Never paused, never metered
Paid plans: no idle sleep, no usage meters.
Most managed databases at the low end save money by switching your database off when it is quiet and charging by the unit when it is busy. Both show up as surprises: a cold start on the first request, a project paused after a week of no traffic, a bill that does not match the price page. A paid Lathe instance stays on when idle, and the price is the price. Free has a smaller traffic allowance.
Always on, always the same bill.
- No idle sleep on paid plans
- A paid machine runs whether or not anyone is querying it, so the first request after a quiet night is as fast as the thousandth. There is no wake-up and nothing to warm.
- No idle pauses on paid plans
- A quiet paid instance stays exactly as it was. Nothing pauses it after a fortnight of silence, and a client demo that has sat idle for a month connects first time.
- No usage meters
- Rows, queries, connections, CPU seconds and memory hours are not counted, so they cannot be billed. Traffic within the 20 TB allowance and storage within the disk are part of the machine.
- A full disk is handled, not billed
- You are told when the disk is filling and the instance turns read-only before it fills, so it never fills to zero and never corrupts itself. The fix is a bigger plan, chosen by you, not an automatic charge.
- Backups on the same schedule, quiet or busy
- On paid plans: a daily image, 7 kept, whether the instance served a million queries or none. Every month the latest one is restored to a temporary server and checked.
- Growing without a surprise
- Move up a plan when you want more; the difference for the rest of the period is charged pro rata and the new price applies from the next renewal. Nothing changes until you change it.
Good for
- A side project that must answer the first request quickly after a quiet day
- A client demo or a staging database that sits idle for weeks
- A small product whose owner wants the bill to be a known number
- Anything a paused project or a cold start has bitten before
Questions
Does an idle instance cost the same as a busy one?
Yes. The price is for the machine and the month, not for what you do with it. An instance that serves nothing costs the plan price; one that serves a million queries costs the plan price.
Why not scale to zero and save the money?
Because the saving is smaller than it looks and the cost lands on the first user each morning. A dedicated machine that is always on is what a database was for most of its history, and it costs from $15 a month here.
What happens when the disk fills up?
You get an email and a banner in the portal with a one-click upgrade well before it is full. If it keeps filling, the instance turns read-only rather than corrupting itself. Nothing is charged automatically.
Is there a free plan?
Yes: 0.5 vCPU, 1 GB RAM, 10 GB disk and 1000 GB of traffic a month, nothing to pay now or later, one per person, and no daily backups. It upgrades to Mini on the same machine, keeping everything on it. The paid plans are never paused for inactivity.
Every number on this page comes from the pricing page's facts.
On all month, one price, from $15.
Live about 5 minutes on average after creation on Free or checkout on a paid plan. Paid plans: cancel any time.
Start Free - $0