MotherDuck vs Aiven Pricing (2026)
How do these two stack up on price? Here's what each one costs, what you get, and where the value sits.
| MotherDuck | Aiven | |
|---|---|---|
| Starts at | $250/mo | $5/mo |
| Number of plans | 3 | 6 |
| Free plan | ||
| Free trial | ||
| Pricing model | hybrid | usage-based |
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)
- 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
- 90-day snapshot retention
- Query history
- Role-based access control (preset roles)
- Support from MotherDuck experts
- 99.9% availability SLA
Enterprise
- Unlimited internal active users and service accounts
- Fixed-cost capacity pricing
- AWS PrivateLink connectivity
- Role-based access control (custom roles)
- HIPAA BAA
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
MotherDuck vs Aiven FAQ
- Which one is cheaper?
- Aiven is the cheaper option, starting at $5/mo vs $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. MotherDuck uses hybrid pricing, while Aiven goes with usage-based. That changes the math depending on your team size and usage.
- Which one is a better deal?
- Depends on what you need. MotherDuck: Positioned as a cost-efficient alternative to Snowflake and BigQuery for teams that don't need a full data warehouse — the $250 base is approachable, but the compute rates (especially Jumbo and above) put it in mid-market territory. They're clearly targeting data-savvy startups and mid-size teams who want DuckDB's speed without managing infrastructure themselves. 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.
Keep tabs on both.
We'll monitor pricing changes for MotherDuck and Aiven and let you know when something moves.