Free Postgres Database: Every Generous Free Tier in 2026

Every free Postgres database has a catch. Most comparison pages list the storage number and stop there. The catch is somewhere else: a database that is paused after a quiet week, one that is deleted on day 44, one whose compute runs out on day 17, or one that sits in Singapore and adds a fifth of a second to every page your Indian users load.

This page compares free PostgreSQL hosting the way you would actually use it: as free database hosting for an app that has to keep working. We run a Postgres fleet in Mumbai, so we did not only read pricing pages. We measured. Every latency number below was taken by us on 16 October 2026, from a home broadband connection in India and from a server in Mumbai. Every limit was re-checked against the provider’s own pricing page or documentation on 14 November 2026.

On this page

• Which Postgres providers have generous free tiers?
• Best free Postgres database for each use case
• Free PostgreSQL hosting compared: 14 options
• Each free tier in a few lines
• Free Postgres latency from India, measured
• The four ways a free Postgres stops working
• Neon free tier: the day-17 problem
• When to leave a free tier, and what the paid floor costs
• How to create a free Postgres database online, step by step
• FAQ

Which Postgres providers have generous free tiers?

Yes, several do. Judged on three things - how much storage you get, whether the database expires, and whether it stops when idle - the most generous free Postgres tiers in November 2026 are CockroachDB Basic, Layerbase, Netlify Database, Prisma Postgres and Neon. None of them expires, but each one sleeps, meters usage or caps something else.

1. CockroachDB Basic: 10 GiB and 50 million request units a month. Postgres-compatible rather than Postgres, and the allowance is for accounts paying by card.
2. Layerbase: 5 GB across up to 2 databases, no card. Databases sleep and wake on connect.
3. Netlify Database: 5 GB per database, up to 3. Its compute is paid from the same 300 monthly credits as your Netlify site.
4. Prisma Postgres: 2 GB shared by up to 50 databases, with 200,000 queries a month.
5. Neon: 1 GB per project across up to 100 projects (20 GB in total), with 100 compute hours per project.

If your users are in India, add a fourth test: a region near them. Of these five, only CockroachDB Basic offers Mumbai.

Best free Postgres database for each use case

• Learning SQL, or a project you open a few times a week: Neon. 1 GB per project, a real Postgres, and scale-to-zero means you only spend compute while you are working.
• An app with logins, file uploads and a database in one place: Supabase, in its Mumbai region. Keep it busy every week or it is paused.
• A database that has to stay awake 24 hours a day for free: one that does not meter compute hours, such as Nile or Aiven. Neon’s allowance runs out around day 17 if the database never sleeps (the maths is below).
• Many small databases, one per experiment: Prisma Postgres, up to 50 databases sharing 2 GB.
• A hackathon or a demo next week: anything on this list. Write down the expiry date if you pick Render.
• Your users are in India: pick a Mumbai region. From our tests, Singapore adds about 40 ms to every query from a home connection and about 55 ms from a Mumbai server, compared with Mumbai.

Free PostgreSQL hosting compared: 14 options

Every free Postgres hosting option we could verify, with limits as published by each provider on 14 November 2026. Sources: Neon plans, Supabase pricing and compute docs, Aiven free tier docs, Render free tier and pricing, Railway plans, Koyeb databases docs, Prisma Postgres free plan, Nile pricing, CockroachDB Basic, Netlify Database limits, Layerbase, the AWS free tier page, Microsoft’s Azure free account guide and Voroa free instances.

Three notes on the table. CockroachDB speaks the Postgres wire protocol but is a different database underneath, so some Postgres features and extensions will not work. AWS and Azure free periods end. Netlify Database’s compute and bandwidth are taken from the same credits as the rest of a Netlify team; our guide to Netlify free plan limits explains how that pool runs out.

Each free tier in a few lines

Neon

A real Postgres with 1 GB per project and up to 100 projects, capped at 20 GB in total. Compute scales to zero after 5 minutes and cannot be kept on. When a project uses its 100 CU-hours, compute is suspended until next month, but Neon says none of its limits delete your data.

Supabase

500 MB of database, shared CPU and 0.5 GB RAM, with two active projects. A project is paused after a week of inactivity, and there are no automatic backups on Free. It is the only big free tier here with a Mumbai region.

Aiven

1 GB on a 1 CPU, 1 GB RAM machine, with no time limit and no card. The catch is 20 connections with no pooling, and Aiven chooses the cloud and region for you. One free service of each type per organisation.

Render

1 GB and 256 MB RAM, one free database per workspace. It is deleted 30 days after creation unless you upgrade within a 14-day grace period, and it has no backups.

