This document provides a comparison between hosted, serverless (no cost or management to spin down to zero) providers of SQL cloud databases.
Last verified: July 2, 2026. Prices are US-region (us-east-1 or equivalent) and vary by region. Each provider's sources are listed in Provider Sources.
Removed providers:
- PlanetScale has been removed due to their ending of free plans (April 2024). Still no free tier as of mid-2026, though PlanetScale for Postgres (GA Sept 2025) now starts at $5/mo for a single-node database.
- Render has been removed since their free Postgres expires after 30 days.
- Tembo has been removed since their free plan is disabled after 14 days.
- Nhost has been removed since they sporadically shut down active projects.
- Gel (fka EdgeDB) has been removed: Gel Cloud shut down on January 31, 2026 and the team joined Vercel. The open-source project can still be self-hosted but has seen no commits since December 2025.
- Xata has been removed: the classic serverless product ("Xata Lite") was retired on February 28, 2026, and the relaunched Xata Postgres platform is usage-based with no ongoing free tier (self-hosting the Apache-2.0 core is free).
- LiteFS (Fly.io) has been removed: LiteFS Cloud was sunset on October 15, 2024, Fly.io dropped free allowances for new organizations (October 2024), and the LiteFS repo has been dormant since April 2025 — Fly's focus has shifted back to Litestream.
Please join our discussions or fix/update information by editing this doc!
See also the Python FaaS Comparison
See also the Authentication Providers Comparison
- DevEx
- Pricing
- Runtime Limits
- Discussions, Community, and Support
- Provider Sources
- References and Useful Links
| Dialect | Status | Cloud | Cnxn | OSS | Examples | Docs | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aurora DSQL (AWS) | Postgres compat. | GA (May 2025) | AWS (multi-region) | TCP | 🚫 | Link | |
| Aurora Serverless v2 (AWS)² | PostgreSQL / MySQL | GA | AWS | TCP | 🚫 | ||
| Azure SQL Serverless | T-SQL | GA | Azure | TDS | 🚫 | ||
| CockroachDB (Basic) | Postgres compat. | GA | AWS / GCP | Pool | ✅ | Link | 🚀 |
| D1 (Cloudflare) | SQLite | GA | Cloudflare | HTTP / Binding | 🚫 | Link | 🚀 |
| MotherDuck | DuckDB | GA (June 2024) | AWS | md: driver / WASM |
🚫 | Link | |
| Neon | PostgreSQL 14–18 | GA | AWS ³ | TCP + Pool + HTTP/WS | ✅ | Link | 🚀 |
| Nile | PostgreSQL 15 ⁴ | Public preview | AWS | Pool | Link | 👍 | |
| Prisma Postgres | PostgreSQL 17 ¹ | GA (Feb 2025) | Unikraft bare metal + Cloudflare | TCP + Pool + HTTP | ✅ | Link | 🚀 |
| SQLite AI (fka SQLite Cloud) | SQLite | Available | Drivers + sync | ✅ | Link | ||
| Supabase | PostgreSQL | GA (April 2024) | AWS | TCP + Pool + HTTP | ✅ | Link | 🚀 |
| SurrealDB (Surreal Cloud) | SurrealQL (SQL-ish) ⁵ | Cloud beta / engine 3.0 GA | AWS | HTTP / WS | ✅ | Link | 🚀 |
| Turso | SQLite (libSQL) ⁶ | GA | AWS | Embed + HTTP | ✅ | Link | 🚀 |
- Prisma Postgres originally required the Prisma client over HTTP; direct TCP connections became GA ~October 2025, so any Postgres tool now works. It scales to zero with millisecond resumes via unikernel snapshots.
- Aurora Serverless v2 now scales to 0 ACUs (November 2024): auto-pause after ≥5 min idle, resume in ~15 s, no compute charges while paused (storage still billed).
- Neon was acquired by Databricks (May 2025); the product continues standalone (and powers Databricks Lakebase). Neon's Azure regions are deprecated for new projects.
- Nile is Postgres protocol-compatible but does not support user-defined functions/triggers, sequences on tenant tables, or RLS policies.
- SurrealQL is SQL-inspired (SELECT/WHERE/GROUP BY) but a distinct multi-model language, not wire- or syntax-compatible with any SQL standard.
- Turso Cloud runs on libSQL (their C fork of SQLite); their ground-up Rust rewrite of SQLite is in beta and being rolled in gradually. New accounts run on AWS; Fly.io was the legacy infrastructure.
