Top PostgreSQL Database Free Tier Solutions

If you are looking for free solutions to host your Postgres database, you are in the right place! We did a bit of research for the best Postgres providers you can use for free. Everything works with Hasura Cloud too :)

These free tiers are great for side projects, MVPs, experimenting with Postgres, or learning Postgres. The providers were not added in any particular order so take your time to go through all of them!

Note that this list is in no particular order and of course not comprehensive. Do let us know in comments if you know any other free tier Postgres vendor.

Neon.tech

Neon is a company that provides fully managed serverless Postgres databases. Being serverless, it automatically scales your database based on the project workload and only charges you for the amount of resources used.

Since it's fully managed, Neon offers high availability without you having to worry about maintaining and scaling your database. It also enables you to create different branches of your database seamlessly. For instance, you can create test, staging, and dev branches.

Neon comes with a free tier that offers you the following:

10GB of storage
compute up to 1 vCPU and 256 MB
3 projects (databases)

Check the free tier here.

Try the Neon offering on Hasura by following the introduction guide.

Fly.io

Fly is a global distribution platform that allows you to deploy and run applications close to the users. You can also use Fly to deploy a Postgres database.

All Fly applications, including Postgres, rely on building blocks such as:

flyctl - the CLI that allows you to interact with the Fly apps from the terminal
private networking
health checks
volumes
logs and metrics

You can have a Postgres cluster up and running within minutes using the flyctl CLI. Fly automates the cluster creation process and has some extensions to simplify cluster management.

Scaling your Postgres cluster is effortless. You can scale vertically (add more VM resources) or horizontally (add more replicas) with a single flyctl command.

The free Postgres tier on Fly comes with:

up to 3 shared-cpu-1x 256MB VMs
3GB of storage
160GB outbound data transfer

Check the free tier here.

ElephantSQL

ElephantSQL is a service that offers PostgreSQL database hosting. It removes the tedious work by automating the setup and running of Postgres clusters. It also automates the tasks such as upgrades and backups.

All plans, including the free tier, come with 24/7 monitoring for availability and performance, automated backups, global distribution, and the ElephantSQL Web Browser for simple inspection and test queries.

The free tier on ElephantSQL comes with:

shared high-performance server
20MB of data
5 concurrent connections

Check the free tier here.

Amazon RDS

RDS stands for Relational Database Service and is Amazon's managed SQL database service. You can use Amazon RDS to deploy and run a Postgres database.

The Amazon RDS comes with automatic backups and point-in-time recovery. That allows you to restore the database instance to any point in time (up to 35 days) if anything bad happens to your database. It also updates the database automatically.

You have complete visibility into metrics such as CPU, disk, and memory utilization. Lastly, you can scale the cluster with a few clicks to meet your demands and requirements.

The Amazon RDS free tier includes the following:

20GB storage
extra 20GB storage for backups and snapshots
750 hours of DB usage

Check the free tier here.

Render.com

Render is a cloud company that offers fully managed PostgreSQL databases. The Postgres databases come with encryption by default, automated backups, and expandable storage.

With Render, you can have multiple databases in a single Postgre instance. Each database is backed up daily, and the backups are for at least 7 days.

The Render free tier includes the following:

1GB SSD storage
97 connections
shared CPU
256MB RAM

Check the free tier here.

Summary

This article presented 5 free solutions to host your Postgres database:

Neon
Fly
ElephantSQL
Amazon RDS
Render

These free tiers are better suited for hobby projects, MVPs, and learning/experimentations with PostgreSQL.

If you know other providers with free tiers, feel free to drop them in the comments. We're keen to learn about them!

Resources

In case you want to learn, experiment, or deepen your knowledge about PostgreSQL, we curated these resources for you:

Note: Heroku is deprecating their free Postgres tier on Nov 28, 2022. If you want to move from Heroku to one of these Postgres database vendors, check this article to learn how to migrate your Postgres database.