Railway

There is no free database as such: a one-time $5 trial credit, then $1 of credit a month on the Free plan, with a 0.5 GB volume. When the credit runs out, workloads stop, and volume data is deleted 30 days after the plan expires.

Koyeb

One free database instance with 1 GB, a quarter of a vCPU and 1 GB RAM, but only 5 hours of compute a month. It sleeps after 5 minutes idle, which is what makes those 5 hours last.

Prisma Postgres

The free plan grew this year: 2 GB per workspace shared by up to 50 databases, and 200,000 queries a month, with no card. Idle databases scale to zero, and once the monthly queries are used, queries stop until the 1st. There are no backups on Free.

Nile

1 GB, 50 million query tokens and up to 500 connections, and the database never pauses. There are no backups on Free, and the regions are in the US and Europe only.

CockroachDB Basic

The biggest free storage allowance here: 10 GiB and 50 million request units a month, worth $15 of usage. It scales to zero when idle and offers Mumbai. The allowance applies to organisations paying monthly by card or marketplace, and it is CockroachDB, not Postgres.

Netlify Database

Managed Postgres, generally available since 28 April 2026. Free gives up to 3 databases with 5 GB each, sleeping after 5 minutes, with backups kept 3 days. Compute and bandwidth come out of the 300 credits a Netlify team gets each month, so a busy database can pause the site too.

Layerbase

5 GB across up to 2 databases, no card and no expiry. Small databases sleep and wake when you connect, in about one to five seconds by Layerbase’s own figures. Its page does not state connection limits or a region for free databases.

Voroa

One free Postgres per account in Mumbai: 1 GB, 0.1 CPU, 256 MB RAM and 20 connections. It is not paused for inactivity, but it shares the workspace’s 750 free hours a month, and there are no backups on the free size. More detail is in the Voroa section below.

Free Postgres latency from India, measured

We timed TCP connections to each provider’s public database endpoint, 20 attempts each, and report the median. A TCP connect is one network round trip, which is the floor for every query you send. For Neon we also created a free project in Singapore and timed real queries end to end with psycopg, including new connections and a cold start after the database had scaled to zero.

From a home broadband connection in India

From a server in Mumbai (where your app runs, if you host it in India)

Real queries against a free Neon database in Singapore, from India

What those numbers mean for your app

A cold start costs 0.7 to 1.1 seconds on top. After 7 minutes idle the free Neon database had scaled to zero.

Across three runs the first connection then took 1.24 to 1.64 seconds against 0.56 seconds warm, so the wake-up itself was roughly 0.7 to 1.1 seconds. The connection straight after it was back to normal. That is fast for a database waking from zero, and it is still the first thing a visitor waits for after a quiet spell.

Latency multiplies by the number of queries. A typical API request does not send one query. It checks the session, loads the user, loads the thing the page is about, and writes a log row. Call it five queries, sent one after another.

From a server in Mumbai that is about 15 ms of waiting with the database in Mumbai, and about 300 ms with the database in Singapore. Your code has not done anything yet, and the user already feels it.

New connections are the expensive part. Opening a connection to Postgres over TLS takes several round trips before the first query runs: TCP, TLS, then password authentication. Against Singapore from India we measured about 560 ms for that.

A long-running server opens its connections once and reuses them, so it pays this rarely. A serverless function that opens a fresh connection on every request pays it every time. If you deploy on serverless, use the provider’s pooled connection string or a pooling driver.

Put the app and the database in the same region. A database in Mumbai with an app in Oregon is worse than both in Singapore. Check where your app runs before you choose where the database lives.

The four ways a free Postgres stops working

Free tiers end in one of four ways. Knowing which one applies tells you more than the storage figure.

1. It sleeps. Neon, Koyeb, Prisma Postgres, Netlify Database, Layerbase and CockroachDB scale compute to zero when idle and wake on the next query. Nothing is lost; the first request after a quiet period is slower.

2. It is paused or stopped. Supabase pauses a free project after a week without enough activity. A paused project does not answer at all until you restore it from the dashboard. Supabase emails a warning about a week before. A paused project can be restored for up to a year (Supabase project pausing). Our Supabase free tier limits guide covers each limit in detail, and the Supabase backup guide shows how to keep your own copy. On Voroa, a free database is stopped, with its data kept, when the workspace’s free hours run out, and starts again on the 1st.

3. It is deleted. Render deletes a free database 30 days after creation, plus a 14-day grace period (Render free tier docs; more in our Render alternative comparison). Prisma deletes an instant database you never claimed after 24 hours. AWS closes the free-plan account after 6 months or when the credit runs out, and says you are not charged unless you move to a paid plan. Azure’s free amounts end after 12 months, and then normal billing applies.

