Editorial take
Why it stands out
CockroachDB should be judged against the pain of scaling and operating business-critical relational systems, not against the simplest possible hobby-database pricing.
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Tool profile
Distributed SQL database with PostgreSQL compatibility, strong resilience features, and a managed cloud service that starts free and scales into provisioned production tiers.
Distributed operational databases for high-availability applications
CockroachDB is a high-value addition because it solves a very specific operational problem: teams that want relational SQL semantics but also want a database designed around distribution, resilience, and multi-region behavior from the beginning. That makes it especially relevant for teams building customer-facing applications where availability and geographic scale matter more than the lowest possible single-node simplicity.
CockroachDB Cloud's pricing is much more explicit than many distributed-database vendors. The Basic plan starts at $0/month with 50 million request units and 10 GiB storage free per month. Standard starts at $0.18 per hour for 2 vCPUs, and Advanced starts at $0.60 per hour for 4 vCPUs, with broader security and scaling features. The open-source database also remains free to self-host. That makes CockroachDB both an OSS database choice and a managed operational database buy, depending on the team's maturity.
Quick fit
Editorial take
CockroachDB should be judged against the pain of scaling and operating business-critical relational systems, not against the simplest possible hobby-database pricing.
What it does well
Primary use cases
Fit notes
Compare with
Pressure-test this pick against nearby alternatives.
Pricing snapshot
CockroachDB Cloud Basic starts at $0/month and includes 50 million request units plus 10 GiB storage free per month. Standard starts at $0.18/hour for 2 vCPUs, Advanced starts at $0.60/hour for 4 vCPUs, and CockroachDB's open-source core remains free to self-host.
Alation
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Enterprise data intelligence and catalog platform for search, governance, trust, and AI-ready knowledge layers over organizational data.
Choose Alation when the buying problem is enterprise trust, governance, and discoverability across data assets.
