Time-Series Databases
TigerData pricing: what’s included in Free vs Performance vs Scale, and what will we actually pay?
11 min read
Understanding TigerData pricing starts with one core principle: you pay for the services you run, not for every query, row, or gigabyte that crosses the wire. There are no per-query fees, no ingest/egress penalties, and no surprise line items for “data scans.” Just Postgres services with clear plans—Free, Performance, Scale, and Enterprise—and transparent monthly billing.
Quick Answer: TigerData’s Free tier lets you run up to two managed Postgres+Timescale services at no cost while you prototype. Performance and Scale plans add more CPU, storage, HA options, and support, billed in a straightforward, consumption-based way. You’re charged for active services, not for queries or data transfer.
The Quick Overview
- What It Is: A transparent pricing model for Tiger Cloud, TigerData’s fully managed Postgres + TimescaleDB platform for telemetry, time-series, events, and analytics.
- Who It Is For: Teams building on Postgres who need to handle high-ingest telemetry at real-life scale, without stitching together Kafka, Flink, and multiple storage layers—and who want billing they can actually predict.
- Core Problem Solved: Avoid the “it worked but it was fragile and expensive” trap: hidden per-query billing, separate ingest fees, and multi-system pipelines that are hard to run and even harder to budget.
How TigerData pricing actually works
Tiger Cloud pricing is built around services, plans, and resources—not around query counts or data transfer. You choose a plan (Free, Performance, Scale, or Enterprise), create one or more database services, and then configure:
- A compute shape (vCPU/RAM)
- Storage (including how much, with automatic tiering options)
- Optional add-ons (HA, read replicas, production support, etc., depending on plan)
You’re then billed monthly in arrears for:
- Active services (compute + storage)
- Any explicitly enabled add-ons
- Any cloud-provider–specific extras you turn on yourself (e.g., AWS PrivateLink, if applicable)
You are not billed for:
- Number of queries
- Ingest or egress data volume
- Automated backups
Important: You are charged for all active standard services in your account, even if you are not actively using them. To reduce costs, pause or delete unused services from Tiger Console.
The lifecycle looks like this:
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Start with Free or a 30-day trial of Performance/Scale
- Create up to two free services or activate a 30-day free trial of Performance or Scale (no credit card required).
- Use the same Postgres-native tools and TimescaleDB features you get in paid plans, but on smaller shapes and without advanced support/SLAs.
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Upgrade/downgrade plans as you scale
- When you hit limits, you can move between Performance and Scale in Tiger Console yourself.
- If you need Enterprise (larger fleets, stricter compliance, dedicated support), you contact TigerData directly for a quote.
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Pay only for what’s running
- Billing is prorated if you change plans mid-month.
- Because there are no per-query or ingest charges, your cost curve is tied to the number and size of services, not spiky workload patterns.
What’s included in Free vs Performance vs Scale
Below is a conceptual breakdown to clarify what you get and what you actually pay for at each level. Exact CPU, storage, and price points are determined in Tiger Console and/or AWS Marketplace, but the structure and inclusions are consistent.
Free tier: experiment with real Tiger Cloud services
Positioning: Best for early prototyping, demos, staging environments, and individuals learning Postgres+Timescale for telemetry workloads.
What’s included:
- Up to 2 free services in your Tiger Cloud account
- Fully managed Postgres + TimescaleDB extension
- Core Timescale primitives:
- Hypertables for time- and key-based partitioning
- Compression policies for time-series data
- Continuous aggregates and time-series functions
- Basic operational handling:
- Automated backups included (no separate line item)
- Managed Postgres upgrades and patching
- Email support for billing/account questions (no strict production SLA)
What you actually pay:
- $0 for the services designated as free (within Free limits; Free services are currently in beta).
- If you create additional standard services beyond the free allowance, those are billed according to their plan and size.
- No per-query, ingest, or egress charges.
Note: Free services are currently in beta. Limits and capabilities can evolve; Tiger Console always shows the current Free-tier constraints.
