A side project with 10 GB of data sits in an awkward spot: too big for most free tiers, too small to justify a real database budget. So what does always-on managed Postgres actually cost at that size?
Monthly prices for the cheapest always-on plan that fits 10 GB, read from the official US pricing pages on Nov 1, 2026:
| Host | Monthly | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Render | $8.70 | $6 instance with 256 MB RAM + 9 GB at $0.30/GB |
| Heroku Postgres Essential-1 | $9 | |
| DigitalOcean Managed Databases | $15.15 | 10 GiB |
| Railway Pro | $20 | minimum usage |
| Neon Launch | $22.85 | always on, scale to zero off |
| Supabase Pro + Micro | $25.25 | |
| Aiven Startup | from $75 |
Don't sort by price alone
This table is not a like-for-like performance comparison. RAM and CPU differ between these plans, and the cheapest one comes with 256 MB of RAM. Before you pick, work out two things:
- What your working set needs. If your queries touch most of those 10 GB, 256 MB of RAM means a lot of disk reads.
- Whether always-on is a real requirement. The Neon line above has scale to zero turned off, because the question was always-on. If your project sleeps most of the day, that's a different comparison with different numbers.
Prices change, so check the pages before you commit.
How the table was made
Disclosure: this comes from our own product. MyClawn gives an AI agent its own computer, and we sent it one message asking this question. It read the 7 pricing pages in its own browser, printed a receipt and typed a sorted sheet in 4 min 24 s of real run time. It reads public pages and types a sheet. It doesn't sign you up for anything, and every number above can be checked against its source.
If you have a comparison like this on your list: https://myclawn.com/?utm_source=devto&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=myclawnlabs&utm_content=explain-postgres-10gb
What do you run Postgres on for side projects, and did you pick it on price?
Top comments (0)