Best Free Database Hosting in 2026: What Each Free Tier Does When You Stop Using It
Short answer: Neon ranks first for a prototype that goes quiet. Its $0 Free plan allows up to 100 projects at 1 GB each (20 GB in total), suspends compute after 5 minutes idle and deletes no data at a limit. Supabase pauses a free project after 1 week of inactivity, Turso archives after 10 days and MongoDB Atlas pauses after 30 days with zero connections. Supabase Pro at $25 a month is never paused for inactivity. Limits checked 20 Oct 2026.
Ten free database tiers compared on storage, what happens after 14 idle days, what happens at the cap and the first paid step, with limits read on vendor pages on 20 Oct 2026.
A free database rarely fails on day one. It fails on day fourteen, when a prototype nobody touched over a holiday has been paused, archived or parked behind a limit. This guide runs one scenario through ten free tiers: a prototype holding 400 MB of data, written to during working hours, then left alone for 14 days. Some tiers keep it running, some pause or archive it before day 14, and one cannot hold it at all. Toolradar data: Toolradar tracks 24 managed databases, and 58% of them are free or freemium while 38% are paid only, so a free tier is a real option here and the difference is what it does when you stop using it.
Methodology: the managed databases category lists 24 tools. This guide ranks ten database products whose own pages print a free plan or a free allowance with no time limit. A 30-day trial does not count, and neither does a paid-only pricing page: CockroachDB lists a trial and PlanetScale lists no free plan, so both sit outside the ranking. Every limit and price was read on the vendors' pricing pages, docs or help centers on 20 Oct 2026, and each 14-day result applies a published rule to the scenario.
The order follows the scenario. First come the tiers with room for 400 MB and no pause or archive rule inside 14 days on the pages read: Neon, MongoDB Atlas, TiDB Cloud, Cloudflare D1, Firebase and Convex. Next come the tiers that pause or archive inside the window but keep the data: Supabase, Turso and Nhost. Upstash is last because its free data size is below the prototype. Inside a group the order is editorial. Units stay as each vendor prints them (MB, GB or GiB, CU-hours, rows, request units) and none is converted. For database clients rather than hosted databases, see the best free database tools post.
Top Picks
Picked by editorial review, informed by G2 and Capterra review volume and rating and by media mentions, the signals behind our category rankings. How we rate
Postgres free for up to 100 projects at 1 GB each, 20 GB in total, with compute that suspends after 5 minutes idle.
Starting price
Free; Launch usage-based, no minimum
Best for
A Postgres prototype that sits idle for weeks and must still be there when you return.
MongoDB's M0 cluster is labelled free forever: 512 MB, 100 operations a second, paused after 30 days with zero connections.
Starting price
Free; Flex $8 to $30 a month
4.5 (901 reviews)
Best for
MongoDB prototypes that need a free managed cluster and can live within 100 operations a second.
MySQL-compatible Starter instances get 5 GiB of row storage and 50 million request units a month, on up to five free instances.
Starting price
Free; usage-based beyond quota
4.6 (67 reviews)
Best for
MySQL-compatible apps that want several small free databases and can live with throttling at the quota.
| Tool | Starting price | Rating | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Neon | Free; Launch usage-based, no minimum | n/a | A Postgres prototype that sits idle for weeks and must still be there when you return. |
| MongoDB Atlas | Free; Flex $8 to $30 a month | 4.5 901 reviews | MongoDB prototypes that need a free managed cluster and can live within 100 operations a second. |
| TiDB Cloud | Free; usage-based beyond quota | 4.6 67 reviews | MySQL-compatible apps that want several small free databases and can live with throttling at the quota. |
| Cloudflare D1 | Free; Workers Paid minimum | 4.5 696 reviews | Workers apps that need a small SQL database and stay under 100,000 rows written a day. |
| Firebase | Free (Spark); Blaze pay as you go | 4.6 1,073 reviews | Mobile and web apps already on Firebase that want a NoSQL database with daily free quotas. |
| Convex | Free; Starter pay as you go | 4.6 6 reviews | Realtime apps that want a reactive database, functions and file storage in one backend. |
| Supabase | Free; Pro billed monthly | 4.6 233 reviews | Developers who want Postgres with auth and storage and will keep the project active or move to Pro. |
| Turso | Free; Developer $4.99/mo yearly | n/a | Apps that want many small SQLite databases, one per user or tenant, and can unarchive after a quiet spell. |
| Nhost | Free; Pro plan | 2.3 20 reviews | Developers who want Postgres with GraphQL and one active project at a time. |
| Upstash | Free; pay as you go | n/a | Key-value or cache data that fits in 250 MB, not a relational prototype. |
- Starting price
- Free; Launch usage-based, no minimum
- Free plan
- Yes
Best for: A Postgres prototype that sits idle for weeks and must still be there when you return.
