The best free cloud database depends on what you need it to survive. For MongoDB, Atlas M0 is the clear choice, with 512MB of storage that stays free but pauses after 30 days of inactivity. For PostgreSQL, Neon and Supabase have the most useful free tiers, while Render’s free Postgres expires after 30 days and is only suitable for testing. PlanetScale no longer lists a free plan, and CockroachDB’s pricing page now shows a trial. All figures here come from the vendors’ own pages as of October 17, 2026, and none of those pages carried a date.
What “Free” Means for Databases
Free database tiers fail in one of four ways: they expire, they pause when idle, they cap storage, or they throttle performance. Pick based on which failure you can live with. A hobby project can handle a pause. A client demo cannot handle an expiry. And none of these plans offers the backups or support that a production system needs.
MongoDB Atlas M0
MongoDB’s documentation lists these limits for the free M0 cluster: 0.5GB of storage, 500 connections, 100 operations per second, one free cluster per project, 10GB in and 10GB out per rolling seven days, 100 databases and 500 collections, no backups, and no sharding. The cluster pauses “after 30 days of inactivity where there are zero connections.” Usage over the limits is throttled or queued. MongoDB’s pricing page confirms “Free forever” with 512MB of storage and shared resources. For learning and small apps, this is the most stable free offer in this list.
Neon (Serverless PostgreSQL)
Neon’s pricing page describes a free plan with 100 projects, 100 compute-unit hours per project, 1GB of storage per project (20GB across all projects), and 10 branches per project. Compute scales to zero and “suspends after 5 min, cannot be turned off.” If you exceed storage, writes are blocked, and if you run out of compute hours, compute suspends until the next billing period. Paid usage is billed at $0.106 per compute-unit hour on Launch and $0.222 on Scale, with storage at $0.35 per GB-month.
Neon and Databricks
Databricks announced it would acquire Neon on May 29, 2025. Open Source For You reported the news, and press coverage put the price at about $1 billion, though that article gives no price. Neon’s FAQ says the free plan remains and that Neon “will continue to bill users directly.” Neon’s pricing page now says “from Databricks,” which suggests the deal closed, but this research did not confirm a closing date.
Supabase
Supabase’s pricing page lists a free plan with a 500MB database per project, a “limit of 2 active projects,” and projects “paused after 1 week of inactivity.” It also includes 5GB of egress, 50,000 monthly active users, and 1GB of file storage. Pro starts at $25 a month. The one-week pause is the shortest idle window in this list, so a project you do not touch for a week will stop until you restart it.
Render Postgres
Render’s documentation says free Postgres databases “expire 30 days after creation,” then give you 14 days to upgrade before deletion. Storage is fixed at 1GB, with one active free Postgres per workspace. Free web services spin down after 15 minutes idle. This is fine for a short experiment, and a poor choice for anything that must persist.
Aiven Free PostgreSQL
Aiven’s page lists 1GB of storage, 1GB of RAM, one CPU, and a single node with no high availability. It says the “service powers off after a period of inactivity,” but the page did not show how long that is. The free MySQL and Valkey tiers were not reviewed.
Firebase Spark
Firebase’s pricing page lists a free tier for Firestore with 1 GiB stored, 10 GiB per month of egress, and daily limits of 20,000 writes, 50,000 reads, and 20,000 deletes. Realtime Database includes 100 simultaneous connections, 1GB stored, and 10GB per month of downloads. A Cloud SQL PostgreSQL option through Data Connect is a three-month no-cost trial, after which it is archived. Firestore is a document database, not PostgreSQL or MongoDB.
Options That Changed or Went Away
PlanetScale
PlanetScale’s pricing page shows no free tier. A Postgres single node starts at $5 a month, and a Metal option at $50. The page did not discuss earlier free plans, so this article makes no claim about when they ended.
CockroachDB
The pricing page shows a 30-day free trial with $400 in credit, with no card needed for Standard. After that, clusters are paused with a 30-day grace period. CockroachDB’s documentation, however, says the Basic plan includes “$15 of resource consumption (equivalent to 50 million Request Units and 10 GiB of storage) for free each month” for pay-as-you-go organizations with a card on file. The two pages disagree, so the fairest summary is a trial, plus a small monthly credit on Basic according to the docs.
Xata
Xata Cloud is paid, starting at $0.012 per hour plus $0.28 per GB per month. Only the open-source, self-hosted version is free.
Railway
Railway offers a 30-day trial with a $5 credit, then $1 a month. Limits after the trial are 1 vCPU, 0.5GB of RAM, one project, and one volume. The Hobby plan has a $5 minimum with a $5 usage credit.
Which One Should You Pick?
Learning MongoDB
Atlas M0. It stays free, and the 30-day idle pause is generous.
A Side Project With PostgreSQL
Neon, if you can accept compute that suspends after five minutes of idle time, or Supabase, if you also want authentication and storage and can accept the one-week pause.
A Short-Lived Test
Render’s free Postgres, understanding it expires in 30 days.
A Production App
None of these free tiers is a safe place for production data. Plan to pay.
Practical Tips
Export your data regularly, since free plans may lack backups. Keep connection strings in environment variables, not code. Set a calendar reminder for expiries. Run a small query on a schedule only if the provider’s terms allow it, since some plans pause on inactivity and this article did not review terms about keep-alive pings. Use the same database type in development and production so a move is easier. Read the vendor’s pricing page again before launching.
