Different Starting Points, One Data Foundation: What’s New in TiDB Cloud

Key Takeaways

• TiDB Cloud Premium is announced for general availability, with customer availability in November 2026.
• BYOC and TiDB Cloud Filesystem enter public preview: managed TiDB Cloud in your own cloud account, and a persistent workspace for AI agents.
• PostgreSQL support on TiDB Cloud Starter opens in public preview to anyone, with no eligibility gate.
• PingCAP plans to open source the core code of TiDB X, the architecture behind TiDB Cloud, by the end of 2026.

Nobody approves a project called “add complexity.” It builds up one shard, one region, and one compliance requirement at a time, until a single database has turned into a fleet and the team running it has grown to match. Atlassian reached that point with Forge SQL, its hosted relational database service for developers, which ran on more than 750 PostgreSQL clusters. What’s new in TiDB Cloud this product release cycle solves this problem.

AI agents compress that timeline from years to months. In the past six months, agents created nearly three million database instances on TiDB Cloud Starter, the entry-level TiDB Cloud plan. The sprawl is familiar; the speed is new. Agentic applications also add a requirement most databases weren’t designed for: preserving an agent’s work so the next session can pick up where the last one stopped.

Enterprise applications and AI applications are converging on the same database requirements from opposite directions. Running both on one operational data foundation avoids adding a second database, duplicating skills, and multiplying the infrastructure and processes it takes to operate them.

Today at SCaiLE 2026, we’re announcing TiDB Cloud updates for both sides of that problem: the planned general availability of TiDB Cloud Premium, public previews of Bring Your Own Cloud (BYOC) and TiDB Cloud Filesystem, a public preview of PostgreSQL support on TiDB Cloud Starter, and a plan to open source the core code of TiDB X by the end of 2026. This post covers what each release includes, where it stands today, and how to decide which option fits your workload.

What’s New in TiDB Cloud at a Glance

TiDB Cloud adds one plan headed to general availability, three public previews, and an open-source commitment. Release stage matters when you plan a rollout, so the table below lists each announcement with its current status.

Announcement	Release Stage	What It’s For
TiDB Cloud Premium	GA announced; available to customers in November 2026	Business-critical applications that need isolated resources, automatic scaling, private connectivity, and customer-managed encryption keys
TiDB Cloud Essential	Public preview	Growing production applications that need control over provisioned compute capacity
BYOC	Public preview, available now	Organizations that want TiDB Cloud’s managed operations with data in their own cloud account
TiDB Cloud Filesystem	Public preview, available now	A persistent workspace that lets AI agents keep code, files, and results across sandboxes and sessions
PostgreSQL support on TiDB Cloud Starter	Public preview, open signup	PostgreSQL developers who want to build on TiDB with familiar tools
TiDB X core code	Open-source release planned by end of 2026	Inspecting and adapting the architecture behind TiDB Cloud

TiDB Cloud Starter remains generally available and is the entry point for the PostgreSQL preview. TiDB Cloud Dedicated remains available for teams that need broader cloud and regional coverage or configurable clusters. Starter, Essential, and Premium all run on TiDB X, the architecture that now powers TiDB Cloud.

Why Enterprise and AI Applications Need One Data Foundation

Established companies are adding AI and agentic capabilities to applications that already carry compliance requirements, established tooling, and years of operational history. They can’t discard what works to adopt what comes next. TiDB’s MySQL compatibility lets many existing applications move onto TiDB with minimal code changes. At Pinterest, adopting TiDB simplified the data infrastructure, enabled the retirement of several in-house systems, and reduced maintenance overhead, with infrastructure cost savings of around 50%.

Agent-native companies start from the other end. They create infrastructure at machine speed, then pick up conventional transactional requirements, such as user data, billing, reliability, and persistent state, as experiments turn into products. Manus has scaled to more than 1.5 million TiDB Cloud clusters to support the applications its agents create.

One side needs to become more agentic without building a parallel data stack. The other needs to become a durable business without rebuilding its data layer. Each of today’s announcements serves one or both of those paths.