- Pro: 100 CU-hours a month per project, and compute suspends after 5 minutes idle so idle time uses none
- Pro: Docs say no Free limit deletes data: compute suspends or storage writes fail until you free space or upgrade
- Pro: Launch has no monthly minimum: 8 GB stored costs $2.80 a month before compute
- Con: Past 1 GB per project, or 20 GB across all free projects, inserts, updates and deletes fail
- Con: At 100 CU-hours or 5 GB of transfer per project, compute is suspended until the next billing period
Neon's Free tier is quite generous, offering 100 CU-hours and 0.5 GB storage per project, making it excellent for development and small projects.
Watch out
CU-hour overages can quickly increase costs.
MongoDB Atlas
MongoDB's M0 cluster is labelled free forever: 512 MB, 100 operations a second, paused after 30 days with zero connections.
- 4.5 on G2 (901 reviews)
- Starting price
- Free; Flex $8 to $30 a month
- Free plan
- Yes
- Rating
- 4.5 (901 reviews)
Best for: MongoDB prototypes that need a free managed cluster and can live within 100 operations a second.
- Pro: 512 MB, 32 MB of sort memory and 500 connections, with one free cluster per project
- Pro: Atlas pauses a free cluster after 30 days with zero connections, so a 14-day gap leaves it running
- Pro: A paused cluster can be resumed at any time unless it ran an old version Atlas cannot restore
- Con: A 400 MB prototype nearly fills a 512 MB cluster, and Free has no auto-expanding storage
- Con: Operations past 100 a second queue, and transfer past 10 GB in or out in 7 days is throttled
MongoDB Atlas offers a fair and flexible pricing model.
Watch out
Dedicated tier storage and I/O are additional.
TiDB Cloud
MySQL-compatible Starter instances get 5 GiB of row storage and 50 million request units a month, on up to five free instances.
- 4.6 on G2 (67 reviews)
- Starting price
- Free; usage-based beyond quota
- Free plan
- Yes
- Rating
- 4.6 (67 reviews)
Best for: MySQL-compatible apps that want several small free databases and can live with throttling at the quota.
- Pro: Each of the first five instances gets 5 GiB row storage, 5 GiB columnar storage and 50 million RUs a month
- Pro: The tier docs say no credit card is needed to start on the free quota
- Pro: No inactivity pause is listed on the pricing page or the tier docs
- Con: At the quota, new connections are refused and existing ones throttled until the month resets or a spending limit is set
- Con: Free instances are limited to 256 MiB of memory per query
TiDB's pricing is quite generous, offering substantial free tiers for both self-hosted and cloud serverless options.
Watch out
Overage fees for storage/RUs beyond free tier in Cloud Serverless.
Cloudflare D1
SQL databases with SQLite semantics on the Workers Free plan: 500 MB per database, 5 GB per account, daily row limits resetting at 00:00 UTC.
- 4.5 on G2 (696 reviews)
- Starting price
- Free; Workers Paid minimum
- Free plan
- Yes
- Rating
- 4.5 (696 reviews)
Best for: Workers apps that need a small SQL database and stay under 100,000 rows written a day.
- Pro: Free allows 5 million rows read and 100,000 rows written a day, 10 databases and 5 GB per account
- Pro: Cloudflare says the Workers Free plan will always include D1 for prototyping
- Pro: Time Travel point-in-time recovery covers 7 days on Free
- Con: One free database is capped at 500 MB, so the 400 MB prototype has 100 MB of headroom
- Con: Past the daily read or write limit, queries return errors until the reset or an upgrade
Workers Free includes 5M reads/day, 100k writes/day, and 5 GB.
