On March 9, bit.io will migrate to a new pricing plan. We’re making this change because we got universal feedback that users wanted an always-on database, to only pay for what is used, to set spend limits, and to not worry about cpu or ram.
Free databases will continue to remain on the free tier. Every account provides 3 free databases with 3GiB of data. Because usage limits are changing, free databases may experience reduced performance. If you have a popular, active database, review these changes closely.
On March 9th, you can upgrade any database to Pro for $5 per month.
The big changes
- Rather than a Pro subscription, there are now Pro databases.
- Rather than queriers paying for usage, database owners pay for Pro databases
- Usage now includes writes, updates, and deletes in addition to reads (i.e., the old “rows queried”). Together, these are called “row operations”.
- When you hit a budget limit, your database is slowed rather than stopped.
This new pricing allows us to offer guaranteed availability and performance. In our old plan, when you exceeded the rows-queried limit, you could not use any database. In the new plan, when you hit a budget limit, your database is slowed rather than stopped.
How it works
To provide more consistent and higher performance, each database includes a constantly refilling pool of row operations. As you query and use the database, you consume row operations from that pool. If you don’t query, the pool continues to fill up. If the pool has available row operations, your database will perform those operations as fast as possible. If the pool is empty, your database will slowly perform those operations at the pool refill rate. When the pool is empty, you can configure it to burst with additional row operations and set a monthly limit on how much you pay.
Think of it like a gas tank that is always slowly refilling – if you run out of gas, you can still drive at the refill rate or pay extra to speed up. When you create the database, you get a full tank of gas. And when you’re not driving, you save up gas for later usage.
The new pricing options
Free tier (3 databases per account)
- 3GiB of storage – same as before
- Pool of 500M row operations
- 200 row operations per second pool auto-refill
Pro Database ($5 per database per month)
- 100 GiB of storage – you’re no longer charged for inactive data
- Pool of 2.5B row operations
- 1000 row operations per second pool auto-refill
- Burst for $1 per 100M operations when pool is empty
All accounts include 3 free 3GiB databases. If you need more storage, more databases, or more performance, you’ll need a Pro database.
Finally, some important notes:
- If you have shared your database with others, you will be responsible for their usage on your database. Set your limits carefully. Once your free database exceeds the usage limits, it will become slower and that may impact your users. If you anticipate high usage, we recommend that you upgrade your database to Pro.
- If you downgrade more than three databases or have free databases with more than 3GiB of storage, they will be disabled after a 30 day grace period.