What does a managed Postgres database really cost?
Eleven managed Postgres services priced at three sizes, from a hobby database to one with real traffic, running all month on a single node, with the storage and any plan fee you must pay included. London where it's offered. Pick a size.
Last checked: 9 Nov 2026 · every price read off the vendor's own page · always on, 730 hours a month · no affiliate links
Jump to: the short answer · how the sizes are priced
The short answer
Cheapest at each size, before VAT. A hobby database (about 1 GB of RAM, 10 GB) is $9 a month on Heroku's Essential-1 (about £6.72), but Heroku doesn't say how much memory it has; the cheapest with a stated 1 GB are DigitalOcean at $15.15 (about £11.32) and AWS RDS at $15.80 (about £11.80). Small production (2 vCPU, 4 GB, 50 GB): Heroku Standard-0 at $50 (about £37.36), then Railway at about $51.50 on its usage estimate and AWS RDS at $59.21 on burstable CPUs. Growing (4 vCPU, 16 GB, 200 GB): Railway at about $198 (estimate), then AWS RDS at $238.30 and Supabase at $249.
DigitalOcean changed its database plans on 15 October 2026. Accounts that have never created a database (every account from 30 November) can only create Standard Edition clusters up to 4 GiB, with no standby nodes. A 16 GB database, or any high availability, now means Advanced Edition, from $135.75 a month: the growing size is $283 there, while the 16 GiB Standard plans still shown on the pricing page ($198.55 and $244.35) can't be bought by new customers.
Storage is a separate line almost everywhere, and some vendors set a minimum. Neon charges $0.35 per GB a month, Render $0.30, Google Cloud SQL $0.204 in London, Railway $0.15, AWS RDS $0.133 and Supabase $0.125 after its included 8 GB. AWS's gp3 storage starts at 20 GiB, Azure's Burstable servers can't go below a 32 GiB disk, and Aiven's cheaper plans are fixed at 8 GB, so its cheapest plan that holds 10 GB is Startup-4 at $75.
Some platforms charge before the database. Supabase's $25 Pro plan is needed for a database that doesn't pause (it includes $10 of compute credit); Railway's $20 Pro minimum is needed because Hobby volumes stop at 5 GB; Render's workspace is free for one person, but a team pays $25 a month, which makes its figures $47, $115 and $285. Neon, AWS, Google Cloud, DigitalOcean, Aiven and Heroku charge no platform fee.
High availability, a standby that takes over if the database fails, doubles the bill or more. At the small size: AWS RDS $59.21 becomes $119.15, Render $90 becomes $180, Google Cloud SQL $107.14 becomes $214.14, Crunchy Bridge $180 becomes $360, Aiven $75 becomes $180 and Heroku $50 becomes $200. For a new DigitalOcean account it means Advanced Edition at $271.50, and Azure needs a General Purpose server at $314.06. Neon sells no standby because its storage is already multi-AZ; Supabase prices none below Enterprise.
Free tiers stop. Supabase pauses a free project after a week without activity, Render deletes a free database 30 days after it's created, Neon suspends a free project's compute once its 100 CU-hours a month run out (an always-on 0.25 CU database needs about 182.5), and Aiven may shut down free services left unused.
The cheapest instances often have burstable CPUs. All three AWS figures are T4g instances, which charge $0.075 per vCPU-hour for CPU above their baseline; AWS's fixed-performance db.m6g.large (2 vCPU, 8 GiB) is $134.32 a month before storage. Azure's B-series is burstable, Crunchy Bridge's Hobby plans slow down when their CPU credits run out, and Google's shared-core machines are outside its SLA.
London costs more than the US price tables. Google Cloud SQL's vCPU is $0.0496 an hour in London against $0.0413 in Iowa, about 20% more; AWS's db.t4g.micro is $0.018 against $0.016 in Ohio; Crunchy Bridge's Standard-8 is $175 in London against the $140 in the US East table on its pricing page. These figures use London where it's offered; Railway, Render and Heroku are priced in their European regions.
Small plans allow few connections: Heroku Essential 20, DigitalOcean's 1 GiB plan 22, Supabase Micro 60 direct (200 pooled) and Render 100 up to its 4 GB plans. Neon allows up to 10,000 pooled connections through its built-in PgBouncer.