Watch out
Workers CPU that runs the query is billed on Workers pricing, on top of D1 rows (official FAQ).
- Starting price
- Free (Spark); Blaze pay as you go
- Free plan
- Yes
- Rating
- 4.6 (1,073 reviews)
Best for: Mobile and web apps already on Firebase that want a NoSQL database with daily free quotas.
- Pro: Spark needs no payment method and includes 1 GiB of stored data and 10 GiB of egress a month
- Pro: Daily quotas are 50K reads, 20K writes and 20K deletes, refreshed at midnight
- Pro: No inactivity rule appears on the Firebase pricing page or the Firestore quotas doc
- Con: More quota than the daily limits needs billing enabled, and the Firebase page links to Google Cloud for the rates
- Con: Iowa (us-central1) charges $0.03 per 100,000 reads and $0.09 per 100,000 writes beyond the free quota; other locations differ
Firebase's Spark tier is generous for MVPs.
Convex
A reactive backend database with hard free caps: 0.5 GB of database storage, 1 million function calls and 1 GB of I/O a month.
- 4.5 on G2 (5 reviews)
- 5.0 on SourceForge (1 reviews)
- Starting price
- Free; Starter pay as you go
- Free plan
- Yes
- Rating
- 4.6 (6 reviews)
Best for: Realtime apps that want a reactive database, functions and file storage in one backend.
- Pro: Free includes file storage, text search, vector search, crons and auth
- Pro: Starter has no base fee and bills pay as you go beyond the free amounts, at $0.22 per extra GB of database storage
- Pro: Convex's FAQ says it never deletes a record written by a mutation that returned successfully
- Con: Free has hard resource caps, and sustained overuse may return HTTP errors from function calls
- Con: Database storage includes indexes, and each index is priced as another copy of the table
Convex Free tier is generous for side projects: 1M function calls/mo and 0.5GB storage at no cost.
Watch out
EU hosting adds a 30% surcharge on all usage, significant for European teams
- Starting price
- Free; Pro billed monthly
- Free plan
- Yes
- Rating
- 4.6 (233 reviews)
Best for: Developers who want Postgres with auth and storage and will keep the project active or move to Pro.
- Pro: Free includes unlimited API requests, 50,000 monthly active users and 5 GB of egress
- Pro: Pro never pauses for inactivity and includes 8 GB of disk per project, with a spend cap on by default
- Pro: The pausing doc says a paused project can be restored for up to 1 year, and the billing docs say paused projects do not count toward the 2-project limit
- Con: After 1 week of inactivity a free project pauses, so the 14-day gap leaves it paused until someone clicks Resume project
- Con: Free projects go read-only past 500 MB, which leaves the 400 MB prototype 100 MB of headroom
Supabase is the open-source Firebase alternative that developers actually want to use, Postgres database, authentication, storage, edge functions, and real-time subscriptions in one platform.
Watch out
Free projects pause after 7 days of inactivity: your app goes offline until someone visits it again. Not suitable for any production use, only for development and demos
Turso
SQLite-compatible cloud databases, with 100 free databases and 5 GB of storage, archived after 10 days of inactivity on the free plan.
- Starting price
- Free; Developer $4.99/mo yearly
- Free plan
- Yes
Best for: Apps that want many small SQLite databases, one per user or tenant, and can unarchive after a quiet spell.
- Pro: Free allows 100 databases, 5 GB of storage, 500 million rows read and 10 million rows written a month
- Pro: Developer includes 9 GB of storage and unlimited databases, billed yearly or monthly
- Pro: Point-in-time restore covers 1 day on Free and 10 days on Developer
- Con: Free databases are archived after 10 days of inactivity, so the 14-day gap archives the prototype until you unarchive it with the CLI or API
- Con: Past any one limit (storage, rows read, rows written or syncs), the Free plan blocks your databases
Turso offers a generous free tier for edge SQLite databases.
Watch out
Overages auto-enabled on new subscriptions since March 2025
Nhost
Postgres with Hasura GraphQL, auth and storage: one project and a 1 GB database free, paused after 1 week of inactivity.
