§03 · Data · Which database?
Managed databases
A managed database takes backups, upgrades, failover and monitoring off your hands. The newer serverless providers bill by usage and scale to zero, which suits side projects and preview environments; traditional managed services bill per instance hour and suit steady production load.
Where we would start, by stage
Editorial picks from the data below, never paid. They change when prices or free tiers do; the full table is underneath.
Free Postgres with 100 projects, scale to zero after 5 minutes and copy-on-write branches.
From $0.106 per CU-hour (Launch, no monthly minimum)
Postgres plus auth, storage and APIs in one project; Pro from $25/mo.
From $25/mo (Pro, per organization, includes $10 compute credit)
Postgres or MySQL from $5/mo, with branches that each run on their own cluster.
From $5/mo (PS-5 single-node Postgres, AWS us-east-1)
Postgres, MySQL, Valkey, Kafka and more on the cloud of your choice, with forks and point-in-time recovery.
From $5/mo (PostgreSQL or MySQL Developer plan)
Seven engines including SQL Server, Oracle and Aurora, in every AWS region.
From $0.016/hr (RDS PostgreSQL db.t4g.micro, Single-AZ, us-east-1) plus storage
All 31 compared
A to Z · never paid placement31 tools
| Tool | From | Free option | Engines | Scale to zero | Branching | Backups | Stages |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aiven aiven.io · EU | $5/mo | Free tier | PostgreSQL, MySQL, Valkey, Kafka, OpenSearch, ClickHouse | No, hourly-billed dedicated VMs | Database forks (Hobbyist plan and above) | PITR 2 / 14 / 30 days (Startup/Business/Premium) | |
| Amazon RDS and Aurora aws.amazon.com · EU | $0.016/hr | Trial | PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB, SQL Server, Oracle, Db2, Aurora | Aurora Serverless (scales to 0 ACU); DSQL; RDS no | No; Aurora cloning and snapshots instead | Automated backups and snapshots, point-in-time restore | |
| Appwrite Cloud appwrite.io · OSS · EU | $25/mo | Free tier | TablesDB; dedicated PostgreSQL, MySQL, Documents, Vectors | Yes, serverless TablesDB billed on reads/writes | Daily, 7-day retention on Pro; PITR on dedicated +20% | ||
| Clever Cloud clever.cloud · EU | €6/mo | Trial | |||||
| Cloudflare D1 cloudflare.com · EU | $5/mo | Free tier | SQLite | Yes, scale to zero, billed per row | No; Time Travel restore instead | Time Travel PITR: 30 days paid, 7 days free | |
| CockroachDB Cloud (Cockroach Continuum) cockroachlabs.com · EU | Usage-based | Trial | CockroachDB (PostgreSQL wire-compatible) | No scale to zero; provisioned vCPUs, usage storage | Managed backups; default hourly, 30-day retention | ||
| Convex convex.dev · OSS · EU | $25/mo | Free tier | Convex document database (relational-style indexes) | Yes; Starter is pay-as-you-go and scales to zero | Preview deployments, not data branching | Daily backups on Professional and above | |
| Crunchy Bridge crunchydata.com · EU | $9/mo | PostgreSQL 14-18 | No, fixed plans billed per second | Forks, including to a different cloud | Included at no cost; restore from backups | ||
| DigitalOcean Managed Databases digitalocean.com · EU | $15.15/mo | PostgreSQL, MySQL, MongoDB, Valkey, Kafka, OpenSearch | No, fixed-size clusters billed hourly, monthly cap | Free daily backups, restore to any point in 7 days | |||
| Dragonfly Cloud dragonflydb.io · EU | $36/mo | Trial | Dragonfly (Redis, Valkey, Memcached APIs) | No; provisioned memory billed hourly | No | Manual and scheduled, $0.10/GB-mo | |
| Firebase firebase.google.com · EU | Usage-based | Free tier | Firestore (document), Realtime Database (JSON) | Yes; per-operation billing, no instances | No | Scheduled backups and PITR, billed on Blaze | |
| Google Cloud SQL cloud.google.com · EU | $0.011/hr | Trial | PostgreSQL, MySQL, SQL Server | No, instances billed per vCPU and GiB per hour | Automated backups, PITR up to 35 days | ||
| MongoDB Atlas mongodb.com · EU | $8/mo | Free tier | MongoDB (document) | Partly; Flex bills by ops/second tier, no scale to zero | No | None on Free; automated backups on paid clusters | |
| Neon neon.com · OSS · EU | Usage-based | Free tier | PostgreSQL | Yes; scale to zero after 5 min, CU-hour billing | Yes, copy-on-write; 10 per project included | Instant restore: 6 h Free, 7 days Launch, 30 days Scale | |
| Nhost nhost.io · OSS · EU | $25/mo | Free tier | PostgreSQL with Hasura GraphQL | No; free projects pause when idle | No | Daily, 7 days on Pro; PITR add-on from $100 | |
| Nile thenile.dev · EU | $15/mo | Free tier | PostgreSQL with tenant virtualization, pgvector | Yes, billed per query token, never pauses | Listed as coming soon | Listed as coming soon on the pricing page | |
