Databases — enterprise stack.
For each requirement below, pick the option that fits your build — recommended first, then free and cheaper alternatives — or skip what your project doesn't need. Tap the info icon next to any requirement to see why it matters.
Managed PostgreSQL Hosting (Primary OLTP)
Where your code actually runs and serves requests. Picking the right host affects speed, scaling, and how much ops work you do.Pricing & free-tier limitsRDS db.t3.micro $0.017/hr ~$12.50/mo + gp3 $0.115/GB-mo storage, $0.095/GB-mo backup, $0.021/hr snapshot. Neon Free: 0.5GB storage, 100 CU-hrs/mo, 1 branch, 100hr compute. Neon Pro $19/mo: 10GB incl, $0.45/GB over, $0.12/CU-hr over. Aurora $0.12/ACU-hr ~$87.6/ACU/mo min 0.5 ACU $43.8/mo + $0.10/GB-mo, $0.021/GB-mo backup. Free Tier: Neon 0.5GB forever, RDS 750hr t2/t3 12mo legacy.
Serverless Branching Postgres (Neon-style)
Persistent storage for your app’s data — users, products, orders. The single most important architectural decision for most projects.Pricing & free-tier limitsNeon Free: 0.5GB, 1 project, 10 branches, 100 CU-hrs, 3GB data transfer. Launch $19/mo: 10GB, 10 projects, 1000 CU-hrs incl, $0.45/GB over, $0.14/CU-hr, $0.20 per million rows read over. Scale $69/mo: 50GB, 5000 CU-hrs, $0.35/GB over. Autosuspend 5min free.
Postgres BaaS Infrastructure (Supabase-style)
Persistent storage for your app’s data — users, products, orders. The single most important architectural decision for most projects.Pricing & free-tier limitsSupabase Free: 500MB DB, 1GB file storage, 50k MAU, 2GB BW, 500k Edge Function invocations. Pro $25/mo: 8GB DB incl, $0.125/GB over, $0.021/GB file storage, $0.09/GB BW over, 7-day PITR. $0.015/100k auth overages. Compute $10 per 1M Edge Function GB-s.
MySQL-Compatible Serverless / Vitess (PlanetScale-style)
Persistent storage for your app’s data — users, products, orders. The single most important architectural decision for most projects.Pricing & free-tier limitsPlanetScale Free (Hobby): 5GB storage, 1B row reads/mo, 10M row writes/mo, 1 branch. Scaler Pro $29/mo: 10GB incl, $1.50/GB over, 100GB BW incl $0.12/GB over, $1.50 per 100M row reads over. Enterprise $199/mo: 50GB, SOC2. TiDB Free 5GB, $0.15/GB over, $0.10/M RCU.
Managed MySQL / Aurora MySQL Compatible
Persistent storage for your app’s data — users, products, orders. The single most important architectural decision for most projects.Pricing & free-tier limitsRDS MySQL db.t3.micro $0.017/hr ~$12.5/mo, storage $0.115/GB-mo. DO MySQL $15/mo 1GB RAM 10GB storage, $0.15/GB over. Aurora MySQL $0.12/ACU-hr (~$87.6/mo/ACU) 0.5-128 ACU + $0.10/GB-mo + $0.021/GB-mo backup. Free Tier RDS 750hr 12mo.
Managed NoSQL Document DB (MongoDB Atlas)
A piece of your stack you may or may not need, depending on scope. Pick the option that fits — or skip it if your project doesn’t require this capability yet.Pricing & free-tier limitsM0 Free: 512MB storage, shared RAM, 3 nodes replica, 500 conn max. M10 $57/mo: 10GB storage incl, 2GB RAM, $0.30/GB-mo storage over, $0.60/M reads over. M30 $0.54/hr ~$388/mo: 40GB incl, $0.25/GB over, backups $0.14/GB-mo. Data transfer $0.12/GB over 10GB.
Managed Key-Value Cache (Redis)
Stores frequent results in fast memory so you serve less from the database. Big lever for speed and cost.Pricing & free-tier limitsRedis Cloud Free: 30MB, 30 conns, 200 ops/sec. Essentials $5/mo: 250MB $0.20/GB-hour over, $0.40/100k commands over. Pro 1GB $70/mo: $0.35/GB over, 99.99% SLA, VPC. Upstash Free 10k cmds/day, Pro Pay-as-you-go $0.20/100k cmds.
