Upstash Pricing 2026: Redis Free Tier, Pay-as-You-Go and Fixed Plans

Upstash Redis is free up to 500K commands and 250 MB a month, then $0.20 per 100K commands on pay-as-you-go, or a flat Fixed plan from $10 a month for 250 MB with unlimited commands. By our arithmetic, Fixed 250MB beats pay-as-you-go once a database passes 5 million commands a month, about two commands a second around the clock. Prices were read on Upstash's pricing page on October 26, 2026.

The break-even is the number to carry. Below it, usage billing is cheaper and a budget cap stops surprises; above it, a Fixed plan is cheaper and the bill stops moving with traffic. Everything else on this page is the detail that shifts that line: storage above 1 GB, read regions, bandwidth and the Prod Pack add-on.

All figures are USD, from Upstash's Redis pricing page and its pricing docs, both read October 26, 2026. Upstash also sells Vector, QStash and Workflow with their own meters, and Vector appears in our free vector databases list; this page covers Redis, which is what most buyers price first.

Toolradar data: Toolradar, the software directory we run, tracks 658 data and database tools as of October 25, 2026, and the median cheapest paid plan across the 139 that publish a price is $49 a month. Upstash's cheapest flat plan is a fifth of that median, and it sits with the 64% of tools in the category that offer a free or freemium tier. Its record is Upstash on Toolradar, and the product itself is covered in our Upstash review.

Plan	Price	Data size	Monthly bandwidth	Commands	Who it fits
Free	$0	250 MB	10 GB	500K a month	Prototypes and one hobby database
Pay as you go	$0.20 per 100K commands, $0.25 per GB above 1 GB	Up to 100 GB	200 GB free, then $0.03 per GB	Unlimited	Variable or low traffic, with a budget cap
Fixed 250MB	$10 a month, plus $5 per read region	250 MB	50 GB	Unlimited	Steady traffic above the break-even
Fixed 1GB	$20 a month, plus a per-region fee	1 GB	100 GB	Unlimited	A busy cache or session store
Fixed 5GB to Fixed 500GB	$100 to $1,500 a month	5 GB to 500 GB	500 GB to 20 TB	Unlimited	Larger datasets at a flat price
Prod Pack	Plus $200 a month per database	Any paid plan	As the plan	As the plan	Uptime SLA, multi-zone HA, SOC 2 report
Enterprise	Custom	Up to 10 TB	Unlimited	100K+ per second	HIPAA, dedicated resources, VPC peering

How Upstash bills: commands, storage, bandwidth

Pay-as-you-go meters three things. Commands cost $0.20 per 100K, reads and writes alike, and operational commands such as AUTH, PING and INFO are not counted. Storage is free for the first 1 GB per database and $0.25 per GB after that, measured as the daily average of total data across every replica and region. Bandwidth is free up to 200 GB a month and $0.03 per GB beyond. There is no monthly minimum, and a paid account's first 10 databases carry no per-database charge; the eleventh onward costs $0.50 a month each, up to 100.

Fixed plans meter none of those. You pay the flat price for a data-size ceiling, a bandwidth allowance and a throughput limit, with no command count at all. Pay-as-you-go, Free and Fixed 250MB all cap at 10,000 commands a second, and Upstash says there is no performance difference between plans inside the limits; the higher Fixed tiers raise the limits, not the speed. A Fixed database is charged pro rata for the days it exists, used or not, where a pay-as-you-go database that sits idle costs nothing.

The two models fail differently at the ceiling. On pay-as-you-go, bandwidth and storage have no hard limit, so the bill grows; the optional budget cap emails you at 70% and 90% and rate-limits the database rather than charge past it. On a Fixed plan, hitting the storage or bandwidth limit either auto-upgrades the database to the next tier, if you enabled that, or blocks writes and traffic until you act.

Where Fixed beats pay-as-you-go, computed

Dividing each Fixed price by the pay-as-you-go rate per 100K commands gives the monthly command count at which the flat plan costs the same as usage billing. Everything above that count is cheaper on Fixed.