Supabase connects over IPv6 by default. If your app host only speaks IPv4, you go through its shared pooler or pay $4 a month for an IPv4 address. Point-in-time recovery there is $100 a month per 7 days of retention.
Old Postgres versions cost extra on the big clouds. Extended support after a version's end of life adds $0.118 per vCPU-hour on AWS RDS and $0.084 on Google Cloud SQL in London: on 2 vCPUs, about $172 and $123 a month, more than the small instance itself.
The database is usually the bigger bill. The app server itself starts at $2.19 a month (256 MB) on the cheapest paid host compared there; the cheapest always-on database here is $9, and a small production one $50.
When the cheapest is not the answer
- Your database is idle most of the day. Every figure here is always on. Neon's compute can scale to zero after 5 minutes idle and bills only the hours it runs: its own "typical" Launch figure is $15 a month.
- You want one price with no extra lines. Aiven's price covers the VM, storage, backups and all networking, and Heroku's Classic and Essential plans include their storage; DigitalOcean doesn't count database traffic against your bandwidth.
- You need failover you can rely on. Railway's high availability is a cluster of at least three nodes billed as usage, and Railway publishes no uptime SLA; Heroku's Essential plans expect 99.5% uptime a month with unannounced maintenance; Crunchy Bridge's Hobby plans have no SLA.
- Your data has to stay in the UK. Railway (Amsterdam), Render (Frankfurt) and Heroku (its Europe region) have no London option. Aiven's London price depends on the cloud underneath: Startup-4 is $75 on DigitalOcean or UpCloud, $110 on AWS and $125 on Azure.
Who made this page
An AI agent read each vendor's pricing pages and docs in a real browser set to UK English, set the region menus to London (or the vendor's European region) with the pages' own controls, used Crunchy Bridge's own price calculator, and copied the sentence behind every figure; code checked each sentence was really on the page before it could be used. Hourly prices are multiplied by 730 hours.
There are no affiliate links on this page and nothing on it earns a commission.
How the numbers are worked out
monthly cost = the cheapest single-node setup with at least that much CPU, RAM and storage, running all month (730 hours), + storage + any fee you must pay first
- Hobby, about 1 GB of RAM and 10 GB: a side project, an MVP or an internal tool, always on so the first request doesn't wait for it to wake
- Small, 2 vCPU, 4 GB, 50 GB: a live product with paying users, background jobs and a few dozen connections
- Growing, 4 vCPU, 16 GB, 200 GB: a product with real traction, reporting next to app traffic and several services sharing one database
A vendor with no exact match is priced at its next plan up, and the line says "more than asked". Where a vendor doesn't state a vCPU count, the size is matched on what it does state: Neon on RAM; Supabase's small figure is its cheapest compute with a stated 2 vCPUs; Heroku doesn't publish Essential-1's memory. Railway bills only the RAM and CPU a database uses, so its figures are estimates on the assumption in each line. High availability (a standby) is not in the figures; each note gives its price. London where offered; Railway in Amsterdam, Render in Frankfurt, Heroku in its Europe region.
VAT. Every vendor prices in US dollars, before VAT. Only AWS ("exclusive of applicable taxes and duties, including VAT") and Supabase (VAT "based on your billing address") say so on the pages read.
