Database & Backend Platform · decision tool

Cheapest database for a side project

At side-project scale (a few thousand users, a GB or two) the winner is whichever free tier actually covers you — priced live from verified pages, with the first bill you'll hit when you outgrow it.

Prices verified 2026-07-15 against official pricing pages · fit weights are our estimates (see methodology) · share the URL to share your configuration

As of Jul 2026, with 1,000 monthly active users, 1 GB database size, 2 GB monthly egress, 1,000 db operations per user / month, 24 compute active hours / day, a $5 budget for this slot, Firebase (Firestore) ranks first for these inputs at 94% fit and a StackSays-estimated $0/month (Turso: 81% fit, $0/month). Fit weights are our estimates; prices trace to official pages. Change any input below and the verdict recomputes.

Your situation

The verdict updates as you move these.

Monthly active userspeople actually hitting the app each monthDatabase size (GB)rows + indexes; a typical early SaaS is 1–10GBMonthly egress (GB)data served out of the DB/API to clientsDB operations per user / month≈100 light · 1,000 normal · 10,000 heavy — only per-operation DBs (Firestore) bill thisCompute active hours / daybills ONLY serverless-compute DBs (Neon); always-on (Supabase/PlanetScale/Mongo) and per-operation (Firestore/Turso) DBs ignore itBudget for this slot ($/mo)what you'd accept paying for the database layerTeam size1 = solo; bundled platforms save glue time for small teams

Clear pick for your inputs

Firebase (Firestore)fit 94% · est $0/mo

Google's document database with realtime sync and a huge mobile ecosystem

vs Turso: fit 94% against 81%, est $0 against $0 per month

Firebase (Firestore)fit 94%

$0/mo

Tursofit 81%

$0/mo

Supabasefit 48%

$25.00/mo

MongoDB Atlasfit 42%

$8.00–$30.00/mo

Neonfit 42%

$19.68/mo

Convexfit 32%

$25.22/mo

PlanetScalefit 31%

$15.00+/mo

The decision, in plain words

For a solo builder at 1,000 monthly active users and a $5.00/mo budget for the database slot, Firebase (Firestore) leads at 94% fit and $0/mo. The two rules doing the work: budget fit (Runs free at your usage — $0 vs your $5/mo budget); batteries included (Bundles auth, file storage, realtime — fewer services to glue at team size 1).

The gap to Turso (81% fit) is wide at these inputs — you'd need to change your requirements, not your taste, to flip it.

Honest weak spot of the pick: proprietary data model — leaving means rewriting the data layer.

Generated from the calculation above — every number traces to the sourced data; nothing here is written by an AI making things up.

Why Firebase (Firestore) scores 94%

Budget fit (weight 30, our estimate) — Runs free at your usage — $0 vs your $5/mo budget+30

Batteries included (weight 12, our estimate) — Bundles auth, file storage, realtime — fewer services to glue at team size 1+12

Exit cost (weight 4, our estimate) — Proprietary data model — leaving means rewriting the data layer-4

Ecosystem maturity (weight 8, our estimate) — established — our estimate from ecosystem age, docs and hiring pool+8

Free-tier runway (weight 10, our estimate) — Your usage fits the free tier today (1GiB Firestore, 50K reads / 20K writes / 20K deletes per day, 50K auth MAU, 10GiB egress)+10

Total (lines sum exactly)56

Possible range −64…+64 (sum of active rule weights) · fit % = (total + max) / (2 × max)(56 + 64) / 128 = 94%

How the $0/mo estimate is calculated

Note — Read/write caps shown as monthly equivalents of the DAILY quotas (50K×30.4, 20K×30.4) — a single heavy day can exceed the daily cap even if the month fits$0

Monthly total (lines sum exactly)$0

What could change this verdict

Cost risk

Estimated now (StackSays estimate, not your final bill)$0/mo · Spark (free)

Free-tier statusOn the free tier (1GiB Firestore, 50K reads / 20K writes / 20K deletes per day, 50K auth MAU, 10GiB egress)

Next known billing thresholdSpark (free) caps at 1.52M document reads — beyond that you change plans

Official prices verified 2026-07-15; calculation is deterministic code over those prices.

At a glance

Tool	Free tier	Paid entry	Verified
Supabase	500MB database, 50K MAU, 1GB file storage, 5GB egress, 2 projects	Pro plan $25/mo	2026-07-15
Neon	0.5GB storage + 100 compute-hours per project, 5GB egress, 60K auth MAU	Pay-as-you-go — Compute billed per CU-hour ($0.106); suspended compute costs $0; storage $0.35/GB-month	2026-07-15
Firebase (Firestore)	1GiB Firestore, 50K reads / 20K writes / 20K deletes per day, 50K auth MAU, 10GiB egress	Pay-as-you-go — Firestore nam5 rates: $0.06/100K reads, $0.18/100K writes, $0.18/GiB storage; deletes ($0.02/100K) not modeled. Ops derived from your per-user activity input (80/20 read/write split, our estimate)	2026-07-15
Convex	1M function calls, 0.5GB database, 1GB file storage, 1GB egress	Professional $25/mo	2026-07-15
Turso	100 databases, 5GB storage, 500M rows read / 10M rows written per month	Developer plan $4.99/mo	2026-07-15
PlanetScale	No free tier	PS-5 HA cluster $15/mo	2026-07-15
MongoDB Atlas	512MB storage, shared CPU/RAM, ~100 ops/sec cap	Flex tier $8/mo	2026-07-15

Where did you land?anonymous, one click

Data sources

Tool	Source	Verified
Supabase	Supabase pricing page	2026-07-15
Neon	Neon pricing page	2026-07-15
Firebase (Firestore)	Firebase pricing page	2026-07-15
Convex	Convex pricing page	2026-07-15
Turso	Turso pricing page	2026-07-15
PlanetScale	PlanetScale pricing page	2026-07-15
MongoDB Atlas	MongoDB Atlas pricing page	2026-07-15

A monitor re-checks these pages for changes; when a vendor moves a price, the date updates and every verdict recomputes.

Keep deciding