4. It hits a wall. Every free tier has a hard limit that changes behaviour without warning your users:

• Supabase puts the database into read-only mode above 500 MB. Inserts start failing with cannot execute INSERT in a read-only transaction.
• Neon blocks writes that would grow storage past 1 GB, and when a project uses up its 100 CU-hours, its compute is suspended until the next month: existing connections drop and new ones cannot open (Neon free plan limits). How Neon and Supabase differ beyond the free tier is in Neon vs Supabase.
• Prisma Postgres stops answering queries once the month’s 200,000 are used, until the 1st or until you upgrade.
• Aiven allows 20 connections and no pooling. A serverless app can use that up in one busy minute and start failing with too many connections.

Neon free tier: the day-17 problem

Neon’s free compute is generous for a database that sleeps, and tight for one that never does. The free compute starts at 0.25 CU, so 100 CU-hours buys 400 hours of running time. A month has about 730 hours. If something touches the database at least every five minutes, around the clock, it never scales to zero and the allowance runs out after roughly 16.7 days. From then until the 1st of next month, the project’s compute is suspended.

What keeps a database awake is often not your users. An uptime monitor that pings an endpoint every minute, a cron job, or a worker that polls a queue is enough. If you need a database that is awake 24 hours a day, either remove those callers or pick a tier that does not meter compute hours.

When to leave a free tier, and what the paid floor costs

Move to a paid size when any of these becomes true:

• You need backups. Supabase, Render, Prisma Postgres, Nile and Voroa have none on their free sizes.
• Real users depend on it. A pause, a monthly cap or a deletion date is fine for a demo, not for customers.
• You are close to a cap. Storage, compute hours or monthly queries: hitting one stops writes or the whole database, usually at a busy moment.
• You need it awake all day. A tier that sleeps or meters compute hours adds cold starts and a month-end cliff.

The cheapest paid step on each provider, from their own pricing pages on 14 November 2026:

Dollar prices are before tax and your card’s foreign currency markup. Voroa’s sizes are billed in rupees with a GST invoice; the full list is on the pricing page.

Free Postgres tiers that disappeared

The list of free Postgres options keeps changing, which is a reason to keep your own copy of your data whatever you choose:

• Heroku removed free Postgres on 28 November 2022 and deleted databases that were not upgraded.
• ElephantSQL stopped taking sign-ups in May 2024 and shut down on 27 January 2025.
• Vercel Postgres moved every database to Neon in December 2024.
• Tembo stopped creating new cloud instances on 5 May 2025.
• Xata no longer has a managed free tier; its pricing page offers a free trial, and the open-source version is free to run yourself.
• Fly.io no longer gives free Postgres to new accounts.
• Neon raised free storage from 0.5 GB to 1 GB per project on 2 October 2026, and Prisma Postgres now gives 2 GB per workspace. Many comparison pages still show the old figures.

The habit that protects you on any provider takes one line:

pg_dump "$DATABASE_URL" --format=custom --file=backup-$(date +%F).dump

Run it weekly. If your provider changes its free tier, you restore that file somewhere else with pg_restore and move on. On Voroa the same file goes in through Import an existing database.

Is PostgreSQL free?

Yes. PostgreSQL itself is free and open source under the PostgreSQL License, a short permissive licence similar to MIT and BSD. You can use it, change it and ship it inside a commercial product without paying anyone and without publishing your own code.

Is PostgreSQL free for commercial use? Yes, with no user limit, no core limit and no paid “enterprise edition” of the database itself. Companies that sell Postgres sell the work around it: running the server, backups, upgrades and support.

That is why this page exists. The database costs nothing; the machine it runs on does. A free Postgres database is a provider choosing to pay for a small machine on your behalf, and the catch in each free tier is how they keep that cost bounded.

Free managed Postgres in Mumbai on Voroa

Voroa’s free plan includes one managed Postgres per account: 1 GB of storage, 256 MB of RAM, 0.1 CPU and up to 20 connections, in Mumbai, with no card. It is not paused for inactivity and not deleted after a fixed time.

It does share the workspace’s 750 free running hours a month with your free web services, workers and cron jobs. One free database on its own runs all month within that. A free database and a free web service running all month use the hours in about 16 days; then both are stopped, with nothing deleted, until 12 midnight IST on the 1st. If a paid app depends on the database, move the database to a paid size too.

The other trade-offs are real: it is a small machine, like Render’s free database; there are no automatic backups on the free size, so keep your own pg_dump; and free database capacity is shared, so if the platform is full, a new free database is refused with a clear message rather than queued.

Paid sizes are billed in rupees, by UPI or card, with a GST invoice. Details are in Free instances on Voroa.