| Service | Hobby: 1 GB RAM, 10 GB | Small: 2 vCPU, 4 GB RAM, 50 GB | Growing: 4 vCPU, 16 GB RAM, 200 GB |
|---|---|---|---|
| Neonbilled by use, and these figures keep the compute on all month; a database that scales to zero when idle costs less (Neon's own 'typical' Launch figure is $15 a month). History kept for instant restore is extra, $0.20 per GB-month. HA: no standby product, because its storage is already multi-AZ. London | £17.07Launch plan, 0.25 CU (1 GB RAM), always on: 182.5 CU-hours × $0.106 = $19.35 + 10 GB × $0.35 = $3.50; total $22.85 · $22.85 | £70.89Launch plan, 1 CU (4 GB RAM), always on, matched on RAM because Neon publishes no vCPU count (2 CU, 8 GB, would be $172.26): 730 CU-hours × $0.106 = $77.38 + 50 GB × $0.35 = $17.50; total $94.88 · $94.88 | £283.54Launch plan, 4 CU (16 GB RAM), always on: 2,920 CU-hours × $0.106 = $309.52 + 200 GB × $0.35 = $70.00; total $379.52 · $379.52 |
| SupabaseMedium (4 GB, 'Shared compute', no vCPU count) would make the small size $80.25. Connects over IPv6 by default; an IPv4 address is $4 a month. Point-in-time recovery is $100 a month per 7 days. HA: no standby priced below Enterprise. Free projects pause after a week of inactivity. London | £18.86Pro plan $25 + Micro compute (shared CPU, 1 GB) $10, less the $10 monthly compute credit, + 2 GB over the 8 GB included disk at $0.125; total $25.25 · $25.25 | £97.31Pro plan $25 + Large compute (2 dedicated vCPUs and 8 GB, more than asked: Supabase's cheapest compute with a stated 2 vCPUs) $110, less the $10 credit, + 42 GB extra disk at $0.125 ($5.25); total $130.25 · $130.25 | £186.03Pro plan $25 + XL compute (4 dedicated vCPUs, 16 GB) $210, less the $10 credit, + 192 GB extra disk at $0.125 ($24.00); total $249.00 · $249.00 |
| AWS RDSburstable: CPU above the baseline costs $0.075 per vCPU-hour, and the fixed-performance db.m6g.large (2 vCPU, 8 GiB) is $134.32 a month before storage. HA (Multi-AZ) doubles both lines: $31.60 / $119.15 / $475.87. Extended support for old Postgres versions $0.118 per vCPU-hour. London | £11.80db.t4g.micro (2 burstable vCPUs, 1 GiB), Single-AZ: $0.018/hour × 730 = $13.14 + gp3 storage at its 20 GiB minimum × $0.133 = $2.66; total $15.80 · $15.80 | £44.24db.t4g.medium (2 burstable vCPUs, 4 GiB), Single-AZ: $0.072/hour × 730 = $52.56 + 50 GB gp3 × $0.133 = $6.65; total $59.21 · $59.21 | £178.04db.t4g.xlarge (4 burstable vCPUs, 16 GiB), Single-AZ: $0.29/hour × 730 = $211.70 + 200 GB gp3 × $0.133 = $26.60; total $238.30 · $238.30 |
| DigitalOceanfrom 15 October 2026 (30 November for every account) new Standard clusters stop at 4 GiB and can't have standby nodes, so HA means Advanced Edition: $271.50 at the small size, $554.50 at the growing size. Its docs say clusters 'begin at $15.00' and Advanced 'at $130.00', while its price table shows $15.15 and $135.75. 22 connections on 1 GiB. London | £11.32Standard Edition, Basic node (shared CPU): 1 GiB RAM, 1 vCPU, 10 GiB disk included: $0.02254/hour, $15.15 a month · $15.15 | £45.50Standard Edition, Basic node (shared CPU): 4 GiB RAM, 2 vCPUs, 60 GiB disk included: $0.09063/hour, $60.90 a month · $60.90 | £211.43Advanced Edition, General Purpose node: 16 GiB RAM, 4 vCPUs, 100 GiB disk included, $271.50 + 100 GiB at $0.115 = $11.50; total $283.00. New accounts can't create Standard plans above 4 GiB since 15 October 2026 · $283.00 |
| Railwaybills the RAM and CPU actually used: $10 per GB-month of RAM, $20 per vCPU-month and $0.15 per GB-month of volume; each extra 10% of CPU adds $1 / $4 / $8. HA turns it into a cluster of at least three nodes, all billed as usage, and Railway publishes no uptime SLA. Amsterdam, its only European region | £14.94Estimate: Pro plan, a $20 minimum that includes $20 of usage; about $12.50 of usage (1 GB RAM held all month $10 + 5% of a vCPU $1 + 10 GB volume $1.50) sits inside it, so $20.00. The Hobby plan's volumes stop at 5 GB · $20.00 | £38.48Estimate: Pro plan usage, assuming 4 GB RAM held all month $40 + 10% CPU (0.2 vCPU) $4 + 50 GB volume $7.50 = $51.50 · $51.50 | £147.93Estimate: Pro plan usage, assuming 16 GB RAM held all month $160 + 10% CPU (0.4 vCPU) $8 + 200 GB volume $30 = $198.00 · $198.00 |