A Quick Comparison
| Service | Database | Storage | The catch |
|---|---|---|---|
| MongoDB Atlas M0 | MongoDB | 512MB | Pauses after 30 days of inactivity |
| Neon | PostgreSQL | 1GB per project | Suspends after 5 minutes idle |
| Supabase | PostgreSQL | 500MB | Pauses after 1 week of inactivity, 2 active projects |
| Render | PostgreSQL | 1GB | Expires after 30 days |
| Aiven | PostgreSQL | 1GB | Powers off when idle |
| Firebase Spark | Firestore | 1 GiB | Daily operation limits |
Matching the Database to the Job
The right pick depends on what you are building. A prototype that needs authentication, file storage, and a Postgres database in one place fits Supabase’s free plan, as long as you accept the two-project limit and the one-week pause. A project that needs branching, so each pull request gets its own database copy, fits Neon’s 10 branches per project. A document-shaped app that was written for MongoDB fits Atlas M0. A learning exercise you will throw away fits Render’s 30-day Postgres. A mobile app that already uses Firebase fits Spark’s Firestore limits, though Firestore is a different model from either PostgreSQL or MongoDB.
What Pausing Means in Practice
Pausing is not deletion, but it changes your experience. Neon suspends compute after five minutes of idle time, so the first query after a quiet period waits for compute to start. Supabase pauses a whole project after a week of inactivity. Atlas pauses an M0 cluster after 30 days with zero connections. The vendor pages reviewed do not give the wake-up times, so test them yourself before you demo anything to a client.
Backups and Exit Plans
Atlas M0 has no backups, and Render’s free Postgres has none either. That means your export script is your backup. For PostgreSQL, the standard approach is a regular dump to storage you control, and for MongoDB, an export of your collections. The research for this article did not review each vendor’s export tooling, so check the documentation. Whatever you choose, keep your schema in version control so a database can be rebuilt on a different provider, which is especially useful given how often free tiers change.
Free Tiers Compared by Failure Mode
Think of each plan by how it can fail you. Expiry is the Render risk: 30 days, then 14 days to upgrade, then deletion. Idle pausing is the Supabase, Neon, Atlas, and Aiven risk, with the idle windows differing from five minutes to a week to 30 days. Storage caps are universal: 512MB on Atlas, 500MB on Supabase, and 1GB on Neon, Render, and Aiven per database or project. Throttling is the Atlas risk, with 100 operations per second. And plan removal is the PlanetScale and CockroachDB risk, where the free offering disappeared or turned into a trial.
A Migration Mindset
Because terms change, design for portability. Use standard SQL and avoid vendor-specific features unless they are worth the lock-in. Store connection strings in environment variables. Keep migrations in version control. For MongoDB, avoid depending on Atlas-only features until you need them. If a provider changes its free plan, you want the move to be an afternoon of work, not a rewrite.
Security Basics on Free Plans
Free databases are still on the internet. Use strong, unique credentials and restrict network access if the provider offers it. The pages reviewed do not describe each provider’s security controls, so read the documentation before storing anything sensitive. Do not put real customer data in a database with no backups, and rotate credentials if they ever appear in a repository.
A Simple Evaluation Checklist
Before choosing, answer six questions. How much data will I store in the first six months, and does it fit the cap? Can my app tolerate a cold start when the database wakes? Do I need branching, authentication, or file storage along with the database? Will I need backups, and can I script them myself? Is the project commercial, and does the provider allow that on a free plan? What is my exit path if the plan changes? Writing the answers down turns a vague preference into a decision you can defend later.
Reading the Fine Print
Free tiers are marketing as much as product. Terms about acceptable use, commercial use, and resource limits can change, and the pricing pages reviewed carried no dates. Take a screenshot or save a copy of the limits when you sign up so you can see what changed. Note the difference between a monthly credit and a permanent free allowance: CockroachDB’s documentation describes a $15 monthly credit, while its pricing page shows a trial, and Railway’s free plan is a $1 monthly credit after a trial. Credits are not the same as unlimited free storage.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the best free PostgreSQL hosting?
Neon and Supabase have the most useful free tiers, with different trade-offs described above.
Does MongoDB Atlas have a free tier?
Yes. M0 offers 512MB for free with a 30-day inactivity pause.
Does PlanetScale have a free plan?
Its pricing page lists none. Postgres starts at $5 a month.
Does Render’s free database last forever?
No. It expires after 30 days, with a 14-day grace period.
Is a free database safe for production?
No. Most free plans lack backups and have usage limits.
References and Sources
MongoDB Docs, “Atlas M0 (Free Cluster) Limits”: https://www.mongodb.com/docs/atlas/reference/free-shared-limitations/
MongoDB, “Pricing”: https://www.mongodb.com/pricing
Neon, “Pricing”: https://neon.com/pricing
Neon, “Databricks FAQ”: https://neon.tech/databricks-faq
Open Source For You, “Databricks acquires Neon for AI”: https://www.opensourceforu.com/2025/05/databricks-acquires-neon-for-ai/
Supabase, “Pricing”: https://supabase.com/pricing
Render Docs, “Deploy for Free”: https://render.com/docs/free
Aiven, “Free PostgreSQL”: https://aiven.io/free-postgresql-database
Firebase, “Pricing”: https://firebase.google.com/pricing
PlanetScale, “Pricing”: https://planetscale.com/pricing
CockroachDB, “Pricing”: https://www.cockroachlabs.com/pricing/
CockroachDB Docs, “Plan a CockroachDB Basic Cluster”: https://docs.cockroachlabs.com/docs/cockroachcloud/plan-your-cluster-basic.md
Xata, “Pricing”: https://xata.io/pricing
Railway, “Pricing”: https://railway.com/pricing
About The Author