Serverless Redis / Edge Cache (Upstash-style)
Where you keep files users upload or you serve — images, videos, documents — and how fast they reach visitors around the world.Pricing & free-tier limitsUpstash Free: 10k commands/day, 256MB max DB, 20 req/sec, 1GB BW/mo. PayGo $0.20/100k commands, $0.20/GB storage-mo, $0.15/GB BW. Provisioned $10/mo 1GB + 100k cmds/day incl. Dragonfly Free 1GB, $8/mo 5GB. Eviction + TLS included.
Managed Wide-Column / Key-Value (DynamoDB)
A piece of your stack you may or may not need, depending on scope. Pick the option that fits — or skip it if your project doesn’t require this capability yet.Pricing & free-tier limitsFree: 25GB storage forever, 25 WCU + 25 RCU (or 2.5M reads/1M writes on-demand). On-demand: $1.25 per M WCU, $0.25 per M RCU, storage $0.25/GB-mo, $0.20/GB backup, PITR $0.20/GB-mo + $0.20/GB incremental. Provisioned $0.00065/WCU-hr $0.00013/RCU-hr. DAX $0.24/hr t3.small.
Graph Database Managed (Neo4j Aura)
Persistent storage for your app’s data — users, products, orders. The single most important architectural decision for most projects.Pricing & free-tier limitsAura Free: 200k nodes + 400k rels, 1GB storage, 1 DB, community. Pro $65/mo: 1M nodes, 2M rels, 4GB RAM, 16GB storage incl, $0.05/1000 nodes over, $0.35/GB over, $0.15/GB BW. Aura Enterprise $0.34/hr ~$250/mo per 8GB, VPC peering. Free tier forever.
Managed Graph DB AWS-Native (Neptune)
A piece of your stack you may or may not need, depending on scope. Pick the option that fits — or skip it if your project doesn’t require this capability yet.Pricing & free-tier limitsNeptune db.r5.large $0.348/hr ~$253/mo, db.r6g.large $0.308/hr ~$224/mo. Serverless min 1 NCU $0.095/hr ~$69/mo, max 128 NCU, storage $0.10/GB-mo, I/O $0.20/M, backup $0.021/GB-mo. Neptune Analytics $0.55/hr per 2 NCU. No perpetual free, only 90-day trial credit.
Time-Series DB Managed (InfluxDB Cloud)
A piece of your stack you may or may not need, depending on scope. Pick the option that fits — or skip it if your project doesn’t require this capability yet.Pricing & free-tier limitsFree: 30GB ingest/month, 300MB storage, 30 day retention, 3k queries/mo. PayGo: $0.002/MB ingested ($2/GB), $0.002/MB queried, $0.01/GB-hr storage ($0.24/GB-day). Dedicated $0.24/hr ~$175/mo per 8GB node + $0.15/GB-mo storage, $0.01 per M query units over. Edge $199/mo.
Time-Series Postgres Extension (TimescaleDB)
Persistent storage for your app’s data — users, products, orders. The single most important architectural decision for most projects.Pricing & free-tier limitsFree: 500MB storage, 75 compute hours, 1 DB, 7-day backups. Pro $25/mo: 2 vCPU 8GB RAM, 100GB storage incl $0.125/GB over, $0.09/GB BW over, $0.20/1000 compute hours over incl 2500. Compression 90% saving counted. High availability +50% cost, fork $0.30/hr.
Serverless Time-Series (Timestream)
A piece of your stack you may or may not need, depending on scope. Pick the option that fits — or skip it if your project doesn’t require this capability yet.Pricing & free-tier limitsTimestream LiveAnalytics: writes $0.50/M records $0.036/GB-mo magnetic, query $0.01/GB scanned. Free: 100GB writes + 50GB scanned first month. Timestream for InfluxDB db.r6g.large $0.40/hr ~$292/mo, db.m6g.large $0.24/hr ~$175/mo, storage $0.10/GB-mo, backup $0.021/GB-mo. Single AZ -20%.
Distributed SQL (CockroachDB)
Persistent storage for your app’s data — users, products, orders. The single most important architectural decision for most projects.Pricing & free-tier limitsFree: 10GB storage, 50M RUs/mo, 10M RUs = ~$3.50, 1 cluster. Standard $50/mo base + $0.50/GB-mo storage over 10GB + $0.25/M RUs over incl 50M, $0.15/GB transfer. Dedicated $0.60/hr per 4vCPU ~$432/mo + $0.30/GB-mo. Multi-region +50%. Backup $0.10/GB-mo.