| Renderthe $0 workspace allows one person; a team pays $25 a month, making it $47 / $115 / $285. HA bills the standby as a second database: $180 / $520 (none under 1 CPU). Free databases expire 30 days after creation. Storage can grow but never shrink. Frankfurt, its only European region | £16.44Hobby workspace $0 + Postgres 0.5c-1g (less than 1 CPU, 1 GB) $19 + 10 GB at $0.30 = $3; total $22.00 · $22.00 | £67.24Hobby workspace $0 + Postgres 2c-4g (2 CPU, 4 GB) $75 + 50 GB at $0.30 = $15; total $90.00 · $90.00 | £194.25Hobby workspace $0 + Postgres 4c-16g (4 CPU, 16 GB) $200 + 200 GB at $0.30 = $60; total $260.00 · $260.00 |
| Google Cloud SQLHA (a regional instance with a standby) about doubles every rate: $65.40 / $214.14 / $567.20. London's vCPU is about 20% dearer than Iowa's. Extended support for old Postgres versions $0.084 per vCPU-hour. $300 of trial credit for new customers. London | £24.43Enterprise edition, db-g1-small (shared core, 1.7 GB; outside the Cloud SQL SLA) $30.66 + 10 GB SSD at $0.204 = $2.04; total $32.70 · $32.70 | £80.05Enterprise edition, custom 2 vCPU / 4 GB: 2 × $36.208 + 4 × $6.132 = $96.94 + 50 GB SSD at $0.204 = $10.20; total $107.14 · $107.14 | £211.98Enterprise edition, custom 4 vCPU / 16 GB: 4 × $36.208 + 16 × $6.132 = $242.94 + 200 GB SSD at $0.204 = $40.80; total $283.74 · $283.74 |
| Aivenone price covers the VM, storage, backups and all networking. It depends on the cloud: Startup-4 in London is $75 on DigitalOcean or UpCloud, $110 on AWS and $125 on Azure. HA is the Business plan: $180 at the small size, $640 at the growing size. London | £56.03Startup-4 (2 CPU, 4 GB and 80 GB storage, more than asked) on DigitalOcean London: $75 a month, because Aiven's cheaper plans are fixed at 8 GB of storage · $75.00 | £56.03Startup-4 (2 CPU, 4 GB, 80 GB storage) on DigitalOcean London: $0.10/hour, $75 a month · $75.00 | £186.78Startup-16 (6 CPU and 16 GB, more than asked, 350 GB storage) on DigitalOcean London: $0.34/hour, $250 a month · $250.00 |
| Heroku Postgresstorage is bundled. Essential plans are multi-tenant, with an expected 99.5% uptime a month and unannounced maintenance. HA is the Premium tier: Premium-0 $200 (four times Standard-0) and Premium-4 $1,200. Europe region | £6.72Essential-1: shared vCPU and memory (Heroku publishes no figure, so it may not match 1 GB), 10 GB storage, 20 connections: $9 a month · $9.00 | £37.36Standard-0: 2 vCPU, 4 GB, 64 GB storage, 200 connections: $50 a month · $50.00 | £560.33Standard-4: 4 vCPU and 30.5 GB, more than asked, 768 GB storage: $750 a month. Standard-3 ($400) has only 2 vCPU and 15.25 GB · $750.00 |
| Azure Database for PostgreSQLBurstable servers can't use the 1 GiB-step Premium SSD v2, so they pay for fixed disk sizes (32, 64, 128, 256 GiB). The page lists B4as v2 at $132.313, the same as its 2- and 8-vCore sizes, which looks like a page error, so it isn't used. HA isn't available on Burstable; on General Purpose it is $314.06 / $654.72. UK South | £13.55Burstable B1ms (1 vCore, 2 GiB, more than asked) $13.870 + the smallest Premium SSD, 32 GiB × $0.133 = $4.26; total $18.13 · $18.13 | £47.81Burstable B2s (2 vCores, 4 GiB) $55.480 + 64 GiB Premium SSD × $0.133 = $8.51; total $63.99 · $63.99 | £191.24Burstable B4ms (4 vCores, 16 GiB) $221.920 + 256 GiB Premium SSD × $0.133 = $34.05; total $255.97 · $255.97 |
| Crunchy BridgeLondon prices from Crunchy's own calculator; the table on its pricing page is US East. Prices include backups and 2 TB of data transfer; storage $0.10 per GB. Hobby plans slow down when CPU credits run out and have no SLA. HA doubles production plans: $360 / $740. $5 minimum charge | £17.56Hobby-1 (2 burstable vCores, 1 GB, 10% CPU baseline) $22.50 + 10 GB at $0.10 = $1.00; total $23.50, London price · $23.50 | £134.48Standard-8 (2 vCores and 8 GB, more than asked: Standard-4 has 1 vCore) $175 + 50 GB $5; total $180, London price, 25% more than the $140 in its US East pricing table · $180.00 | £276.43Standard-16 (4 vCores, 16 GB) $350 + 200 GB $20; total $370, London price · $370.00 |
Exchange rates. ECB euro reference rates of 6 November 2026 (the latest published when checked on Monday 9 November before the 16:00 CET release): 1 EUR = 0.83415 GBP, 1 EUR = 1.1165 USD, so 1 USD = 0.74711 GBP.
