Aiven vs MotherDuck 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 | MotherDuck | |
|---|---|---|
| Starts at | $5/mo | $250/mo |
| Number of plans | 6 | 3 |
| Free plan | ||
| Free trial | ||
| Pricing model | usage-based | hybrid |
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
Lite
- Up to 3 internal active users and 2 service accounts
- 10 GB free storage
- 10 hrs Pulse compute per month included
- Pulse instances only
- Role-based access control (preset roles)
- Guides: Shared context for better AI agent performance
- Community support
Business
Popular- Up to 10 internal active users and unlimited service accounts
- 5 instance types and read-scaling replicas
- Flights: agent-native data pipelines
- Guides: Shared context for better AI agent performance
- 90-day snapshot retention
- Query history
- Role-based access control (preset and custom roles)
- Support from MotherDuck experts
- 99.9% availability SLA
Enterprise
- Unlimited internal active users and service accounts
- Fixed-cost capacity pricing
- AWS PrivateLink connectivity
- IP allowlisting
- HIPAA BAA
Aiven vs MotherDuck FAQ
- Which one is cheaper?
- Aiven starts lower at $5/mo, compared to $250/mo for MotherDuck.
- Can I use either one for free?
- Both offer free plans, so you can try each without paying. Start with whichever fits your workflow better and upgrade when you hit the limits.
- How do they charge?
- Different approach here. Aiven uses usage-based pricing, while MotherDuck goes with hybrid. That changes the math depending on your team size and usage.
- 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. MotherDuck: At $250/mo plus consumption fees, MotherDuck isn't chasing hobbyists — it's mid-market priced compared to heavyweight warehouses like Snowflake or BigQuery, betting that DuckDB's speed and simplicity justify a premium over free/open-source but a discount versus enterprise data warehouse contracts.
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