CockroachDB — A distributed SQL database built for horizontal scalability and multi-region survivability, available self-hosted or as a managed cloud service.
By Noahlast updated pricing verified
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Best for: teams running multi-region transactional workloads on PostgreSQL-compatible SQL that need automatic failover without manual sharding
Pricing: Cloud Basic free up to 50M request units/10 GiB per month; Standard from $0.18/hr per 2 vCPUs; self-hosted Enterprise Free for businesses under $10M revenue, paid Enterprise license above that.
- CockroachDB Cloud Basic is free up to 50 million request units and 10 GiB storage per month.
- CockroachDB Cloud Standard starts at $0.18/hour per 2 vCPUs; Advanced starts at $0.60/hour per 4 vCPUs.
- Self-hosted CockroachDB runs under a proprietary source-available license (CockroachDB Software License), free for businesses under $10M annual revenue.
- CockroachDB replicates every piece of data three times automatically and is PostgreSQL wire-compatible.
- CockroachDB is no longer open source as of version 24.3.
Limitations: No longer open source; self-hosted runs under a proprietary license.; Unlicensed self-hosted clusters are throttled after a grace period.; Cloud pricing is hourly per vCPU, harder to estimate than flat-rate competitors.
Top alternatives: MongoDB Atlas, Neon, PlanetScale — full list
What is CockroachDB?
CockroachDB is a distributed SQL database built by Cockroach Labs to survive node, datacenter, and region failures by automatically replicating every piece of data three times across a cluster. It speaks the PostgreSQL wire protocol, so most PostgreSQL drivers and ORMs connect to it without modification, while the underlying storage layer distributes and rebalances data across nodes transparently. CockroachDB is available three ways: as a fully managed CockroachDB Cloud service, as Bring Your Own Cloud where Cockroach Labs manages the database inside a customer's own cloud account, and as a Self-Hosted deployment the customer operates entirely. Self-hosted clusters run under the proprietary CockroachDB Software License rather than an open-source license — an Enterprise Free tier waives the license fee for businesses under $10M in annual revenue, but larger companies need a paid Enterprise license, and unlicensed clusters are throttled after a grace period. The database targets teams running transactional, multi-region workloads that need to survive infrastructure failures without manual sharding.
CockroachDB is a distributed SQL database from Cockroach Labs designed for horizontal scaling and multi-region survivability, automatically replicating data three times across nodes to survive machine, rack, or region failures. CockroachDB Cloud's Basic tier is free for workloads under 50 million request units and 10 GiB of storage per month, Standard tier scales from $0.18/hour per 2 vCPUs, and Advanced tier starts at $0.60/hour per 4 vCPUs for workloads needing enterprise security controls like customer-managed encryption keys; self-hosted deployments run under Cockroach Labs' proprietary CockroachDB Software License, which is free for businesses under $10M in annual revenue and requires a paid Enterprise license above that threshold. The database is PostgreSQL wire-compatible, deploys across AWS, GCP, and Azure, and targets teams that need automatic multi-region replication and 99.99%+ uptime SLAs without manually sharding a traditional relational database. CockroachDB is no longer open source as of version 24.3 — self-hosted clusters without a valid license are throttled to five concurrent SQL transactions after a grace period, a licensing change some long-time users have criticized.
Standout feature: Automatic 3x data replication with multi-region survivability and PostgreSQL wire compatibility, so most existing Postgres tooling connects without changes
Biggest weakness: Self-hosted CockroachDB is no longer open source as of version 24.3 — it runs under a proprietary source-available license, and clusters without a valid license (or past their trial/grace period) are throttled to five concurrent SQL transactions, a change that alienated some users who adopted it for its earlier open-source licensing.
Pros
- Automatic 3x replication survives node, datacenter, and region failures without manual intervention.
- PostgreSQL wire-compatible, so most Postgres drivers and ORMs work without modification.
- Cloud Basic tier is genuinely free up to 50 million request units and 10 GiB storage per month.
- Deploys across AWS, GCP, and Azure, plus self-hosted or bring-your-own-cloud options.
Cons
- No longer open source as of version 24.3 — self-hosted runs under a proprietary source-available license.
- Unlicensed or expired self-hosted clusters are throttled to five concurrent SQL transactions after a grace period.
- Enterprise Free self-hosted license requires sending telemetry and cannot be used to host CockroachDB as a service for third parties.
- Cloud compute pricing is billed hourly per vCPU, which takes more effort to estimate than a flat per-seat or per-GB rate.
CockroachDB pricing
Free tier · paid from $0.18/mo · verified from the vendor's pricing page
| Plan | Price | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Basic (Cloud) | Free | Free up to 50 million request units and 10 GiB storage per month; suited to small, bursty workloads. |
| Standard (Cloud) | $0.18/mo | $0.18/hour per 2 vCPUs for steady workloads at scale, up to 200 vCPUs. |
| Advanced (Cloud) | $0.60/mo | $0.60/hour per 4 vCPUs; adds customer-managed encryption keys and other enterprise security controls. |
| Self-Hosted Enterprise Free | Free | Free annual license for businesses under $10M in annual revenue; requires telemetry reporting and cannot be used to host CockroachDB as a service for third parties. |
| Self-Hosted Enterprise | Custom | Paid annual license required for businesses at or above $10M in annual revenue. |
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