- 2.3 on SourceForge (20 reviews)
- Starting price
- Free; Pro plan
- Free plan
- Yes
- Rating
- 2.3 (20 reviews)
Best for: Developers who want Postgres with GraphQL and one active project at a time.
- Pro: Starter gives a 1 GB database, 1 GB of storage and 5 GB of egress at no charge, with unlimited users
- Pro: A free organization can hold many projects if only one is active at a time
- Pro: Pro includes a 10 GB database and $15 in compute credits, with extra database storage billed per GB
- Con: Starter projects are paused after 1 week of inactivity, so the 14-day gap leaves the project paused
- Con: Only one project can be active at a time on Starter, and the plan lists 1 workspace member
Nhost's pricing is generous, especially with a free Starter tier that pauses only after a week of inactivity, making it suitable for hobbyists.
Watch out
Compute overage fees beyond included credits
- Starting price
- Free; pay as you go
- Free plan
- Yes
Best for: Key-value or cache data that fits in 250 MB, not a relational prototype.
- Pro: Pay as You Go gives the first 1 GB of storage free and bandwidth free up to 200 GB a month
- Pro: Free databases are archived after a minimum of 30 days of inactivity, with a backup you can restore into a new database
- Pro: The capacity table lists 10,000 commands a second on Free
- Con: The 250 MB free data size is below the 400 MB prototype, so the scenario does not fit
- Con: The pricing page prints 500K commands a month, while the help center answers a 10,000-requests-a-day limit for free databases
Upstash offers a very generous free tier, making it highly accessible for developers.
Watch out
Redis storage beyond 100GB on Pay as You Go
Other Managed Databases tools worth considering
More published tools from our Managed Databases category, ordered by our category ranking. They are not part of the editorial picks above.
What free database hosting is
Free database hosting is a vendor-run database that costs nothing a month inside published limits, with no trial clock. The limits and the idle rule are the product: the vendor decides how large the database can grow, how much compute or traffic it gets, and when an unused one is paused, archived or throttled.
The ten tiers are different products. Neon, Supabase and Nhost run Postgres, TiDB Cloud is MySQL-compatible, MongoDB Atlas is managed MongoDB and Firebase offers Firestore, a NoSQL database. Turso is SQLite-compatible, Cloudflare D1 uses SQLite's SQL semantics, Upstash is a Redis key-value store and Convex is a reactive backend with its own database. Compare them on the limits you will hit, not on the engine name.
Why the idle rule and the first paid step decide the choice
The free plan decides the first months, and the idle rule decides whether you return to a working database. In the 14-day scenario, Supabase and Nhost pause a free project after 1 week of inactivity, so the prototype waits behind a resume button when you come back. Turso archives it after 10 days, and a CLI or API call unarchives it. Neon, TiDB Cloud, Cloudflare D1, Firebase and Convex print no rule that would pause it inside 14 days, and MongoDB Atlas waits for 30 days with zero connections.
The paid step decides every month after. A flat plan and a usage plan swap places at a load you can compute. At 8 GB, Neon's storage is $2.80 a month plus compute, so it costs less than Supabase Pro's flat price only below 209.4 CU-hours a month. That compares prices, not performance, because the compute sizes differ. For head-to-head detail, see Neon vs Supabase and Supabase vs Firebase.
Key Features to Look For
Idle rule (Essential)
Supabase and Nhost pause a free project after 1 week of inactivity, Turso archives after 10 days, MongoDB Atlas acts after 30 days and Upstash after at least 30 days. Neon suspends compute after 5 minutes but keeps the project. TiDB Cloud, Cloudflare D1, Firestore and Convex print no inactivity rule on the pages read.
What happens at the cap (Essential)
Supabase goes read-only past 500 MB and Neon makes storage-growing writes fail. Turso blocks databases, TiDB Cloud refuses new connections and Cloudflare D1 returns errors past its daily row limits. Convex may return HTTP errors, and Atlas queues operations past 100 a second.
Projects or databases you can run free (Important)
Neon allows 100 projects and Turso 100 databases. TiDB Cloud allows 5 instances, Cloudflare D1 10 databases and Supabase 2 active projects. Nhost allows 1 active project and Upstash 1 database.