Fixed plan	Break-even commands a month	Average rate, 30-day month	Storage check
Fixed 250MB	5 million	About 1.9 a second	250 MB fits inside pay-as-you-go's free 1 GB, so storage does not shift the line
Fixed 1GB	10 million	About 3.9 a second	Same: 1 GB is free on pay-as-you-go
Fixed 5GB	49.5 million	About 19 a second	Pay-as-you-go would also charge $1 for the 4 GB above the free 1 GB, which pulls the line down from 50 million

At 5 million commands a month, the two plans cost the same; at 20 million, pay-as-you-go costs $40 against the flat Fixed 250MB price. Those counts are our arithmetic on Upstash's printed rates, before tax. A cache that serves a page with five Redis calls at 30,000 pageviews a day sends about 4.5 million commands a month, right at the line, which is why the pattern of your reads matters more than your dataset size for most apps.

Two things move the line. A global database with one read region doubles every write on pay-as-you-go, because the replicated write is billed as a second command, while the same region costs a flat $5 extra on Fixed 250MB. And a Fixed plan has a bandwidth allowance where pay-as-you-go gives 200 GB free, so a 250 MB dataset that moves 40 GB a month fits Fixed 250MB, but one that moves 150 GB needs the 500 GB allowance of Fixed 5GB or usage billing, where it is still inside the free 200 GB.

What four workloads cost

Each row applies the printed rates to a stated workload for a 30-day month, our arithmetic, one region, no Prod Pack.

Workload	Commands a month	Data	Pay-as-you-go	Best Fixed plan	Cheaper option
Side project rate limiter	400K	20 MB	$0, inside the Free tier	None needed	Free
Session store for a small SaaS	3 million	150 MB	$6	Fixed 250MB, $10	Pay-as-you-go, by $4
Cache in front of an API	20 million	200 MB	$40	Fixed 250MB, same flat price	Fixed, by $30
Queue plus cache with a bigger dataset	8 million	3 GB	$16.50, with $0.50 of storage	Fixed 5GB, $100	Pay-as-you-go, by $83.50

The last row is the one that surprises people. A 3 GB dataset is too big for Fixed 1GB, and the next step is Fixed 5GB at $100, so a moderate command count with a mid-size dataset is far cheaper on usage billing even with storage charged. The Fixed ladder is priced for data size, not traffic: it rewards small, hot datasets and punishes large, quiet ones. Our free database hosting list covers where a large but quiet dataset is cheaper to keep.

The Free tier and the no-signup database

The Free tier gives one database with 250 MB, 10 GB of bandwidth and 500K commands a month, which Upstash pitches for prototypes and hobby projects. Adding a card moves the database to pay-as-you-go and lifts the limits; once on a paid plan, the first 250 MB and 500K commands are no longer free, so a database that barely crosses the line pays from the first command.

Upstash also hands out a free Redis database with no signup at all: a POST request to its start-redis endpoint returns credentials and a quickstart as markdown, built for coding agents. The database is deleted after 3 days unless you claim it into an account, after which normal pricing applies. Free trials beyond the Free tier are available on request for proofs of concept.

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Prod Pack, Enterprise and the retired Pro plans

Prod Pack costs $200 a month per database on any paid plan and is what Upstash recommends for production. It adds an uptime SLA, multi-zone high availability, encryption at rest, a SOC 2 Type 2 report, role-based access control, and monitoring through Prometheus, Grafana, Datadog and New Relic. On a Fixed plan the extra write replication for multi-zone HA counts only toward the bandwidth allowance; on pay-as-you-go a replicated write is still one billed command.

That add-on changes the shape of the bill more than any plan choice. A Fixed 250MB database goes from its flat price to $210 with Prod Pack, and a pay-as-you-go database that cost $6 becomes $206, so the decision is whether you need the SLA and the compliance paper, not which plan you are on. Enterprise is priced by quote and bundles Prod Pack for every database with HIPAA, VPC peering, SSO, unlimited databases and a technical account manager.

Upstash's FAQ also records a change worth knowing if you are comparing an older quote: the Pro 2K and Pro 10K dedicated plans, at $280 and $680 a month, are deprecated and replaced by pay-as-you-go, Fixed plans and Prod Pack. A team that budgeted for a Pro plan can now pay a Fixed price plus the Prod Pack fee for the same high-availability guarantee.

The lines that change the bill

• Storage above 1 GB. $0.25 per GB on pay-as-you-go, counted across replicas and regions, so a global database stores its data twice. Setting EXPIRE on cache keys is Upstash's own advice for keeping it down.
• Read regions. $5 per region on Fixed 250MB, rising with the tier to $750 on Fixed 500GB; on pay-as-you-go, each region adds a billed copy of every write.
• Bandwidth. Free to 200 GB a month on usage billing, then $0.03 per GB; a fixed allowance per Fixed tier, from 50 GB to 20 TB.
• Extra databases. Free for the first 10 on a paid account, $0.50 a month each beyond, up to 100.
• Request and record sizes. 10 MB per request and 100 MB per record on the standard plans, 500 MB and 5 GB on Enterprise; oversized requests are rejected.
• Deleting early. Fixed plans are charged for the days the database existed; pay-as-you-go only for what ran.

