Upstash vs SurrealDB
A detailed comparison to help you choose between Upstash and SurrealDB.
Quick Verdict
4.2/5
Upstash
0 reviews
3.6/5
SurrealDB
0 reviews
Upstash is rated higher (4.2 vs 3.6). Free tier includes 500,000 commands per month with 250 MB data (10,000 commands/sec is the throughput ceiling). SurrealDB is a multi-model database that handles relational, document, graph, and full-text queries in a single database. Schema-optional, built-in auth, and real-time subscriptions.
Upstash Serverless Redis, Kafka, QStash — per-request pricing | SurrealDB Multi-model database with built-in real-time sync and WebSocket support | |
|---|---|---|
| Overview | ||
| Rating | 4.2 (0 reviews)✓ | 3.6 (0 reviews) |
| Pricing model | freemium | freemium |
| Starting price | Free tier available | Free tier available |
| Best for | Serverless and edge developers needing caching, rate limiting, queues and agent state without running Redis | Teams building real-time, multi-model applications that would otherwise combine a document database, a search engine and a graph store |
| Specifications (entry plan) | ||
| CPU cores | — | 0 vCPU |
| RAM | — | 1 GB |
| Storage | 0 GB | 1 GB✓ |
| Bandwidth | 0 TB/mo | — |
| SLA uptime | — | — |
| Data-center count | — | 3 |
| €/GB RAM/mo | — | €0.00 |
| Features | ||
| IPv6 | ||
| DDoS protection | ||
| Automated backups | ✓ | |
| Snapshots | ||
| Managed option | ||
| Bare metal | ||
| GPU available | ||
| S3-compatible | ||
| Hourly billing | ✓ | |
| Free tier | ||
| Data-center locations | ||
| Regions | — | AWS Ireland (aws-euw1), AWS US East N. Virginia (aws-use1), AWS US West Oregon (aws-usw2) |
| Tags | ||
| Tags | free tierapi access | free tieropen sourceself hostableapi access |
| Visit Upstash → | Visit SurrealDB → | |
Upstash
Pros
- + Genuine free tier: 500K commands/month, 250 MB, no credit card — one of four providers offering that in 2026
- + Per-request pricing fits serverless perfectly: idle costs nothing, HTTP access avoids connection pooling
- + Transparent pricing with published crossover math; per-database budgets rate-limit instead of overbilling
- + Global replication across 14 AWS regions (EU, US, APAC, SA, ZA) with reads from the nearest replica
- + Broad platform beyond Redis: Vector, Search, QStash, Workflow, Box and S3-compatible Blob, each with a free tier
Cons
- - Redis-compatible, not full Redis — validate command semantics before migrating
- - 10,000 commands/sec per database ceiling; sharding across DBs is on you beyond that
- - No public SLA with credits found; availability is a status page, not a contract
- - Backups appear tied to the Prod Pack add-on (+$200/mo per database); base plans leave recovery to you
- - Per-replica command counting doubles write costs on global databases; incident retry storms inflate bills
SurrealDB
Pros
- + One engine for relational, document, graph, time-series and geospatial data, plus full-text and vector search
- + Transparent published rate table with a real free instance (0.25 vCPU, 1 GB memory, 1 GB storage)
- + Hourly billing keeps development and prototype instances cheap
- + Granular permissions at table, document and field level defined in the schema
- + Self-hostable under BSL 1.1 with open-source (Apache 2.0 / MIT) SDKs as an exit path
Cons
- - Young database: 1.0 in 2023 and the storage engine is still being replaced
- - Only three AWS regions (Ireland, N. Virginia, Oregon) — nothing in APAC
- - Smaller ecosystem, tooling and hiring pool than PostgreSQL or MongoDB
- - Scale plan requires a three-node minimum; several advertised features are still marked coming soon
- - Custom SLAs only at Enterprise tier; backup retention policy for free instances is ambiguous in the docs
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