Aiven vs ClickHouse Pricing (2026)
How do these two stack up on price? Here's what each one costs, what you get, and where the value sits.
| Aiven | ClickHouse | |
|---|---|---|
| Starts at | $5/mo | Custom |
| Number of plans | 6 | 3 |
| Free plan | — | |
| Free trial | ||
| Pricing model | usage-based | usage-based |
Free
- 1 dedicated VM
- 1 CPU per VM
- 1 GB RAM per VM
- 1 GB total storage
- Cannot select a specific cloud or region
- No integrations or connection pooling
- All networking cost included
- Seamless upgrade/downgrade to other plans
- One-click version upgrade
- Extensions (PostGIS, PL/v8, etc)
- Performance graphs
- Data encrypted on disk and network
- Real-time backups to a remote location
- Restore to any point in time (PITR)
- Support
Developer
- 1 dedicated VM
- 1 CPU per VM
- 1 GB RAM per VM
- 8 GB total storage
- Cannot select a specific cloud or region
- No integrations or connection pooling
- All networking cost included
- Seamless upgrade/downgrade to other plans
- One-click version upgrade
- Extensions (PostGIS, PL/v8, etc)
- Performance graphs
- Data encrypted on disk and network
- Real-time backups to a remote location
- Restore to any point in time (PITR)
- Support
Hobbyist
- 1 dedicated VM
- 1 CPU per VM
- 1 GB RAM per VM
- 8 GB total storage
- All networking cost included
- Seamless upgrade/downgrade to other plans
- One-click version upgrade
- Extensions (PostGIS, PL/v8, etc)
- Performance graphs
- Data encrypted on disk and network
- Real-time backups to a remote location
- Restore to any point in time (PITR)
- VPC peering in AWS, GCP, and Microsoft Azure
- Support
Startup
- 1 dedicated VM
- 2-32 CPU per VM
- 4-192 GB RAM per VM
- 80 GB-11 TB total storage
- 99.99% uptime SLA
- All networking cost included
- Seamless upgrade/downgrade to other plans
- One-click version upgrade
- Extensions (PostGIS, PL/v8, etc)
- Performance graphs
- Data encrypted on disk and network
- Real-time backups to a remote location
- Restore to any point in time (PITR)
- VPC peering in AWS, GCP, and Microsoft Azure
- Multiple logical databases per instance
- Database forks
- Connection pooling
- 99.99% availability
- Dynamic disk sizing
- Support
Business
- 2 dedicated VM
- 2-32 CPU per VM
- 4-192 GB RAM per VM
- 80 GB-11 TB total storage
- All networking cost included
- Seamless upgrade/downgrade to other plans
- One-click version upgrade
- Extensions (PostGIS, PL/v8, etc)
- Performance graphs
- Data encrypted on disk and network
- Real-time backups to a remote location
- Restore to any point in time (PITR)
- VPC peering in AWS, GCP, and Microsoft Azure
- Multiple logical databases per instance
- Database forks
- Connection pooling
- 99.99% availability
- High availability
- Read-only access to DB replica nodes
- Dynamic disk sizing
- Support
Premium
- 3 dedicated VM
- 2-32 CPU per VM
- 4-192 GB RAM per VM
- 80 GB-11 TB total storage
- All networking cost included
- Seamless upgrade/downgrade to other plans
- One-click version upgrade
- Extensions (PostGIS, PL/v8, etc)
- Performance graphs
- Data encrypted on disk and network
- Real-time backups to a remote location
- Restore to any point in time (PITR)
- VPC peering in AWS, GCP, and Microsoft Azure
- Multiple logical databases per instance
- Database forks
- Connection pooling
- 99.99% availability
- High availability
- Read-only access to DB replica nodes
- Dynamic disk sizing
- Support
Basic
- Up to 1 TB storage
- 8-12 GiB total memory
- Backups every 24h, retained for 1 day
- 1 availability zone
- Export backups to your own cloud account
- Expert support with 1 business day response time
- Single sign-on authentication (SSO) using Google or Microsoft Social login
- Multi-factor authentication (MFA)
Scale
- Unlimited storage
- Configurable memory
- Compute-compute separation
- Backups every 24h, retained for 1 day
- Configurable backups
- 2+ availability zones
- Expert support with 1 hour response time 24x7 for Severity 1 issues
- S3 role-based access
- Private networking
- Automatic vertical scaling
- Manual horizontal scaling
Enterprise
- SAML Single sign-on authentication (SSO)
- Private regions
- Manual vertical scaling for custom profiles
- Enterprise support with 30 min response time for Severity 1 issues
- Named Lead Support Engineer
- Transparent data encryption / CMEK
- Scheduled upgrades
- Consultative migrations guides
- HIPAA and PCI compliance
Aiven vs ClickHouse FAQ
- Which one is cheaper?
- One or both use custom pricing, so it depends on your specific needs.
- Can I use either one for free?
- Aiven has a free plan. ClickHouse doesn't — though they do offer a free trial.
- How do they charge?
- Both use a usage-based model, so the comparison is straightforward — it comes down to features and limits at each price point.
- Which one is a better deal?
- Depends on what you need. Aiven: Aiven sits in the mid-to-premium range for managed open-source data services — they're not trying to undercut bare-metal DIY, they're competing with managed offerings from AWS, GCP, and Render by offering multi-cloud flexibility and a broader service catalog (Kafka, OpenSearch, etc.). The BYOC option signals they're actively courting enterprise buyers who can't send data to a third-party cloud. ClickHouse: ClickHouse is going after the high-performance OLAP segment — think Snowflake and BigQuery alternatives for teams that care deeply about query speed on large datasets. The pricing is competitive for raw compute but the multi-dimensional billing (compute + storage + egress + ingestion) can stack up fast, positioning them as a serious tool for data-heavy teams rather than a budget play.
Keep tabs on both.
We'll monitor pricing changes for Aiven and ClickHouse and let you know when something moves.