Performance plan: production-friendly, cost-efficient scale
Positioning: For teams running production telemetry workloads where performance, predictable cost, and basic production support are required, but data sizes and ingest are still in the tens-to-hundreds of billions of rows, not yet in the “billions per hour” tier.
What’s included:
- All Free-tier capabilities, plus:
- Larger compute shapes (more vCPU/RAM)
- Higher local storage limits (with compression and tiering)
- Postgres-native telemetry optimizations:
- Automatic hypertable partitioning for faster writes/queries
- Hypercore row-columnar storage for analytics
- Compression up to 98% on time-series workloads
- Operational features:
- Automated backups and point-in-time recovery (PITR)
- Monitoring, metrics, and alerts surfaced in Tiger Console
- Easy scaling up/down within the plan
- Support and reliability:
- Email support included
- Production support available as an add-on
- No per-query or scan-based billing—ever
What you actually pay:
- A monthly cost per active Performance service:
- Proportional to CPU/RAM size and storage allocation
- Billed monthly in arrears; if you change size mid-month, charges are prorated
- Optional production support add-on, if selected
- No charges for:
- Number of queries
- Data ingest/egress
- Automated backups
Important: You can upgrade or downgrade between Performance and Scale at any time from Tiger Console. Changes are prorated to the time of the switch.
Scale plan: large-scale telemetry and analytics
Positioning: For organizations ingesting huge telemetry volumes (billions+ metrics per day), running heavier analytical workloads, or requiring more aggressive performance and scaling than Performance offers.
What’s included:
- Everything in Performance, with:
- Larger instances and more aggressive scaling ceilings
- More storage, with automatic tiered storage to keep cold data cheap
- Data platform primitives for serious scale:
- High-ingest hypertables tuned for telemetry
- Broad use of Hypercore for hybrid OLTP/OLAP patterns
- Lakehouse integration (ingest from Kafka/S3, replicate to Iceberg)
- Ops and support:
- Email support
- Production support available as an add-on
- JOIN services (Jumpstart Onboarding and INtegration) available at a minimum monthly spend, for teams who want help designing a full pipeline (Kafka → Tiger Lake → Iceberg, etc.)
What you actually pay:
- Higher per-service monthly costs than Performance, reflecting larger compute/storage profiles.
- Optional production support add-on, plus potential onboarding services once you pass the minimum spend threshold.
- Still no per-query, ingest, or egress charges—even at this scale.
Enterprise: bespoke compliance, SLAs, and deep support
Positioning: For regulated or mission-critical workloads that demand SOC 2 Type II, HIPAA (where applicable), strict SLOs, multi-region/high-availability design, and named account management.
What’s included (at a high level):
- All Scale capabilities, plus:
- HIPAA support (for healthcare and PHI workloads)
- SOC 2 Type II report access, with tighter operational controls
- Encryption at rest with per-service keys and defined rotation cadence
- Encryption in transit (TLS 1.2+) and mutual TLS for critical internal traffic
- Named account manager
- Production support included (not just an add-on)
- JOIN services included
What you actually pay:
- A negotiated contract based on:
- Fleet size (number and size of services)
- SLA and support requirements
- Compliance/regulatory needs
- No per-query or per-scan billing model—costs are tied to services and support, not per-request metering.
To move to Enterprise, get in touch with TigerData for a personalized quote.
Comparing Free vs Performance vs Scale
This is a conceptual table to show how the plans differ in what they include, not a list of specific instance sizes or dollar amounts.
| Plan | Intended Use | Key Capabilities | Support & Services | Billing Model |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | Learning, prototyping, small staging | 2 free services, Postgres + Timescale, backups | Email (non-SLA), managed infra | $0 for free services; no per-query fees |
| Performance | Production apps with moderate scale | Larger shapes, PITR, compression, hypertables | Email included; production support add-on | Per-service monthly; prorated on size/plan |
| Scale | High-ingest, analytics-heavy workloads | Bigger instances, tiered storage, lakehouse | Email; production support add-on; JOIN (min spend) | Per-service monthly; no ingest/egress fees |
| Enterprise | Regulated, mission-critical systems | All Scale + compliance, advanced security | Named account manager, JOIN, prod support included | Contract-based; service + support, transparent |
How upgrades, downgrades, and trials behave
TigerData intentionally keeps plan changes operationally simple and billing-transparent.