Global Distributed RDBMS (Spanner)
Runs in multiple regions for speed and resilience. Enterprise-grade reliability and the hardest to retrofit.Pricing & free-tier limitsSpanner: $0.90/node-hr ~$657/mo per node (1000 PU), $0.30/GB-mo storage, $0.01/GB backup, $0.60/M reads $2.00/M writes, $0.20/GB egress. Emulator free self-host. Autoscaler min 100 PU = $0.09/hr $65.7/mo + $0.30/GB-mo. Free trial 90d 1 node 10GB.
Managed Search / Secondary Index (OpenSearch/Elasticsearch)
Lets users find things fast. A slow or missing search directly costs engagement and conversions.Pricing & free-tier limitsOpenSearch t3.small $0.036/hr ~$26/mo, storage $0.135/GB-mo, Serverless 2 OCU min $0.24/hr ~$175/mo + $0.10/GB-mo. Elastic Cloud 2GB $95/mo incl 60GB storage $0.25/GB over $0.18/GB transfer. Typesense Free 500MB, $29/mo 2GB. Free tier: OpenSearch 750hr 6mo.
Managed Columnar / Analytical DB (ClickHouse)
A piece of your stack you may or may not need, depending on scope. Pick the option that fits — or skip it if your project doesn’t require this capability yet.Pricing & free-tier limitsFree: 30GB storage, 300 compute credits/mo (100 credits = $5), 1 service, 30d retention. PayGo: $0.12/GB-mo storage, $0.045/credit compute (1 credit 1 vCPU-hr), min $0.20/hr per service $146/mo equiv. Pro $300/mo base 24GB RAM 180GB storage $0.10/GB over, $0.12/GB backup.
Database Backup & PITR Storage
Persistent storage for your app’s data — users, products, orders. The single most important architectural decision for most projects.Pricing & free-tier limitsRDS snapshot $0.095/GB-mo, backup storage free = DB size, PITR $0.095/GB-mo. S3 Standard $0.023/GB-mo, Glacier Deep $0.00099/GB-mo. Atlas Continuous backup $0.14/GB-mo + $0.20/M oplog. Neon PITR 7d Pro $5/mo extra per branch $0.10/GB-mo history. Cross-region $0.02/GB transfer.
Database Monitoring & Query Performance (pganalyze/Datadog)
Persistent storage for your app’s data — users, products, orders. The single most important architectural decision for most projects.Pricing & free-tier limitspganalyze Free 1 server, 1d retention. Pro $199/mo 10 servers 90d retention, Enterprise $899/mo 40 servers. Datadog DB Monitoring $15/host/mo + APM $36/host/mo + $1.70 per 1k normalized queries over 10k, log incl. $0.10/GB ingestion. Free: Datadog 14d trial 10 hosts.
Connection Pooling / Proxy Infrastructure
A piece of your stack you may or may not need, depending on scope. Pick the option that fits — or skip it if your project doesn’t require this capability yet.Pricing & free-tier limitsRDS Proxy $0.021/hr per vCPU of underlying DB ~$0.021/hr per $0.017 hr db = $15.1/mo per vCPU + $0.015/GB data transfer. PgBouncer Fargate Spot $0.012/vCPU-hr ~$8.6/mo per 1vCPU task, ALB $0.0225/hr $16.2/mo. Supabase Pooler Free up to 200 conn, Neon Pooler 10k conn free. Odyssey $0.
Database Migration & Replication Tooling
Persistent storage for your app’s data — users, products, orders. The single most important architectural decision for most projects.Pricing & free-tier limitsDMS dms.t3.medium $0.068/hr ~$49.7/mo, dms.c5.large $0.36/hr ~$262/mo, storage $0.115/GB-mo, $0.09/GB transfer. Debezium MSK: m5.large $0.21/hr ~$153/mo broker + $0.10/GB storage. Airbyte Free 1M rows/mo, $10/credit 100k rows over, Cloud $2.50/credit. Fivetran $120/mo base + $0.75/M rows.
Change Data Capture (CDC) Platform
A piece of your stack you may or may not need, depending on scope. Pick the option that fits — or skip it if your project doesn’t require this capability yet.Pricing & free-tier limitsMSK Serverless $0.30 per GB-ingested $0.30 per GB-queried, $0.012/partition-hr ~$8.6/part/mo, storage $0.10/GB-mo, free 100GB/mo. Upstash Kafka Free 10k msgs/day, $0.60/M msgs over. Confluent Start $250/mo 10 CKU $0.15/GB transfer. Estuary Free 10GB/mo, $0.50/GB over.