Compute or request allowance (Important)
Neon gives 100 CU-hours a month per project and TiDB Cloud 50 million request units. Turso gives 500 million rows read and 10 million written a month, Cloudflare D1 5 million read and 100,000 written a day, and Upstash 500K commands a month.
Backups on the free tier (Nice to have)
Neon keeps a 6-hour restore history, Turso 1 day of point-in-time restore and Cloudflare D1 7 days of Time Travel. Supabase lists no automatic backups on Free, and MongoDB Atlas lists no backup services on its Free tier.
What to check before you pick a free database
-
Data size now and in six months. A 400 MB prototype fits every tier here except Upstash, but only 100 MB of headroom remains on Supabase and Cloudflare D1.
-
The engine. Pick Postgres, MySQL-compatible, SQLite, MongoDB or key-value first, because changing later means a migration, not a plan change.
-
What the cap does. Blocked writes, throttling, refused connections and errors behave differently under load, and the pricing page rarely says which one applies.
-
The first paid step. Price the plan you will need at your target size, not the free tier you start on.
Evaluation Checklist
Write down your data size today and in six months, then compare both with each storage figure in the vendor's own unit.
Find the idle rule in the vendor's docs, not only on the pricing page, and compare it with your longest quiet spell.
Check what happens at the cap: read-only mode, throttling, refused connections, errors or a bill.
Count the free projects or databases you need and compare them with the plan limit.
Price the first paid step at your size on the billing toggle you will use.
Re-read the limits every quarter, because free tiers change.
Pricing Overview
Neon Launch
Intermittent Postgres workloads where compute scales to zero, with 100 projects and 10 branches per project.
$0.106 per CU-hour plus $0.35 per GB-month, no monthly minimum
MongoDB Atlas Flex
Development and testing on a shared cluster capped at 500 operations a second, billed hourly with a monthly invoice.
$8.00 to $30.00 a month by load, 5 GB cap
Turso Developer
9 GB of storage, unlimited databases, 2.5 billion rows read and 25 million rows written a month.
$4.99 a month billed yearly, $5.99 billed monthly
Cloudflare D1 on Workers Paid
Databases up to 10 GB each, with 25 billion rows read and 50 million rows written a month included.
$5 a month minimum, then $0.75 per GB-month above 5 GB
Convex Starter
The Free feature set with pay-as-you-go limits; the Professional plan is priced per developer.
$0 base, then $0.22 per GB of database storage above 0.5 GB
Pricing Comparison
| Tool | Free allowance (vendor's unit) | Idle rule and the 14-day result | At the cap | First paid step | Billing basis |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Neon | 100 projects; each 1 GB and 100 CU-hours a month; 20 GB in total | Compute suspends after 5 min idle; no pause or deletion rule printed | Storage-growing writes fail; compute stops at 100 CU-hours; no data deleted | Launch: $0.106 per CU-hour, $0.35 per GB-month | Usage only, no monthly minimum |
M0: 512 MB; 100 operations a second; 500 connections | Paused after 30 days with zero connections; running at day 14 | Operations queue past 100 a second; transfer throttled past 10 GB in or out per 7 days | Flex $8.00 to $30.00 a month, 5 GB cap; Dedicated M10 from $56.94 for 8 GB | Hourly, invoiced monthly | |
5 instances; each 5 GiB row, 5 GiB columnar, 50 million RUs a month | No inactivity rule printed; running at day 14 | Throttled; new connections refused until month reset or a spending limit | Spending limit: $0.20 per GiB-month of row storage, $0.10 per 1M RUs (us-east-1) | Usage only; card required; rates vary by region | |
500 MB per database, 5 GB per account; 5M rows read, 100K written a day | No inactivity rule printed; daily limits reset 00:00 UTC | Errors past daily limits; inserts blocked at the storage limit | Workers Paid: $5 a month minimum; 5 GB included, then $0.75 per GB-month | Monthly subscription plus usage | |
Firebase (Firestore) | Spark: 1 GiB stored; 50K reads, 20K writes, 20K deletes a day | No inactivity rule printed; daily quotas reset around midnight Pacific | More quota needs billing enabled; error not printed on the pages read | Blaze: Iowa reads $0.03, writes $0.09 per 100,000 beyond free quota | Usage only, by Google Cloud location |
