Free Database for Developers

2022-08-11

There’re many open-source softwares like Umami Analytics, Miniflux RSS Reader and n8n your can self-host on your own server, or use a free service like Vercel, Railway or Fly.io:

VercelRailwayFly.ioSupabaseCockroachDB*
HostingYesYesYesN/AN/A
DockerN/AYesYesN/AN/A
Free PostgreSQL StorageN/A1GB3GB500MB5GB

*CockroachDB is compatible with PostgreSQL.

If the software you want to deploy supports Vercel (such as Umami Analytics), you still need to get a database from other database providers. Similarly, if you use Supabase as the database provider, you need to use another hosting service.

Railway is the most convenient solution among the above options, you can deploy a service right from GitHub and create a database for it to use, no coding required. If 1GB of storage is not enough, you can create a database on Fly.io instead, you’ll have to create the database from CLI manually, but it won’t take you more than a few minutes. And you can actually deploy any type of database on Fly.io, be it PostgreSQL, MySQL or ClickHouse, you name it. Another option is CockroachDB, which is compatible with PostgreSQL.

If your project outgrows those free options and you can’t afford their premium plans, you can give Caprover a try. It’s a free and open-source PaaS (like Railway) for deploying services on your own servers, you can throw a few bucks to DigitalOcean or Hetzner to purchase a relatively powerful VPS and host your projects on it.