How to create a free Postgres database online, step by step

You can get a free Postgres database online in about two minutes, from the browser, with no card and nothing to install. You need a Voroa account; sign-up is with email or GitHub.

Step 1. Choose Postgres. In the dashboard, select New, then Postgres from the list of services.

Step 2. Name the database. PostgreSQL is already selected as the database type. Type a name using lowercase letters, numbers and hyphens, for example shop-db. Leave the Postgres database name empty and Voroa generates one. The region is Mumbai.

Step 3. Pick the free size. Under Instance type, choose DB Nano. It shows Free, and the monthly total at the bottom of the page reads Free as well, with 1 GB of storage included.

Select Create database. If the platform’s shared free capacity is full at that moment, you see a clear message instead of a half-created database.

Step 4. Copy the connection URL. Your database opens on the Connect tab. With An app on Voroa selected, the URL there is your DATABASE_URL. Select the eye icon to show the password, then copy the whole line into your app’s environment variables. This address works only from apps running on Voroa in the same workspace, which keeps the traffic inside Mumbai.

Step 5. Connect from your laptop, if you need to. Switch to Outside Voroa to get a second address for psql, pgAdmin, DBeaver or an app hosted elsewhere. Connections are encrypted with TLS. If the tab shows OFF, choose Enable external access; the database restarts for a few seconds. Choose Only addresses I trust if you know the IP addresses that will connect. Full details are in connecting to Postgres from outside Voroa.

Step 6. Use it from your code. Under Connect from your code pick psql, Node.js, Prisma, Python or Go and copy a ready snippet that reads DATABASE_URL from the environment.

That is the whole setup. What each connection detail means is explained in PostgreSQL connection details.

FAQ

Are there Postgres database providers with generous free tiers? Yes. By storage, CockroachDB Basic (10 GiB), Layerbase (5 GB), Netlify Database (5 GB per database) and Prisma Postgres (2 GB per workspace) give the most, and Neon gives 1 GB per project across up to 100 projects. Each has a catch: sleeping, a usage cap, or a card requirement.

Is there a completely free Postgres database? Yes. Neon, Supabase, Aiven, Koyeb, Prisma Postgres, Nile, Netlify Database, Layerbase and Voroa all offer a free Postgres with no end date. Each has a catch: sleeping, pausing, a usage allowance, or a small machine.

Which free Postgres tier does not expire? Neon, Supabase, Aiven, Koyeb, Prisma Postgres, Nile, CockroachDB Basic, Netlify Database, Layerbase and Voroa have no expiry date. Render’s free database is deleted 30 days after creation plus a 14-day grace period. The AWS free plan closes after 6 months and Azure’s free amounts end after 12.

Which free Postgres does not sleep or pause? Render, Aiven (unless it is unused) and Nile keep running. Voroa is not paused for inactivity, but it stops if the workspace’s free hours run out. Neon, Koyeb, Prisma Postgres, Netlify Database and Layerbase scale to zero when idle. Supabase pauses a project after a week of low activity.

Can I get free Postgres hosted in India? Supabase, CockroachDB Basic and Voroa offer a Mumbai region on their free tiers. AWS Mumbai and Azure Central India are free only on their time-limited offers. Neon, Render, Railway, Koyeb and Prisma Postgres are closest in Singapore.

Is PostgreSQL free for commercial use? Yes. The PostgreSQL License lets you use it in commercial software for free. Hosting it is what costs money, which is what the free tiers above cover.

Where can I get free Postgres for testing? For automated tests, run Postgres in a Docker or CI container so every run starts clean. For a shared staging database, any free hosted tier on this page works; keep destructive tests off it.

Do I need a credit card for free Postgres hosting? Not for Supabase, Aiven, Prisma Postgres, Layerbase or Voroa. CockroachDB’s free allowance is for organisations paying by card or marketplace, and AWS and Azure free offers are tied to a billing account.

Is a free Postgres tier good enough for production? For a small app with modest traffic, sometimes, if you accept the catch of the tier you pick and keep your own backups. None of the free tiers in this list comes with an uptime commitment.

How much latency does a Singapore database add for users in India? In our tests, about 40 ms per query from a home connection and about 55 ms per query from a server in Mumbai, compared with a database in Mumbai. Five sequential queries make that roughly 200-300 ms per request.

Get free Postgres in Mumbai

One free Postgres per account, 1 GB, no card, and not paused for inactivity. See how it compares in managed PostgreSQL in India.

Last updated: 14 November 2026: every free-tier limit re-checked against each provider’s own page; latency measured on 16 October 2026. If a provider has changed something we missed, write to us and we will correct it.