Convex | 0.5 GB database, 1 GB files; 1M function calls, 1 GB database I/O a month | No inactivity rule printed; hard caps apply | HTTP errors possible after sustained overuse; no written record deleted | Starter: $0 base, $0.22 per GB above 0.5 GB of database storage | Pay as you go; Professional priced per developer |
Supabase | 2 active projects; 500 MB database per project; 5 GB egress | Paused after 1 week of inactivity; paused at day 14 | Read-only mode past 500 MB | Pro: $25 a month, 8 GB disk, never paused for inactivity | Flat plan, charged up front, billed monthly |
Turso | 100 databases; 5 GB storage; 500M rows read, 10M written a month | Archived after 10 days of inactivity; archived at day 14 | Databases blocked once any one metric passes its limit | Developer: $4.99 a month yearly, $5.99 monthly; 9 GB | Flat plan; overages optional ($0.75 per extra GB) |
Nhost | 1 project; 1 GB database, 1 GB storage, 5 GB egress | Paused after 1 week of inactivity; paused at day 14 | Not printed for Starter; FAQ says projects are never stopped and excess is charged | Pro: from $25 a month; 10 GB database, $15 compute credits | Priced per month on the page |
Upstash | 1 database; 250 MB, 500K commands, 10 GB bandwidth a month | Archived after a minimum of 30 days, with a backup; 400 MB does not fit | Commands past the free limit return an exception (help center) | Pay as You Go: $0.20 per 100K commands, $0.25 per GB above 1 GB | Usage only; Fixed 10GB plan is $200 a month |
Limits and prices read on vendor pages on 20 Oct 2026: Neon pricing and Neon plans, MongoDB Atlas pricing, Atlas free cluster limits and Atlas Flex limits, TiDB Cloud Starter pricing and TiDB Cloud tiers and TiDB FAQ, Cloudflare D1 pricing, D1 limits and Workers pricing, Firebase pricing, Firestore pricing and Firestore quotas, Convex pricing, Convex limits and Convex FAQ, Supabase pricing, Supabase project pausing, Supabase database size and Supabase billing, Turso pricing and Turso group unarchive, Nhost pricing, Upstash Redis pricing and Upstash FAQ, CockroachDB pricing and PlanetScale pricing. The 14-day result applies the published rule to the 400 MB scenario. Rows are in ranked order.
Mistakes to Avoid
- ×
Reading the storage headline and skipping the idle rule. A 500 MB Supabase project and a 512 MB Atlas cluster look alike, yet one pauses after 1 week and the other after 30 days with zero connections.
- ×
Counting 100 free Neon projects as 100 GB. The plans doc caps Free storage at 1 GB per project and 20 GB across all free projects.
- ×
Treating a trial as a free tier. CockroachDB's pricing page lists a 30-day trial with $400 in credit, after which clusters pause and are deleted if no payment method is added.
- ×
Sizing for today's data only. Atlas at 512 MB and D1 at 500 MB per database leave little room above a 400 MB prototype, and Convex prices each index as another copy of the table.
- ×
Ignoring how usage is counted. On Turso and D1, a query that scans an unindexed table counts as many rows read as the table has.
- ×
Assuming a paid plan removes every cap. Supabase Pro includes 8 GB of disk, then charges $0.125 per extra GB, and each extra project adds its own compute.
Expert Tips
- →
Keep a Supabase project active before a gap: its pausing doc says a few database requests a day are typically enough to avoid the pause.
- →
Export before a long gap on tiers that pause or archive. MongoDB's docs advise exporting a copy of a Free cluster you will not use for an extended period.
- →
Pick the engine before the vendor: Postgres on Neon, Supabase or Nhost, MySQL-compatible on TiDB Cloud, SQLite on Turso or D1, MongoDB on Atlas.
- →
Price the first paid step at your size before you commit: at 8 GB, Neon undercuts the Supabase Pro flat price only below 209.4 CU-hours a month.
- →
Use a vendor's multi-database allowance for separate environments: Neon allows 100 projects and Turso 100 databases, against 2 active projects on Supabase.
- →
Set a spending limit before adding a card: TiDB Cloud requires one at a minimum of $0.01, and Supabase Pro has its spend cap on by default.
