Cost and Limitations
Free Quota
We’re offering a free quota up to the first 5 instances created in each Organization. If you need to create the 6th instance, you need to create a Scalable Instance. For this, you’ll be required to provide a credit card and set a Spending Limit. But if you delete some of your previous instance before creating the 6th, the new instance will still have a free quota. In other words, customers can enjoy the free quota for up to 5 instances, whether it’s Free Instance or Scalable Instance.
Free Quota will be issued monthly to TiDB Cloud Starter instances that meet these qualifications. With the free quota, customers can store 5 GiB of row-based data, 5 GiB of columnar data, and consume 50 million RUs for one month.
In total, each Organization can get 25 GiB of row storage, 25 GiB of column storage, and 250M Request Units (RUs) for free per month. Customers can take advantage of this offer and optimize your operations without worrying about initial costs.
Instance Capacity
Each TiDB Cloud Starter organization includes Instance Capacity for up to 100 active instances and branches at no additional charge.
If your organization needs more than 100 active instances and branches, an Instance Capacity charge may apply. This charge helps support large-scale instance management, scheduling, and operational capacity for high-volume use cases such as agent platforms.
For pricing and higher capacity needs, please contact us.
Spending Limit
The “Spending Limit” refers to the maximum amount of money that you are willing to spend on a particular workload in a month. It is a cost-control mechanism that enables you to set a budget for your TiDB Cloud Starter instances. For Scalable instances, the spending limit must be set to a minimum of $0.01. Also, the scalable instance can have a free quota if it meets the qualifications. The scalable instance with a free quota will consume the free quota first.
Note: It is impossible to set a spending limit value lower than the amount already spent for the current month.
Throttled
A Scalable instance will not be throttled unless the spending limit is reached. Once the spending limit is reached, the instance immediately denies any new connection attempts until the quota is increased or the usage is reset at the start of a new month. Existing connections established before reaching the quota will remain active but will experience throttling.
If the free quota of a Free instance is exhausted within the month, the instance will automatically be throttled. This limit will remain in place until the customer upgrade it to Scalable instance or until the next month.
In this way, customers can ensure basic business continuity without paying additional fees. At the same time, customers can adjust the spending limit according to their needs to control their usage and costs.
Billing Cycle
Each TiDB Cloud bill, corresponding to the previous month’s usage, is finalized at the start of every new month. This finalized bill is then charged to your default payment method, typically occurring between the 3rd and 9th day of the respective month. If your usage within the current month reaches or exceeds $500, an automatic charge will be initiated. Please note that the billing cycle operates strictly in accordance with the UTC (+00:00) time zone.