Cheapest managed database for a side project
A small production database that is idle most of the time.
List prices checked
How this is scored
Ranked on entry price, but the split that matters is architectural: serverless engines that scale to zero cost nothing while idle, while provisioned instances bill every hour regardless. For a side project that difference usually beats the sticker price.
All 11, ranked for this workload
| # | Service | Provider | Cost for this workload | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Turso | Turso | $8.25/mo entry · has free tier | 500 databases, 9 GB of storage, and 1 billion row reads per month |
| 2 | MongoDB Atlas | MongoDB | $9.00/mo entry · has free tier | M0 shared cluster with 512 MB, always free |
| 3 | Google Cloud SQL | $9.37/mo entry | — | |
| 4 | Upstash Redis | Upstash | $10/mo entry · has free tier | 500,000 commands per month |
| 5 | AWS RDS for PostgreSQL | Amazon Web Services | $12/mo entry · has free tier | 750 hours per month of a db.t-class instance for 12 months |
| 6 | Azure Database for PostgreSQL | Microsoft | $12/mo entry · has free tier | 750 hours per month of a burstable instance for 12 months |
| 7 | Scaleway Managed Database | Scaleway | $13/mo entry | — |
| 8 | Neon Serverless Postgres | Neon | $19/mo entry · has free tier | 0.5 GB of storage and 190 compute hours per month |
| 9 | Supabase | Supabase | $25/mo entry · has free tier | 500 MB database and 5 GB of egress per month |
| 10 | CockroachDB Cloud | Cockroach Labs | $25/mo entry · has free tier | $0 basic tier with monthly request-unit and storage allowances |
| 11 | PlanetScale | PlanetScale | $39/mo entry · has free tier | None; the Hobby tier was retired in April 2024 |
Published list prices only. Rows that do not publish a rate for an axis this workload depends on are excluded rather than shown as cheap.
Questions
- Cheapest managed database for a side project in 2026?
- Turso from Turso — $8.25/mo entry · has free tier. MongoDB Atlas is second at $9.00/mo entry · has free tier. This ranking is specific to the workload described above; a different usage shape reorders it.
- How is this ranking weighted?
- Ranked on entry price, but the split that matters is architectural: serverless engines that scale to zero cost nothing while idle, while provisioned instances bill every hour regardless. For a side project that difference usually beats the sticker price.
- Why does this differ from the general cheapest list?
- Because a single price axis never describes a real workload. Ranking by headline rate answers "who is cheapest per unit"; this page answers "who is cheapest for this job", and the two orders are often very different — which is the whole reason it exists as a separate table.
- What is not accounted for?
- Committed-use discounts, regional price variation, per-request charges, support plans, and minimum retention. These are published list prices applied to one stated workload — a shortlist to price properly with the vendor, not a quotation.
Other workloads
- Cheapest CDN for video streaming
- Cheapest CDN for a small website
- Cheapest cloud storage for backups
- Cheapest object storage for serving files to users
- Cheapest VPS for a side project
- Cheapest cloud compute per vCPU-hour
- Cheapest hosting for bandwidth-heavy sites
- Best free tier for hosting a project
- Cheapest Heroku alternatives