Red Flags to Watch For
-
An idle rule that lives only in docs: Turso's 10-day archive sits on its unarchive pages, Atlas's 30-day pause on its limits page and Upstash's 30-day archive in its help center.
-
Vendor pages that disagree or stay silent: Upstash prints 500K commands a month on its pricing page but answers a 10,000-requests-a-day question in its help center, and Neon's pricing page omits its 20 GB account total.
-
A cap that refuses work: TiDB Cloud denies new connections at the quota, and Turso blocks databases once any metric is passed.
-
A free label on a trial: CockroachDB lists a 30-day trial with $400 in credit, and PlanetScale's pricing page lists no free plan.
-
A pay-as-you-go step with no ceiling by default: Upstash offers an optional monthly budget on Pay as You Go, while Supabase Pro turns its spend cap on by default.
The Bottom Line
Start on Neon if you want a Postgres prototype that is still there after two quiet weeks: compute suspends after 5 minutes, and a limit deletes nothing. Choose MongoDB Atlas for MongoDB, TiDB Cloud for MySQL-compatible work, and Supabase if you want auth and storage and will keep the project active or move to Pro. Re-read the idle rules each quarter, because free limits move.
Cite this: Toolradar, "Best Free Database Hosting in 2026", Oct 2026.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the best free database hosting in 2026?
Neon ranks first in this guide: its $0 Free plan allows up to 100 projects at 1 GB each (20 GB in total), suspends compute after 5 minutes idle and, per its docs, deletes no data at a limit. MongoDB Atlas suits MongoDB workloads, TiDB Cloud suits MySQL-compatible ones, and Supabase suits teams that want auth and storage and will keep the project active. Limits checked 20 Oct 2026.
Which free database does not pause when it is idle?
On the pages read, Neon suspends compute after 5 minutes but keeps the project, and TiDB Cloud, Cloudflare D1, Firebase and Convex print no inactivity rule. MongoDB Atlas pauses a free cluster after 30 days with zero connections, Upstash archives after a minimum of 30 days, Turso archives after 10 days, and Supabase and Nhost pause after 1 week. Checked 20 Oct 2026.
How long can a Supabase free project sit idle?
One week. Supabase pauses a Free project after 1 week of inactivity, and its pausing doc says a paused project can be restored for up to 1 year with Resume project in the dashboard. A few database requests a day are typically enough to avoid the pause, and Pro is never paused for inactivity.
Is there free Postgres, MySQL or MongoDB hosting?
Postgres: Neon, Supabase and Nhost each have a free plan. MySQL-compatible: TiDB Cloud Starter allows five free instances with 5 GiB of row storage each. MongoDB: Atlas M0 gives 512 MB. PlanetScale's pricing page lists no free plan, with single-node Postgres from $5 a month, and CockroachDB's lists a 30-day trial with $400 in credit instead. Checked 20 Oct 2026.
What happens when a free database fills up?
It depends on the vendor. Supabase puts a project over 500 MB into read-only mode, and Neon makes inserts, updates and deletes fail past 1 GB per project without deleting data. Turso blocks the databases once any limit is passed, TiDB Cloud refuses new connections at the quota, and Cloudflare D1 returns errors past its daily row limits.
How much does the first paid step cost for an 8 GB database?
Turso Developer is $5.99 a month billed monthly ($4.99 billed yearly), and Cloudflare D1 is $7.25 including the Workers Paid minimum. Supabase Pro and Nhost Pro start at $25 a month. Neon is $2.80 of storage plus $0.106 per CU-hour, and MongoDB Atlas starts 8 GB at Dedicated M10, printed as from $56.94 a month. Checked 20 Oct 2026.
Is there a free alternative to Firebase?
Firestore itself has a no-cost Spark plan with 1 GiB stored and daily quotas of 50K reads and 20K writes. Supabase (500 MB, 2 active projects), Nhost (1 GB, 1 project) and Convex (0.5 GB with hard caps) also have free plans; see Supabase alternatives and Firebase alternatives.
Cite this page: Toolradar, "Best Free Database Hosting in 2026: What Each Free Tier Does When You Stop Using It", updated October 2026, https://toolradar.com/guides/best-free-database-hosting
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