Choosing How You Run TiDB Cloud: Starter, Essential, Premium, and BYOC

TiDB Cloud offers several operating models on a shared data foundation, so you can choose the capacity, isolation, and data control your workload needs. Starter covers on-demand development, Essential adds control over provisioned capacity, Premium isolates business-critical workloads, and BYOC keeps your data in your own cloud account.

TiDB Cloud Premium: Isolation for Business-Critical Workloads

TiDB Cloud Premium is announced for general availability today, with customer availability in November 2026. It’s built for business-critical applications that need elastic compute on resources isolated from other tenants. Three-zone availability and a 99.99% monthly uptime SLA help teams meet application reliability requirements as workloads grow. Premium also supports private connectivity.

TiDB Cloud Essential: Provisioned Capacity for Growing Applications

TiDB Cloud Essential, in public preview, is for growing production applications that need predictable performance and cost. You set a compute limit and TiDB Cloud scales automatically with demand, which reduces the need for manual capacity adjustments.

BYOC: Managed TiDB Cloud in Your Own Cloud Account

For applications with security, data residency, or governance requirements that call for customer-controlled infrastructure, TiDB Cloud BYOC (Bring Your Own Cloud) keeps the database in your cloud account while PingCAP manages database operations and routine maintenance. You retain control of the cloud account and application access. BYOC is in public preview and designed for existing TiDB Self-Managed customers who want to reduce operational work. Manus has expanded its use of BYOC alongside TiDB Cloud Filesystem. The BYOC onboarding guide walks through getting started.

Consolidation at Scale: Atlassian

Atlassian shows what running on one foundation looks like at enterprise scale. For Forge SQL, Atlassian consolidated more than 750 PostgreSQL clusters into 16 TiDB clusters that support more than three million tables. Vinod Kumar, VP and Head of Engineering at Atlassian, covers how Atlassian runs demanding enterprise workloads on a single data foundation in his SCaiLE 2026 keynote. For more on this pattern, see how TiDB supports multi-tenant SaaS platforms.

Which TiDB Cloud Option Fits Your Workload

Use the table below to match a requirement to a starting point. Plan details and pricing live on our pricing page.

If You Need…	Start With…
On-demand compute that scales to zero when idle, with a free usage quota, for building and prototyping	TiDB Cloud Starter (generally available)
To build on TiDB with PostgreSQL skills, drivers, and tools	PostgreSQL on TiDB Cloud Starter (public preview)
Control over provisioned compute capacity for a growing production application	TiDB Cloud Essential (public preview)
Isolated resources, private connectivity, and customer-managed encryption keys for business-critical workloads	TiDB Cloud Premium (available November 2026)
Managed database operations with data in your own cloud account	BYOC (public preview)
Broader cloud and regional coverage or configurable clusters today	TiDB Cloud Dedicated
To deploy, configure, and operate TiDB on infrastructure you manage, including on premises or air-gapped	TiDB Self-Managed

PostgreSQL Support on TiDB Cloud Starter

PostgreSQL support on TiDB Cloud Starter enters public preview today, with open signup and no eligibility gate. Anyone can sign up, create a PostgreSQL-compatible instance on Starter, and use it within the documented preview limits.

Until now, PostgreSQL has marked a boundary on where developers could start with TiDB. Teams with PostgreSQL skills, drivers, and tooling had to work in the MySQL ecosystem to use TiDB. This preview opens TiDB Cloud to teams building in the PostgreSQL ecosystem. PostgreSQL-compatible Starter supports SQL embedding generation, vector search, and full-text search, so developers can retrieve relevant context for agentic applications using familiar PostgreSQL clients and drivers.

PostgreSQL compatibility is currently available in public preview on Starter for development and evaluation, subject to documented limits. The preview has no production SLA and does not extend PostgreSQL compatibility to Premium or BYOC. Try PostgresSQL-compatible Starter on TiDB Cloud⁠.

TiDB Cloud Filesystem: A Persistent Workspace for AI Agents

TiDB Cloud Filesystem, now in public preview, gives AI agents a persistent workspace that outlasts the sandbox they run in. When an agent starts a new session in a new sandbox, its saved code, context files, and results are still there, so it continues from prior work instead of rebuilding.

