TiDB Serverless Pricing 2026

Plans, hidden costs, and cheaper alternatives compared

Is TiDB Serverless worth the price?

85/10

TiDB Serverless offers a very generous free tier with 25 GiB storage and 250M RUs, making it highly accessible for new projects and small applications.

The Essential tier's 'typical small prod: ≈$20 / day' suggests a reasonable entry point for production, while Dedicated starts at a significant $1376/month. This pricing is fair, offering options from free to enterprise-grade, catering well to a wide range of users from hobbyists to large enterprises.

Pricing Plans

Free Trial

TiDB Cloud Starter

$0/month

Fully-managed cloud DBaaS for applications with variable workloads
Available on AWS and Alibaba Cloud
25 GiB of row storage
25 GiB of column storage
250M Request Units (RUs) for free per month for each organization
$0.20 per additional GiB of storage
$0.10 per additional 1M RUs
Pay only for the storage and capacity you use
Set spend limits
Scale down to zero

TiDB Cloud Essential

Usage-based

Fully-managed cloud DBaaS for production workloads that need performance, security, and scale
Provisioned compute with autoscaling up to 100K Request Units
Point-in-time backup and up to 30-day retention
Encrypted in transit and at rest
99.99% availability with multi-zone protection
Usage-based pricing with predictable costs
Typical small prod: ≈$20 / day

TiDB Cloud Dedicated

Starts from $0.22/hr

Fully-managed cloud DBaaS for applications with predictable traffic and advanced requirements
Available on AWS, Google Cloud and Azure
4 vCPU to 32 vCPU per node available
PCI-DSS and SOC 2 Type II compliant
Starts from $1376 / month

TiDB Self-Managed

Pricing upon request

Self-managed database for applications with advanced configuration requirements
Runs on nearly any infrastructure or cloud provider
Deploy on infrastructure of choice, across multiple cloud platforms (public or private), on-prem data centers, or hybrid environments
Highly compatible with Kubernetes; integrations available with Apache Spark, Apache Kafka, Apache Flink, and others

TiDB Community

Free

The most advanced, open-source, distributed SQL database with core capabilities

Calculate your cost View full pricing

Hidden Costs & Gotchas

Overage fees for storage/RUs on Starter

Essential tier costs can vary widely

Dedicated tier has high starting cost

Which Plan Do You Need?

Developers and startups

Real-time data applications

MySQL-compatible workloads

How TiDB Serverless Compares to Competitors

Compared to AWS Aurora Serverless, TiDB Serverless's free tier is more generous with 25 GiB storage vs. Aurora's 20 GiB. For dedicated instances, TiDB's $1376/month starting price for its Dedicated tier is comparable to managed MySQL services like AWS RDS, which can also quickly scale to similar costs for high-performance instances.

TiDB Serverless Pricing FAQ

How much does TiDB Serverless cost?

TiDB Serverless starts at $1376/month on the TiDB Cloud Dedicated plan. A free plan is also available with limited features.

Does TiDB Serverless have a free plan?

Yes. TiDB Serverless offers a free plan called "TiDB Cloud Starter". It includes: Fully-managed cloud DBaaS for applications with variable workloads, Available on AWS and Alibaba Cloud, 25 GiB of row storage.

Does TiDB Serverless offer a free trial?

Yes, TiDB Serverless offers a free trial. No credit card is typically required to start the trial, though this may vary.

Is there a cheaper alternative to TiDB Serverless?

Yes. Popular alternatives to TiDB Serverless include SingleStore, StarRocks, MariaDB, ScyllaDB. Free alternatives include StarRocks, MariaDB, ScyllaDB. Compare them side-by-side on Toolradar.