Left out: Neon Free plan — 100 CU-hours a month per project and 1 GB of storage: compute is suspended once the hours run out, and a 0.25 CU database left on all month needs about 182.5 CU-hours; Supabase Free plan — 500 MB database and the project pauses after a week without activity; Render Free Postgres — 256 MB RAM and the database expires 30 days after it is created; Railway Free and Hobby plans — Volume storage is capped at 0.5 GB (Free) and 5 GB (Hobby), so the 10 GB hobby size is priced on Pro; Aiven Free, Developer and Hobbyist plans — Storage is fixed at 1 GB, 8 GB and 8 GB with no way to add disk, and Free and Developer don't let you choose the cloud or region; the cheapest Aiven plan that holds 10 GB is Startup-4; DigitalOcean Standard Edition plans above 4 GiB, and standby nodes on Standard — Shown on the pricing page but no longer available for new clusters (accounts new to DigitalOcean databases from 15 Oct 2026, all accounts from 30 Nov 2026); Google Cloud SQL db-f1-micro — 0.6 GB of RAM, below the hobby size, and shared-core machines are outside the Cloud SQL SLA; Enterprise and custom tiers — Priced by sales with no published figure: Supabase Enterprise, Railway Enterprise, Render Enterprise, Neon's Agent plan and Aiven's BYOC; Azure B4as v2 — Listed at $132.313 a month, the same as the 2- and 8-vCore Basv2 sizes, and Azure's price API shows one per-vCore meter for the series, so the real 4-vCore price is unclear; B4ms is used instead.
There are no affiliate links on this page. DigitalOcean runs an affiliate programme and a referral programme, and Railway an affiliate programme; this site hasn't joined them. Google Cloud's affiliate programme is open only to affiliates in the US and Canada. The research is done by AI agents reading each vendor's own pages. Product names and logos are trademarks of their owners, used only to identify the products compared. No analytics cookies, no tracking scripts, no third-party requests. A personal project, separate from the author's day job.
Questions people ask
How much does a managed Postgres database cost per month?
On this page's figures, always on and before VAT: a hobby database (about 1 GB of RAM, 10 GB) from $9 on Heroku or $15.15 on DigitalOcean; a small production one (2 vCPU, 4 GB, 50 GB) from $50 on Heroku Standard-0 to $180 on Crunchy Bridge; a growing one (4 vCPU, 16 GB, 200 GB) from about $198 on Railway, an estimate, to $750 on Heroku.
How much does Supabase cost for a production database?
Supabase needs its $25 Pro plan, which includes $10 of compute credit. With Large compute (2 dedicated vCPUs, 8 GB) and 50 GB of disk it comes to $130.25 a month; Medium (4 GB, shared compute) would make it $80.25. A dedicated IPv4 address is $4 a month extra.
Can a new DigitalOcean account create a 16 GB Postgres database?
Not on Standard Edition. Since 15 October 2026, accounts that have never created a database (every account from 30 November) can only create Standard clusters up to 4 GiB, with no standby nodes. A 16 GiB, 4 vCPU database means Advanced Edition: $283 a month with 200 GB, or $554.50 with a standby.
How much does high availability add to a Postgres database?
It doubles the bill or more. At the small size (2 vCPU, 4 GB, 50 GB), AWS RDS goes from $59.21 to $119.15, Render from $90 to $180, Google Cloud SQL from $107.14 to $214.14, Aiven from $75 to $180 and Heroku from $50 to $200. Neon sells no standby because its storage is already multi-AZ.
Answers use the figures on this page, last checked 9 Nov 2026.