Agents are temporary. Their work isn’t. A coding agent clones a repository, installs dependencies, runs tests, and writes patches, and all of it disappears when the sandbox ends. Rather than adding a separate file-storage layer beside the database, TiDB Cloud Filesystem persists that work on the same foundation as the rest of your agent data.

The public preview supports:

• Git workspace resume. Restore an agent’s saved Git working state in another sandbox instead of starting from a fresh clone.
• Shared files across workflows. Access the same files from supported sandboxes, local tools, and CI jobs.
• A coding-agent profile. Keep rebuildable directories such as node_modules local, and persist test results, failure logs, and patches.
• Search by name, content, or meaning. Enable embeddings with a supported provider and your own API key to search file contents semantically.
• Checkpoints and forks. Checkpoint a layer before an experiment, fork from the saved state, or roll back uncommitted changes.

During the preview, FUSE mounts buffer writes locally, so another runtime may not see changes immediately. Sync pending writes before handing off a workspace, since checkpoints include only synced changes.

Moonshot AI, the company behind Kimi, helped shape TiDB Cloud Filesystem and uses it to support coding-agent work across more than one million persistent filesystems. Using TiDB Cloud, Kimi has also reduced its data infrastructure costs by an order of magnitude.

Get started with TiDB Cloud Filesystem, then follow the sandbox handoff example to reuse saved work across sessions.

Open Sourcing the Core of TiDB X

PingCAP plans to open source the core code of TiDB X by the end of 2026. The move extends TiDB’s open-source commitment to its latest architecture, so teams can inspect and adapt the core technology they depend on and keep more control over their long-term data foundation.

“Every team should be able to start small on a data foundation that can grow with its ambitions,” said Max Liu, co-founder and CEO of TiDB. “TiDB has been battle-tested at extraordinary scale by large enterprises and frontier AI pioneers. We’re bringing the capabilities shaped by that experience into a managed cloud platform, so more organizations can scale on the same foundation without having to build the specialized teams and manage the infrastructure complexity behind it.”

Get Started With TiDB Cloud

Whether you start from an established application or an agent-built one, today’s releases let you change how you run TiDB as your requirements grow without changing the database underneath. Starter is the fastest way to see that for yourself, and it’s where both the MySQL-compatible and PostgreSQL preview paths begin.

Create a free TiDB Cloud Starter cluster and connect with the MySQL or PostgreSQL tools you already use.

Frequently Asked Questions

When is TiDB Cloud Premium available?

TiDB Cloud Premium was announced for general availability at SCaiLE 2026 on October 15, 2026, and becomes available to customers in November 2026. It’s built for business-critical applications that need isolated resources, automatic scaling, private connectivity, and customer-managed encryption keys. Teams that need broader cloud and regional coverage today can use TiDB Cloud Dedicated.

Who can use PostgreSQL support on TiDB Cloud Starter?

Anyone. The public preview has open signup and no eligibility gate, and usage is subject to the documented preview limits. PostgreSQL support is in public preview, not general availability, so review the preview limitations before running production workloads.

What is BYOC in TiDB Cloud?

BYOC (Bring Your Own Cloud) is a TiDB Cloud deployment option that keeps your data in your own cloud environment while TiDB Cloud manages database operations. You manage your data and control how applications access it. BYOC is in public preview.

What is TiDB Cloud Filesystem?

TiDB Cloud Filesystem is a persistent workspace for AI agents. It keeps code, files, saved Git state, and results available across sandboxes and sessions, so the next agent can continue where the last one stopped. It’s in public preview, and preview pricing and usage limits apply.

What’s the difference between TiDB Cloud Essential and Premium?

Essential, in public preview, gives growing applications control over provisioned compute: you set a compute limit and TiDB Cloud scales automatically with demand. Premium, available in November 2026, adds compute on resources isolated from other tenants, private connectivity, and customer-managed encryption keys for business-critical workloads that need predictable performance during bursts.

What is TiDB X?

TiDB X is the architecture that powers TiDB Cloud Starter, Essential, and Premium. PingCAP plans to open source the core code of TiDB X by the end of 2026.