| PlanetScale planetscale.com · EU | $5/mo | PostgreSQL, MySQL (Vitess), sharded Postgres (Neki) | No; fixed cluster sizes billed per millisecond | Yes; each branch runs on its own cluster | Automatic; 2x disk size backup storage included | ||
| Prisma Postgres prisma.io · EU | $10/mo | Free tier | PostgreSQL | Yes, per-operation billing, autoscaling | Per-PR preview databases with Prisma Compute | Daily; 7 days (Starter/Pro), 30 days (Business) | |
| Redis Cloud redis.io · EU | $5/mo | Free tier | Redis 8 (key-value, JSON, vector, search) | No; sized plans billed hourly | No | Daily and instant backups on paid plans | |
| Render render.com · EU | $7/mo | Free tier | |||||
| Scaleway Managed Databases scaleway.com · EU | €0.016/hr | PostgreSQL 12-17, MySQL 8; also MongoDB, Redis | Yes, Serverless SQL Database scales to zero | No | Automated; Serverless daily, kept 7 days | ||
| Scalingo scalingo.com · EU | €7.20/mo | Trial | |||||
| Stackhero stackhero.io · EU | €19/mo | PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB, Redis, Valkey, ClickHouse, more | No; fixed instances billed hourly | No | Daily; kept 7 days, weekly 1 mo, monthly 3 mo | ||
| Supabase supabase.com · OSS · EU | $25/mo | Free tier | PostgreSQL | No; per-project compute billed hourly | Yes, $0.01344 per branch-hour (paid plans) | Daily: 7 days Pro, 14 days Team; PITR add-on | |
| TiDB Cloud pingcap.com · OSS · EU | Usage-based | Free tier | TiDB (MySQL-compatible), row + columnar | Yes, Starter scales to zero, usage-billed | Yes, up to 5 branches per org by default | PITR up to 30 days on Essential | |
| Tiger Cloud tigerdata.com · EU | $30/mo | Free tier | PostgreSQL + TimescaleDB, pgvector, pgvectorscale | No; hourly compute, storage billed by use | Yes, database forks | PITR 3 days (Performance), 14 days (Scale) | |
| Turso turso.tech · OSS · EU | $5.99/mo | Free tier | SQLite-compatible (Turso / libSQL) | Yes; billed on rows and storage, idle DBs cost storage | Yes; a branch counts as a database | PITR: 1 day Free, 10 Developer, 30 Scaler, 90 Pro | |
| Ubicloud Managed PostgreSQL ubicloud.com · OSS · EU | $19.54/mo | Open source | PostgreSQL 16, 17, 18 | No; fixed instances billed per minute | Forks via point-in-time restore | 7 days, restore to any minute | |
| Upstash Redis upstash.com · EU | Usage-based | Free tier | Redis-compatible (key-value) | Yes; per-command billing, idle PAYG DB costs $0 | No | Manual and daily backups kept 1 or 3 days | |
| Xata xata.io · OSS · EU | $0.012/hr | Open source | PostgreSQL (vanilla, upstream) | Scale to zero, ~1 s wake-up; billed per hour | Copy-on-write branches in seconds, anonymization | Point-in-time restore; retention not published | |
| YugabyteDB Aeon yugabyte.com · OSS · EU | $125/mo | Free tier | YugabyteDB (PostgreSQL YSQL, Cassandra YCQL APIs) | No; provisioned vCPUs | No | Daily, 8-day default retention; PITR add-on |
No tools match these filters.
How to choose a database
- Start from the engine your stack expects (Postgres is the safe default) and the region of your app servers.
- Serverless databases cost little when idle but can cost more under constant load than an always-on instance. Compare both for your expected hours.
- Branching (a copy of the database per pull request) is worth a lot if you run preview environments.
- Check point-in-time recovery retention and whether backups cost extra.
- Watch connection limits on small plans; serverless functions open many connections, so you may need a pooler.
Questions
What is the best free Postgres hosting?
Several providers offer a permanent free Postgres tier with limits on storage, compute hours or inactivity pauses. The table compares those limits side by side with the date each was checked.
Do free database tiers pause?
Some do: a free project that is idle for a period can be paused or scaled to zero, and the first query afterwards is slower. The "Scale to zero" column says how each provider handles it.
Comparisons and pricing changes
Head to head
Render vs Railway Supabase vs Firebase Neon vs Supabase PlanetScale vs Neon MongoDB Atlas vs SupabaseRecent changes
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Cockroach Continuum replaces Basic, Standard and Advanced for new organisations
CockroachDB Cloud (Cockroach Continuum) · source ↗
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Remote Config fetches become billable
Firebase · source ↗
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Free plan loses email template editing on default SMTP
Supabase · source ↗
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Render replaces per-seat plans with flat workspace plans and cuts included bandwidth
Render · source ↗
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Business plan and self-serve pricing changes
Convex · source ↗