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
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
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
- VPC peering in AWS, GCP, and Microsoft Azure
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
- VPC peering in AWS, GCP, and Microsoft Azure
- Multiple logical databases per instance
- Database forks
- Connection pooling
- 99.99% availability
- Dynamic disk sizing
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
- 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
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
- 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
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 undercuts AWS RDS and GCP Cloud SQL at the entry point (free tier, $5 plans) to hook indie developers, but the Startup-to-Premium range ($75-$270+) puts them in line with — sometimes above — dedicated DBaaS competitors like Crunchy Data or Timescale Cloud. They're clearly playing multi-cloud flexibility as the wedge to win teams who don't want to be locked into a single hyperscaler's database service. ClickHouse: Sitting in the usage-based analytics database space, ClickHouse avoids sticker-shock flat fees but the escalating per-unit compute rate (nearly double from Basic to Enterprise) signals they're not competing on being the cheap option once you scale up. They're positioning to win teams that want to start cheap and pay more as they mature, rather than budget-conscious shops that need pricing certainty upfront.
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