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30-day free trial for Performance or Scale
- You can activate a 30-day free trial of the Performance or Scale plan with no credit card required.
- This lets you test advanced features and larger shapes before committing.
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Free tier after trial
- After your trial, you can continue using up to 2 free services, even if you don’t upgrade immediately.
- Any additional standard services past the free allowance are billed normally.
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Upgrading/downgrading between Performance and Scale
- You can switch plans directly in Tiger Console.
- Pricing is prorated based on when you switch, so you don’t double-pay for the same period.
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Going Enterprise
- There’s no “self-serve” button; Enterprise is a conversation.
- TigerData will shape a package around your compliance, SLO, and fleet-size needs.
What you will not be surprised by
The biggest budget surprises in modern data platforms come from the things that aren’t obvious up front: per-query fees, data-scan billing, network egress, backup costs, or “serverless” meters that scale silently until the bill arrives. TigerData explicitly avoids that pattern.
You will not see:
- Per-query fees: No cost per SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, or DELETE.
- Ingest/egress charges: You won’t be charged for how many bytes you write or read.
- Backup/restore line items: Automated backups are included; you don’t pay extra for the feature.
- Hidden “premium” for analytics workloads: Columnar scans and time-series functions don’t incur special billing.
You will see:
- A clear list of active services and sizes in Tiger Console.
- Transparent monthly charges for those services and any support/onboarding you explicitly asked for.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I pay more if my workload gets more read-heavy or write-heavy?
Short Answer: No. Your bill is based on the service size and plan, not on query or ingest volume.
Details:
Whether you run 1,000 or 10 million queries per day, the cost of a given Tiger Cloud service is tied to its underlying compute and storage configuration and plan (Free, Performance, Scale, Enterprise). If workload grows, you may choose to scale up your CPU/RAM or storage, or add read replicas—but there’s no direct “per-query” multiplier. This is deliberate: TigerData is built for high-ingest telemetry, where per-query or per-row costs don’t scale well.
What happens if I leave a Performance or Scale service idle?
Short Answer: You still pay for any active standard service, even if you aren’t using it.
Details:
An “active” service is a running Postgres instance under Performance, Scale, or Enterprise. It consumes resources, maintains HA/backups, and remains available to your applications. Even with zero queries, it still incurs cost.
To reduce spend:
- Pause or delete unused services in Tiger Console.
- Migrate long-term data you don’t need online to lower-cost storage (for example, using tiered storage strategies).
- Consider using your Free services for low-stakes staging or sandboxes, saving paid services for production.
Can I try Scale features before committing?
Short Answer: Yes. Use the 30-day free trial and/or talk to TigerData about upgrading.
Details:
If you’re on Free or Performance and considering Scale:
- Activate a 30-day Scale trial from Tiger Console (no credit card required) to test larger workloads, tiered storage, and lakehouse-style flows.
- During/after the trial, you can downgrade back to Performance or continue with Scale. All changes are prorated.
- If you expect to grow into Enterprise, it’s often worth starting on Scale and working with TigerData’s team to design a growth path.
Summary: what you’ll actually pay on TigerData
TigerData keeps your architecture simple (Postgres as the core, with Timescale primitives) and your billing transparent:
- Free tier: Up to 2 services, ideal for learning, prototyping, and light staging. $0, with the same no-per-query model as paid plans.
- Performance: Production-ready Postgres + Timescale for telemetry, billed per service based on compute/storage. Production support is an add-on.
- Scale: High-ingest and analytics scale with larger shapes and lakehouse integration, again billed per service—no ingest/egress or query premiums.
- Enterprise: Tailored for regulated and mission-critical workloads, with compliance, SLAs, and named support, priced via a transparent contract.
In all cases, your bill is driven by how many services you run and how big they are—not by how often you use them. That’s the core promise.
Next Step
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