How Upstash compares with running Redis elsewhere

Upstash's model is unusual in charging per command, which is what makes it cheap for low-traffic serverless apps and expensive for chatty ones. A function on a platform priced per request, such as the ones in our Cloudflare Workers pricing explainer, that calls Redis over HTTP a few thousand times a day pays cents; a hot cache behind a busy API crosses the Fixed break-even within days. Platforms that bill compute by the hour, covered in our Railway vs Fly.io and Fly.io pricing pages, charge the same whether the Redis inside them is idle or saturated, so a self-hosted Redis on a small container is the usual comparison above the break-even.

For a Postgres-shaped workload the cheaper comparison is a serverless database that bills compute time, such as the plans in our Neon pricing explainer, and for a wider set of hosted options the best backend-as-a-service and best serverless platforms lists put Upstash's model next to its rivals.

Which Upstash plan should you pay for?

Stay on Free for a prototype that stays under 500K commands and 250 MB; it costs nothing and needs no card.

Pick pay-as-you-go for anything under about 5 million commands a month, for traffic that swings, or for a dataset above 1 GB with a moderate command count. Set the budget cap on day one.

Pick Fixed 250MB or Fixed 1GB once a database runs above the break-even every month and its data fits the tier: the price stops tracking traffic, and a read region is a flat per-region fee rather than a doubled write bill.

Add Prod Pack only when a customer, an auditor or an on-call rotation needs the SLA, multi-zone HA or the SOC 2 report; its monthly fee alone costs more than most small databases do.

How we checked these prices

We read Upstash's Redis pricing page, including its plan comparison, all seven Fixed tiers and the FAQ, and its Redis pricing docs, on October 26, 2026. Break-even counts and workload costs are our arithmetic on those printed rates for a 30-day month in one region, before tax; the pageview example assumes five commands per page and is an illustration, not a benchmark. The Toolradar figures come from its data and databases ranking. Prices change, so check the pricing page before you commit.

Cite this: Devshot, "Upstash Pricing 2026: Redis Free Tier, Pay-as-You-Go and Fixed Plans", November 2026.

FAQ

How much does Upstash cost?

Upstash Redis is free up to 500K commands and 250 MB a month. Pay-as-you-go costs $0.20 per 100K commands plus a per-GB charge for storage above 1 GB, with no minimum. Fixed plans run from $10 a month for 250 MB to $1,500 for 500 GB with unlimited commands, and the Prod Pack add-on is $200 a month per database, as of October 26, 2026.

When does an Upstash Fixed plan beat pay-as-you-go?

At 5 million commands a month for Fixed 250MB and 10 million for Fixed 1GB, by our arithmetic on the pay-as-you-go rate. Above those counts the flat plan is cheaper; below them, usage billing is. A dataset larger than the Fixed tier's limit forces a bigger tier, which moves the line up sharply.

Is Upstash free?

Yes, for one database with 250 MB, 10 GB of bandwidth and 500K commands a month, with no card. There is also a no-signup database that lasts 3 days unless claimed. Once you add a card, the free allowance ends and every command and gigabyte is billed at the paid rates.

What is Upstash's Prod Pack?

A $200-a-month add-on per database, available on any paid plan, that adds an uptime SLA, multi-zone high availability, encryption at rest, a SOC 2 Type 2 report, role-based access control and monitoring integrations. Upstash recommends it for production and bundles it into Enterprise.

Does Upstash charge for bandwidth or storage?

On pay-as-you-go, storage is $0.25 per GB above a free 1 GB per database, and bandwidth is free up to 200 GB a month, then $0.03 per GB. Fixed plans include a storage ceiling and a bandwidth allowance in the flat price and bill neither separately.

Do read regions cost extra on Upstash?

Yes. A Fixed plan adds a flat fee per read region, $5 on Fixed 250MB and double that on Fixed 1GB. On pay-as-you-go, every write is replicated to each read region and each copy is billed as a command, so 100K writes with one read region cost $0.40, twice the single-region rate.

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