TiDB Serverless
TiDB is a modern, cloud-native distributed SQL database designed for applications requiring elasticity, resilience, and real-time insights.
Our verdict
Who it's for
A modern database architecture for real-time data, offering elastic scalability and MySQL compatibility.
Who should look elsewhere
Complexity might be higher for users unfamiliar with distributed databases.
Pros
- +Eliminates data silos by unifying OLTP, OLAP, and AI workloads.
- +Offers extreme horizontal scalability without manual sharding.
- +High availability and disaster recovery with cloud-native architecture.
- +MySQL compatibility reduces migration overhead and learning curve.
- +Autoscaling and RU-based provisioning simplify operations and cost management.
Cons
- −Complexity might be higher for users unfamiliar with distributed databases.
- −Pricing for higher tiers can become significant for large-scale production workloads.
- −Requires understanding of distributed systems concepts for optimal self-managed deployment.
Key features
- ✓Seamless Scalability (no sharding, independent compute/storage scaling)
- ✓Built-in Resilience (decoupled services, cloud-native storage for recovery)
- ✓Operational Agility (Request Unit (RU) based provisioning, autoscaling)
- ✓Developer Simplicity (familiar MySQL syntax, unified SQL for various workloads)
- ✓Cloud-Native Object Storage (durability and elasticity)
- ✓Context-Aware, Usage-Based Scaling
- ✓Modular Architecture for Resilience
- ✓Distributed SQL Compute Layer
Pricing
| Plan | Price | Billing | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| TiDB Cloud Starter | $0 | month | Fully-managed cloud DBaaS for applications with variable workloads; Available on AWS and Alibaba Cloud; 25 GiB of row storage |
| TiDB Cloud Essential | — | month | Fully-managed cloud DBaaS for production workloads that need performance, security, and scale; Provisioned compute with autoscaling up to 100K Request Units; Point-in-time backup and up to 30-day retention |
| TiDB Cloud Dedicated | $0.22 | month | Fully-managed cloud DBaaS for applications with predictable traffic and advanced requirements; Available on AWS, Google Cloud and Azure; 4 vCPU to 32 vCPU per node available |
| TiDB Self-Managed | — | month | Self-managed database for applications with advanced configuration requirements; Runs on nearly any infrastructure or cloud provider; Deploy on infrastructure of choice, across multiple cloud platforms (public or private), on-prem data centers, or hybrid environments |
| TiDB Community | — | month | The most advanced, open-source, distributed SQL database with core capabilities |