Database Branching / Preview Environments
Persistent storage for your app’s data — users, products, orders. The single most important architectural decision for most projects.Pricing & free-tier limitsNeon Free 10 branches, Pro unlimited $0.10/branch-hr active + storage $0.35/GB-mo per branch copy-on-write (only diff). PlanetScale Free 1 prod branch + 1 dev branch, Scaler $29/mo 5 branches incl $5/branch over. Supabase branching $20/mo add-on 5 branches $0.12/GB per branch over.
Multi-region Database Replication
Persistent storage for your app’s data — users, products, orders. The single most important architectural decision for most projects.Pricing & free-tier limitsAurora Global: primary $0.12/ACU-hr + secondary $0.12/ACU-hr per region, storage $0.10/GB-mo per region + $0.20/GB cross-region replication. Turso Free 500 dbs 9GB storage 500M row reads, $29/mo Scale 24GB $0.15/GB over. DynamoDB Global Tables $1.875/M replicated WCUs, 25GB free, storage x regions.
Database Secrets & Credential Rotation
Persistent storage for your app’s data — users, products, orders. The single most important architectural decision for most projects.Pricing & free-tier limitsSecrets Manager $0.40/secret/mo + $0.05/10k API calls, rotation Lambda $0.20/M requests. Free 30d for RDS secrets. Vault HCP $0.03/hr ~$22/mo + $0.50/secret/mo. SOPS self-host $0 + S3 KMS $1/key/mo + $0.03/10k requests. IAM Auth no cost, token 15min TTL.
Database Proxy / Serverless Data API
Persistent storage for your app’s data — users, products, orders. The single most important architectural decision for most projects.Pricing & free-tier limitsAurora Data API $0.20/M requests + base Aurora cost, Data API v2 $0.12/M RDB capacity + requests. Neon HTTP API free 10k req/day, $0.15/M over. Hasura Cloud Free 1M req/mo, Pro $99/mo 10M req incl $0.15/M over. PostgREST Fargate Spot $0.01/hr ~$7.3/mo + ALB $16.2/mo.
In-Memory Acceleration Layer (ElastiCache / DAX)
A piece of your stack you may or may not need, depending on scope. Pick the option that fits — or skip it if your project doesn’t require this capability yet.Pricing & free-tier limitsElastiCache Serverless $0.125/GB-hr data stored ~ $0.125*730 = $91.25/GB-mo + $0.12/M ECPUs (3KB). On-demand cache.t3.micro $0.017/hr $12.4/mo. DAX t3.small $0.24/hr ~$175/mo, t3.medium $0.48/hr ~$350/mo. Free trial 30d t3.micro cache. Upstash free counters.
Vector Database for AI Workloads
Persistent storage for your app’s data — users, products, orders. The single most important architectural decision for most projects.Pricing & free-tier limitsPinecone Free: 100k vectors, 1 pod, 5M reads/mo. Starter $70/mo: 2M vectors, 25GB, $0.24/GB-mo storage, $4.00/1M reads, $10/1M writes. Qdrant Free 1GB, $25/mo 5GB $0.20/GB over. pgvector extension $0 add-on RDS storage $0.115/GB-mo, Neon vectors free within 0.5GB.
Database Auditing & Compliance Logging
Persistent storage for your app’s data — users, products, orders. The single most important architectural decision for most projects.Pricing & free-tier limitsCloudTrail first copy free, additional $2.00/100k mgmt events, $0.50/100k data events up to $2.40/GB-mo S3 logs. pgAudit 0 licence cost, storage $0.023/GB-mo. Atlas Auditing $0 included in M10+ $57/mo base. Datadog compliance $0.10/GB ingestion $1.70/M audit logs. Satori $2000/mo 10 DBs.
Automated Failover & High Availability Orchestration
Scheduling, availability, and booking logic. Core to any appointment or reservation product.Pricing & free-tier limitsRDS Multi-AZ doubles instance cost: db.t3.micro $0.017=> $0.034/hr ~$25/mo. Aurora HA replica $0.12/ACU-hr per instance 2x min $87.6/mo, Global DB secondary $0.12/ACU-hr. Patroni self-host Fargate $0.04/hr ~$29/mo + Route53 health $0.50/check/mo. Free tier: Patroni free, Multi-AZ 750hr trial.