Note that the "Free Plan" is intended to represent ongoing free resources i.e. not trials or sign-up credits.
| Free Plan | Bill Limits | First Paid Tier | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Aurora DSQL (AWS) | 100k DPUs + 1 GB storage / mo (ongoing, no expiry) | $8 / 1M DPUs + $0.33 / GB-mo | |
| Aurora Serverless v2 (AWS) | None ongoing ⁷ | $0.12 / ACU (~2 GiB RAM) hour + $0.10 / GB-mo storage + $0.20 / 1M I/O (Standard tier; I/O-Optimized: $0.156 / ACU-hr, no I/O charge) | |
| Azure SQL Serverless | 10 DBs × 100k vCore-seconds / mo + 32 GB each (lifetime of subscription) | Yes ⁸ | ~$0.000145 / vCore-second (≈$0.52 / vCore-hr) + ~$0.115 / GB-mo |
| CockroachDB Basic | $15 / mo in credits ≈ 50M RUs + 10 GiB (payment method required) | Yes | $0.20 / 1M RUs + $0.50 / GiB-mo (over credits) |
| D1 (Cloudflare) | 5M RR / day + 100k RW / day + 5 GB | $5 / mo for 25B RR + 50M RW / mo + 5 GB, after $0.001 / M RR + $1.00 / M RW + $0.75 / GB-mo | |
| MotherDuck | Lite: 10 GB storage + 10 CU-hrs compute / mo, 3 users ⁹ | Usage-based: compute from $0.60 / CU-hr (Pulse) + ~$0.04 / GB-mo storage; Business plan $250 / mo | |
| Neon | 100 projects × 0.5 GB + 100 CU-hrs / mo each, 5 GB egress | Launch: usage-based, no minimum (since Dec 2025) — $0.106 / CU-hr + $0.35 / GB-mo | |
| Nile | 1 GB storage, 50M query tokens, 500 connections | $15 / mo = 5 GB storage (+ $1.00 / GB), 150M query tokens (+ $0.05 / M) | |
| Prisma Postgres | 1 GiB storage, 100k ops / mo, 10 databases | Yes | $10 / mo = 10 GB storage (+ $2.00 / GB), 1M ops (+ $0.008 / 1k), 1,000 databases |
| SQLite AI | 512 MB storage ¹⁰ | Dev $19 / mo = 3 GB; Pro $79 / mo = 30 GB | |
| Supabase | 500 MB DB, 5 GB egress, 50k MAU, 2 active projects (paused after 1 week inactivity) | Yes | $25 / mo = 8 GB disk (+ $0.125 / GB), 100k MAU, 250 GB egress (+ $0.09 / GB), incl. $10 compute credits |
| SurrealDB (Surreal Cloud) | 1 free instance (0.25 vCPU / 1 GB RAM), 1 GB storage (read-only if exceeded) | Usage-based: Burstable from ~$0.021 / hr (0.5 vCPU / 1 GB); General Purpose from ~$0.135 / hr | |
| Turso | 100 DBs (100 active), 5 GB total, 500M RR + 10M RW / mo | Developer $4.99 / mo = 9 GB, 2.5B RR / mo; Scaler $24.92 / mo = 24 GB |
RUs = CPU + IOPs, DPU = Distributed Processing Unit, CU = compute unit, ACU = Aurora Capacity Unit, mo = month, M = million, k = thousand, RR = rows read, RW = rows written, B = billion, ops = operations, MAU = monthly active (auth) users
- AWS replaced its legacy 12-month free tier with up to $200 in signup credits (July 2025). A free-plan Aurora PostgreSQL offer (up to 4 ACUs + 1 GiB, max 6 months) launched March 2026 — a trial, not ongoing.
- On the Azure free offer, when the monthly vCore-second allowance is exhausted you choose between auto-pause-until-next-month or continuing at standard rates (docs).
- MotherDuck restructured pricing between Dec 2025 and Feb 2026: the former $25/mo Lite minimum became a free starter tier. Storage rate reported as $0.04/GB-mo in 2026 sources vs $0.08 earlier — verify on the pricing page.
