We may earn a commission if you buy through links on this page. It never changes a score or a ranking. How we make money
Paid plans start at $5/mo. There's also a free plan.
Aiven lists a Free tier at $0 and paid plans starting at $5/month for Developer, but these are entry prices, not flat rates for every database. Services are billed hourly and invoiced monthly; workload size, storage, service count, cloud choice and support can change the total. The Free and Developer tiers are tightly capped, while production-oriented tiers start at $75/month. Aiven also lists a 30-day free trial, but the published pricing details do not specify its scope.
01Every plan, line by line
| Plan | Billed annually | Billed monthly | Built for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | — | $0 | Learning, demos, and tutorials |
| Developer | — | $5 | Development and prototyping |
| Hobbyist | — | $12 | Small workloads on select clouds |
| Startup | — | $75 | Lightweight staging or smaller production |
| Business | — | $180 | Production needing high availability |
| Premium | — | $270 | Enterprise-grade performance and availability |
Add-ons and overages
- Dynamic disk sizing is available at additional cost on Startup, Business, and Premium.
- Three higher support tiers with separate charges are available; prices are not published.
- Extra storage and additional services can increase the bill; prices are not published.
- With BYOC, Aiven charges a service fee and the cloud provider bills infrastructure separately; prices are not published.
02What the plan grid doesn't tell you
Hourly usage billing
Listed monthly prices are starting prices. Aiven bills services hourly and invoices monthly, so actual costs depend on the service and resources used.
Storage and extra services
Extra storage and additional services can increase the bill; the published pricing details do not publish their prices.
BYOC infrastructure
With Bring Your Own Cloud, Aiven charges a service fee and your cloud provider bills infrastructure separately. Neither price is published.
Paid support tiers
Aiven lists three higher support tiers with separate charges, but does not publish their prices in the published details.
03Which plan should you buy?
| If you are… | Get | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Learning, demos, tutorials | Free | It costs $0 and includes 1 dedicated VM, 1 CPU, 1 GB RAM and 1 GB total storage. |
| Lightweight production | Startup | It starts at $75/month and lists an uptime SLA of 99.99%, with 1 VM and 80 GB–11 TB storage. |
| Production with high availability | Business | It starts at $180/month and includes 2 dedicated VMs; high availability is listed. |
04Is Aiven worth the money?
Aiven can be worth the cost if you want managed databases, streaming, search or analytics and would otherwise run that infrastructure yourself. Its listed plans include operational work such as backups, security patches, upgrades and scaling, but the headline prices are only starting points. Compare the bill for each service, storage, support and cloud setup before switching. For BYOC, account for both Aiven’s service fee and the cloud provider’s separate infrastructure bill.
Aiven pricing FAQ
What is AI-based pricing and how does it work?
Aiven’s pricing is not described as AI-based. The published pricing details list service tiers, hourly starting rates and resource limits; services are billed hourly and invoiced monthly. Aiven supports AI workloads, but the published information does not say that AI determines prices.
How much does Aiven cost for PostgreSQL?
The published pricing details do not give a PostgreSQL-specific price. Aiven’s listed plans start at $5/month, but services are billed hourly and the total depends on the service and resources used. Check the current service-specific price before estimating a PostgreSQL bill.
How do you use Aiven with MySQL?
The published pricing details do not give MySQL setup instructions or identify a MySQL-specific price. Aiven describes its platform as managing database services and supporting standard drivers, APIs and clients. Check the service details and connection instructions for the database you plan to use.
Is Aiven completely free?
Aiven lists a Free plan at $0/month, limited to 1 dedicated VM, 1 CPU, 1 GB RAM and 1 GB total storage, with no specific cloud or region selection. It also lists a 30-day free trial, but the published details do not specify what the trial covers.