-16, so we cannot confirm these terms today.

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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
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. Turso and D1 provide 5 GB of edge SQLite.

Quick Comparison

Tool Free Tier Details Stability
Supabase Free Postgres development platform: database, Auth, Storage, Realtime and Edge Functions. The Free plan is $0: unlimited API ... stable
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 Trial Distributed SQL database. No free plan for new deployments since 2026-09-15, when CockroachDB moved new clusters to Cock... risky
2026-09-15 removed
Turso Free Edge SQLite — 100 databases, 5 GB storage, 500M rows read/month, 10M rows written/month free stable
Firebase Spark Spark plan, no payment method needed: Auth (50K MAU), Firestore (1 GiB stored, 50K reads/day, 20K writes/day, 20K delete... 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
2026-06-29 reduced
Xata Free Open-source Postgres platform (Apache 2.0) with copy-on-write branching and scale-to-zero. Self-hosted on Kubernetes — f... stable
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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