Best Prisma Postgres alternatives (2026)
Prisma Postgres scores 81/100 in Databases & backends. Here are 14 alternatives ranked by the same evidence-based score, with pricing and free tiers side by side. Rankings are never for sale.
| Tool | Score | Free tier | Open source | Pricing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Prisma Postgres (current pick) | 81 | Yes: 200K operations/mo, 2 GB storage, 50 databases, no card | No | Starter $10/mo (1M operations, then $8 per million; 10 GB, then $2/GB; spend limits); Pro $49/mo (10M ops, 50 GB); Business $129/mo (50M ops, 100 GB, HIPAA/SOC 2) |
| Supabase | 93 | Yes: 2 projects, 500 MB DB, 50K MAU, 1 GB storage (pauses after 1 week idle) | Yes | Pro from $25/mo per org (includes $10 compute credit) |
| Neon | 86 | Yes: 100 projects, 1 GB storage per project, 100 CU-hours/project/mo | Yes | Launch: usage-based, no monthly minimum ($0.106/CU-hour, $0.35/GB-month) |
| Convex | 84 | Yes: Free plan with hard resource caps | Yes | Professional $25/developer/mo; Starter $0 base plus pay-as-you-go |
| Appwrite | 80 | Yes: 75K MAU, 2 GB storage, 5 GB bandwidth, 750K executions; 2 projects, paused after 1 week idle | Yes | Pro from $25/mo per project (+$15/extra project); 200K MAU included, then $3 per 1,000 |
| Firebase | 77 | Yes: Spark plan with no-cost quotas (e.g. Firestore 1 GiB, 50K reads/day) | No | Blaze: pay as you go above free quotas |
| PocketBase | 77 | Yes: free to self-host (no hosted plan) | Yes | Free and open source (MIT); you pay only for your own server. No official hosting. |
| Turso | 77 | Yes: 100 databases, 5 GB, 500M row reads/mo, no card | Yes | Developer $5.99/mo ($4.99 annual) |
| MongoDB Atlas | 76 | Yes: M0 free forever, 512 MB storage, up to 100 ops/sec (no backups) | No | Flex $0.011/hr, about $8–$30/mo depending on ops/sec; Dedicated from $0.08/hr (M10, from ~$56.94/mo) |
| Nhost | 76 | Yes: Starter is free with 1 project, 1 GB database, 1 GB storage and 5 GB egress (the project pauses after 1 week of inactivity) | Yes | Starter free (1 project). Pro from $25/mo with $15 compute credits included: 10 GB database (then $0.20/GB), 50 GB storage, 50 GB egress, daily backups. Team from $599/mo. Enterprise custom |
| Cloudflare D1 | 75 | Yes: 5M rows read/day, 100K rows written/day, 5 GB total (500 MB per database, 10 databases) | No | Workers Paid $5/mo account minimum: 25B rows read and 50M rows written/mo included (then $0.001/M reads, $1.00/M writes), 5 GB included then $0.75/GB-mo |
| Upstash | 71 | Yes: 250 MB and 500K commands/mo | No | Pay as you go: $0.20 per 100K commands |
| Xata | 71 | No: 14-day free trial on Xata Cloud (no card); open source self-hosting is free | Yes | Xata Cloud pay as you go from $0.012/hr (micro, ~$9/mo) + $0.28/GB-month storage; no per-branch or per-seat fees; BYOC quoted |
| PlanetScale | 69 | No | No | From $5/mo (single-node Postgres PS-5); HA from $15/mo |
| Busabase | 66 | Yes: free cloud plan and free self-hosting | Yes | Open source self-hosted free; Cloud Free $0 (1 space, 3 seats, 5,000 records per space); paid from $10/seat/mo billed yearly ($120/seat/yr) |
Why switch from Prisma Postgres?
Very agent-friendly: one command creates a database with no account, and pricing is simple per-query with no egress fees and hard spend limits. The hosted service is proprietary (only the ORM is open source), and the free tier has no backups.
The alternatives in detail
Best for: Default backend for vibe-coded apps (Lovable, Bolt, v0 integrations)
Best for: Serverless Postgres with instant branches for previews and agents
Best for: TypeScript apps that need realtime data with minimal backend code
Best for: An open-source, self-hostable Firebase alternative
Best for: Mobile and realtime apps that want a Google-managed backend
Best for: Small and mid-size apps that want a free, portable backend on one cheap VPS
Best for: Lightweight SQLite apps and database-per-user designs
Best for: Apps with flexible, nested JSON data or that need vector search next to app data
Best for: Builders who want a Supabase-style all-in-one Postgres backend but prefer a GraphQL API
Best for: Apps already on Cloudflare Workers or Pages that want a cheap SQL database with no servers
Best for: Caching, rate limiting and queues in serverless apps
Best for: Teams running many coding agents or previews that each need an isolated copy of a production Postgres database
Best for: Production databases that need performance and HA
Best for: Teams running several agents who want agent output stored as reviewable data instead of scattered chat logs