65 articles on database — what drives the cost, how it is priced, and where the savings actually are.
AlloyDB bills compute per vCPU-hour and memory, plus regional storage per GB-month with no separate I/O charge, plus backups. It is a PostgreSQL-compatible database aimed at demanding workloads. Here is how it prices versus Cloud SQL.
Timestream bills writes per million, storage in a fast memory tier (per GB-hour) and a cheap magnetic tier (per GB-month), and queries per GB scanned. Tuning retention between tiers and scanning less are the levers. Here is the model.
Cosmos DB serverless bills per request unit (RU) consumed plus storage, with no provisioned throughput to pay for when idle. It suits spiky or low-traffic workloads; steady high traffic is cheaper on provisioned throughput. Here is how to choose.
A read replica adds a full instance cost to offload reads and improve read latency, but it does not help writes and adds replication lag. Knowing when a replica pays off, versus caching or a bigger primary, is the decision. Here is the framework.
Every database connection consumes memory on the server, so without pooling you scale the database up just to hold connections. A pooler like PgBouncer or RDS Proxy lets a small database serve many clients. Here is the cost-performance case.
Spanner bills compute as nodes (about $0.90/node/hour) or processing units (100 PU = a tenth of a node), plus $0.30 per GB-month of storage, backup, and egress. Processing units let you start small. Here is how to size and control the bill.
Firestore bills per document operation (reads about $0.06 per 100k, writes about $0.18, deletes about $0.02) plus storage and egress, with a daily free tier. Query patterns, not data size, drive the bill. Here is how to keep operations down.
DocumentDB bills like Aurora: instance hours per node, $0.10 per GB-month of storage, and $0.20 per million I/O requests. On a busy cluster the I/O line often rivals compute. Here is the full breakdown and where to cut.
Neptune charges per instance hour (or per NCU on Serverless), $0.10 per GB-month of storage, and $0.20 per million I/O. Serverless scales to your load; provisioned is cheaper when load is steady. Here is how to choose and control the bill.
Bigtable bills nodes (~$474/month each, minimum one) + storage. The node floor makes it expensive below scale. Here's how to tune nodes, SSD vs HDD, and when a cheaper datastore wins.
DynamoDB cost is throughput + storage + GSIs + extras. Here's how to cut it: match capacity mode to traffic, prune unused indexes, set TTL, and use Standard-IA for cold tables.
Flexible Server bills compute by tier (Burstable ~$12/mo, General Purpose, Memory Optimized) + storage. HA doubles compute. Here's how to pick the tier, when to skip HA, and how reservations and stop/start cut the bill.
DTU bundles compute/storage/IO simply; vCore separates them and unlocks Azure Hybrid Benefit and reserved capacity. Here's which is cheaper for your database and when to switch.
AlloyDB costs more per vCPU than Cloud SQL but is much faster for analytical workloads, so it can need less compute for the same performance. Here's how each bills and which to pick.
Cosmos DB bills by provisioned RU/s (~$0.008 per 100 RU/s-hour) times region count. Over-provisioned throughput and needless multi-region writes are the big overspends. Here's how to right-size and which throughput model to pick.
SQL Managed Instance has a 4-vCore minimum, so even an idle instance starts around $1,460/month on General Purpose. Here's the full pricing breakdown, the Business Critical premium, and the four levers that actually cut the bill.
RDS is cheaper per instance hour; Aurora has more efficient storage and built-in replicas. Here's when each one wins, including Aurora I/O Optimized, Aurora Serverless v2, and Reserved Capacity options.