TiDB Cloud
Fully managed TiDB serverless with MySQL compatibility, horizontal scaling, and HTAP capabilities for hybrid transactional and analytical workloads.
Best for teams needing a MySQL-compatible database that scales horizontally and handles both transactions and analytics without separate systems.
Use Cases
Free Tier
Free Serverless tier — 5GiB storage, 50M read units, 50M write units per month
How to Maximize the Free Tier
TiDB Cloud Serverless free tier gives you 5GiB storage and generous read/write units — enough for most MVPs and prototypes. The free tier includes TiFlash for real-time analytics alongside TiKV for transactions, so you can run OLTP and OLAP from the same database. Use the MySQL wire protocol to connect with existing tools (mysql client, Workbench, ORMs). Monitor your RU consumption in the dashboard and optimize slow queries to stay within limits. Schema changes and DDL operations are online and non-blocking.
Getting Started
Sign up at tidbcloud.com → create a free Serverless cluster → select a region → copy the MySQL connection string → connect with any MySQL client or ORM → create your first table → import data or start writing queries.
Pros
- MySQL compatible: Wire-compatible with MySQL — existing drivers, ORMs, and SQL knowledge transfer directly
- HTAP built-in: TiFlash columnar engine runs real-time analytics alongside transactional workloads — no ETL pipeline needed
- Auto-scaling: Serverless tier scales storage and compute automatically — no manual sharding or capacity planning
Cons
- Read/write units: RU-based billing can be unpredictable — complex analytical queries consume more units than simple lookups
- Free tier limits: 5GiB storage and 50M units fill quickly with write-heavy or data-intensive applications
- Smaller ecosystem: Fewer third-party tools and integrations compared to MySQL or PostgreSQL — community is smaller