Database Sharding / Vitess Infrastructure
Persistent storage for your app’s data — users, products, orders. The single most important architectural decision for most projects.Pricing & free-tier limitsVitess OSS $0 license, needs k8s 3x vTGate $0.10/hr ~$219/mo on EKS $0.10/hr cluster $72/mo. Citus Community free on single node. Citus Cloud Pro $500/mo 4 vCPU 32GB incl 500GB $0.15/GB over. PlanetScale Enterprise $399/mo per keyspace 100GB $1.50/GB over, sharding included, SOC2, $0.05/M routed queries over.
Write-Ahead Log / Storage Separation Architecture
Where you keep files users upload or you serve — images, videos, documents — and how fast they reach visitors around the world.Pricing & free-tier limitsAurora I/O Optimized storage $0.10/GB-mo + $0.20/M I/O, I/O Optimized $0.20/GB-mo no I/O charge. Neon pageserver storage $0.35/GB-mo over, WAL $0.10/GB-mo history. WAL-G S3 $0.023/GB-mo + $0.005/1k PUT. WarpStream Free 30GB, $0.10/GB ingested $0.01/GB hr stored. Free: 10GB WAL included Aurora.
Database Firewall / SQL Filtering
Persistent storage for your app’s data — users, products, orders. The single most important architectural decision for most projects.Pricing & free-tier limitsAWS WAF $5/rule/mo + $1/M requests $0.60/M logging $0.30/GB-mo logs storage. GreenSQL Community free, Pro $1200/yr per DB ~$100/mo. DataSunrise $3000/mo 10 DBs. Cloudflare Free WAF 1 rule, Pro $20/mo 20 rules $0.50/M over. Imperva $2500/mo starter 5 DBs.
Cross-Cloud Database Replication
Persistent storage for your app’s data — users, products, orders. The single most important architectural decision for most projects.Pricing & free-tier limitsFivetran $120/mo base + $0.75/M rows 5M incl + $0.20/GB transfer cross-cloud. Airbyte OSS free self-host $0.04/hr ~$29/mo Fargate + S3, Cloud $2.50/credit 100k rows + $0.15/GB egress. Litestream S3 replication $0 + $0.023/GB-mo storage. Qlik Replicate $0.40/hr ~$292/mo license + instance.
Database Cost / Capacity Autoscaling Controller
Persistent storage for your app’s data — users, products, orders. The single most important architectural decision for most projects.Pricing & free-tier limitsAurora Serverless v2 autoscale included $0.12/ACU-hr only used. Neon autoscale free incl 100 CU-hrs free tier, Scale $69/mo autosuspend free. Vantage Free trial 14d, $2000/mo 1% of spend 100 hosts. CAST AI $0.10/cpu-hr saved ~$469/mo typical 4 vCPU cluster ~15% saving. Lambda autoscaler $0.20/M + CW $0.30/metric/mo.
Disaster Recovery & Cross-Region Backup Vault
Copies of your data so a bug, hack, or outage doesn’t become permanent loss. Cheap insurance every serious project needs.Pricing & free-tier limitsAWS Backup Vault storage $0.095/GB-mo warm $0.012/GB-mo cold Glacier, cross-region copy $0.02/GB transfer. Druva $0.35/GB-mo 100GB min $35/mo + $0.15/GB restore. Veeam Cloud $0.30/GB-mo + $0.50/hr instance $365/mo. Free: RDS automated backups within size free, cross-region first 10GB free.
Database Schema Registry & Governance
Persistent storage for your app’s data — users, products, orders. The single most important architectural decision for most projects.Pricing & free-tier limitsAtlas OSS free, Atlas Cloud Free 1 project unlimited schemas, Team $39/mo per user 10 dbs $0.20/GB audit log. Bytebase Community free 10 instances, Team $29/mo per user 20 instances + $100/mo 100 instances. Glue Schema Registry $1/M schema versions first 1M free, $0.015/GB transfer. Confluent SR $0 incl in $250/mo base.
How this enterprise databases checklist works.
Each requirement below is something a enterprise databases build typically needs. Pick one of the four researched options — recommended, free, cheaper or paid — add your own with "Other", or skip the requirement if your project doesn't need it. Nothing is mandatory; the plan on the right tracks what you've decided so nothing gets forgotten.
Your picks are saved in this browser automatically, so you can come back anytime. Options are researched per build level and refreshed as vendors change their plans — always verify details on the provider's page before committing.