diff --git a/website/blog/posts/2026-03-24-electric-cloud-pricing.md b/website/blog/posts/2026-03-24-electric-cloud-pricing.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000000..9d4a1b71c9 --- /dev/null +++ b/website/blog/posts/2026-03-24-electric-cloud-pricing.md @@ -0,0 +1,212 @@ +--- +title: '...' +description: >- + ... +excerpt: >- + ... +authors: [balegas] +image: /img/blog/electric-cloud-pricing/header.jpg +tags: [cloud, pricing] +outline: [2, 3] +post: true +published: false +--- + + + +Electric Cloud now has self-serve pricing. Sign up, pick a plan, start building — no sales call needed. + +Pricing is usage-based: you pay for writes and retention. Data delivery — reads, fan-out, concurrent users — is free, unlimited, and always will be. The PAYG plan waives bills under $5/month — that's 5 million writes per month for free. Most hobby and simple production apps will run for free forever. + +:::info Key links +- [Sign up for Electric Cloud](https://dashboard.electric-sql.cloud) +- [Pricing details and calculator](/pricing) +- [Electric Cloud docs](/docs) +::: + +## Context + + + +Electric Cloud has been running production workloads for months — long enough to be confident in the platform's reliability and cost structure. Cloud has evolved from a managed Postgres sync engine into a broader real-time data platform built on [durable streams](/products/durable-streams). + +We know many professional teams need to see published pricing before they commit to a platform. Now it's here. + +## How pricing works + + + +### The model + +Two base billing dimensions: writes and retention. + +- **$1 per million writes** to any stream. Each write is up to 10KB; larger messages auto-chunk. +- **$0.10 per GB-month** retention. +- **No charge** for reads, egress, fan-out, concurrent users, connections, or data delivery. + +Some services that run additional infrastructure have a service cost on top of the base write rate. [Postgres Sync](/products/postgres-sync) runs a dedicated replication engine to filter changes and match them to shapes. This has an additional cost of $2 per million writes emitted to the shape log. You're charged for the filtered output, not the raw replication input — one Postgres change landing on 100 shapes = 100 writes. + +See the [pricing page](/pricing) for the full breakdown and worked examples. + +### The tiers + + + +- **PAYG** — $0/month. No commitment, no credit card upfront. Bills under $5/month waived. +- **Pro** — $249/month (6-month commitment). 10% usage discount. Monthly fee acts as prepaid usage credit — you're not paying twice. Unlocks advanced features including hosted sub-queries for Postgres Sync and premium support. +- **Scale** — $1,999/month (12-month commitment). 20% usage discount. Same prepaid credit model. Direct access to founders and hands-on support to accelerate your time to market. + +All tiers include unlimited reads and delivery. + +### Why reads are free + + + +Electric delivers data through existing CDN infrastructure. Caching and request-collapsing handle concurrency at the edge — reads don't hit origin. + +Your costs scale with your writes — the data going in — not with your users or traffic. A stream with 10 readers costs the same as one with 10,000. + +## What it costs in practice + + + +### AI chat app with token streams + + + +Assumptions: 1,000 MAU, ~30 conversations per user per month, AI responses streamed as ~50 writes each (~500 tokens chunked at ~10 tokens per write). + +- Writes: 1,000 × 30 × 50 = **1.5M writes/month** +- Retention: ~1GB of stream history → $0.10 +- **Total: ~$1.60/month → waived on PAYG** + +At 10,000 MAU that's ~15M writes, $15/month. At 100,000 MAU, ~150M writes — on Pro with the 10% discount, $135/month, covered by the $249 prepaid credit. + +All the users *reading* those streams cost nothing. 100 users or 100,000 users on the same stream — same price. + +### Real-time SaaS dashboard with Postgres Sync + + + +Assumptions: 500 active users on a project management-style dashboard, syncing a handful of shapes each. + +- Initial shape loads are served from the CDN cache after the first request — reads are free. +- Database changes: 50,000 row changes/month, average change matches 10 shapes = 500,000 emitted writes. +- Replication cost: 500K writes × $3/M = $1.50 +- Shape log writes from initial queries: ~1M rows → $1.00 +- Retention: ~2GB → $0.20 +- **Total: ~$2.70/month → waived on PAYG** + +One Postgres change landing on 100 shapes = 100 writes — but you're only charged for what gets emitted after filtering, not the raw replication traffic. + +## Get started + + + +Sign up at [dashboard.electric-sql.cloud](https://dashboard.electric-sql.cloud) — start on PAYG, free below $5, no credit card required. See all the details on the [pricing page](/pricing), including a calculator to model your workload. + +Already on Electric Cloud? You'll have received (or will receive) an email confirming when billing is enabled for your workspace. + +*** + +- [Sign up for Electric Cloud](https://dashboard.electric-sql.cloud) +- [Pricing details and calculator](/pricing) + + + + +