- SQLite AI (rebranded from SQLite Cloud / sqlitecloud.io) plan figures are from the official pricing page.
| DB Size | # DBs | Duration | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Default / Free | Max / Paid | Default / Free | Max / Paid | ||
| Aurora DSQL (AWS) | 1 GB free | ||||
| Aurora Serverless v2 (AWS) | 128 TiB (cluster) | ||||
| Azure SQL Serverless | 32 GB (free offer) | 4 TB (GP serverless) | 10 (free offer) | ||
| CockroachDB (Basic) | 10 GiB (credits) | 3 TiB | |||
| D1 | 500 MB / DB | 10 GB / DB | 10 | 50k | 30 s (REST/batch) |
| MotherDuck | 10 GB | ||||
| Neon | 0.5 GB / project | 100 projects | |||
| Prisma Postgres | 1 GiB | 10 | 1,000 | ||
| SQLite AI | 512 MB | 30 GB (Pro) | |||
| Supabase | 500 MB | Expandable disk | 2 active | ||
| SurrealDB (Surreal Cloud) | 1 GB | 1 instance | |||
| Turso | 5 GB total | 9–24 GB total | 100 | 1,000+ |
Sources: Aurora DSQL pricing, Aurora storage limits, Azure resource limits, CockroachDB Basic cluster planning, D1 limits, MotherDuck pricing, Neon plans, Prisma pricing, SQLite AI pricing, Supabase pricing, Surreal Cloud FAQs, Turso pricing
| Ours | Forum | GitHub | SO | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aurora (AWS, v2 & DSQL) | AWS re:Post | DSQL samples | SO | r/aws | |
| Azure SQL Serverless | Microsoft Q&A Tech Community | sql-docs | SO | r/AZURE | |
| CockroachDB | Forum Slack | GitHub | SO | r/CockroachDB | |
| D1 (Cloudflare) | Forum Discord | Projects | SO | r/CloudFlare | |
| MotherDuck | Forum Slack | ||||
| Neon | Discord | GitHub | r/Neon_Postgres | ||
| Nile | GitHub | ||||
| Prisma Postgres | Discussions | GitHub | SO | ||
| SQLite AI | GitHub | ||||
| Supabase | Discussions | GitHub | SO | r/Supabase | |
| SurrealDB | Discussions Support | GitHub | r/surrealdb | ||
| Turso | Discord | GitHub | SO |
Primary sources used for the figures above (all official pages, verified July 2, 2026):
- Aurora DSQL: pricing · FAQs · GA announcement, May 2025
- Aurora Serverless v2: pricing · scaling to zero announcement, Nov 2024 · auto-pause docs · capacity docs (0–256 ACUs)
- Azure SQL Serverless: serverless tier overview · free offer · free offer GA announcement · pricing
- CockroachDB: pricing · pricing rebalance blog · costs docs · Basic cluster planning
- D1: pricing · limits · read replication (beta, Apr 2025)
- MotherDuck: pricing · billing docs · GA announcement, June 2024 · EU region
- Neon: pricing · plans docs · usage-based pricing (minimums removed), Dec 2025 · Databricks acquisition, May 2025 · serverless driver docs
- Nile: pricing · pricing blog · public preview announcement, Sept 2024 · Postgres compatibility
- Prisma Postgres: pricing · GA changelog, Feb 2025 · direct TCP GA · architecture · operations-based billing
- SQLite AI: pricing · cloud product · docs
- Supabase: pricing · GA announcement, Apr 2024 · connection docs · compute docs
- SurrealDB: pricing · Surreal Cloud FAQs · 3.0 announcement, Feb 2026 · 3.1 release notes
- Turso: pricing · new plans blog, Mar 2025 · SQLite rewrite · embedded replicas docs · offline sync beta
Providers evaluated but not included (no ongoing free serverless SQL tier): PlanetScale (no free plan), Railway (30-day trial credit), Render (30-day expiry), Koyeb (free tier closed to new signups after the Mistral AI acquisition, Feb 2026), Genezio (databases discontinued after the DeployApps rebrand), StarbaseDB (unmaintained after the Outerbase → Cloudflare acquisition), Netlify Database (Neon-powered, GA Apr 2026 — effectively Neon; storage billing began July 1, 2026).
- Vercel Data Latency Tester
- Neon's new pricing analyzed by Vantage from June 2025
- 7+ Free PostgreSQL Hosting Platforms by Probir Sarkar from Nov 6, 2024
- Serverless Database Query Performance
- Free database services list (maintained) by Dmitry Scaletta
- Article by Lee Robinson from Jan 28, 2023
- Article by Alex Patterson from June 6, 2023
- Comparison by Pritam Barhate from March 29, 2023
- Article by Jignesh Solanki from Dec 12, 2021
- Article by Alex DeBrie from June 20, 2019
- Dedicated SQL Pool vs. Serverless SQL—Comparison and Uses from Feb 10, 2022