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..a1f4e1d5e7 --- /dev/null +++ b/website/blog/posts/2026-03-24-electric-cloud-pricing.md @@ -0,0 +1,90 @@ +--- +title: 'Electric Cloud pricing is live' +description: >- + Electric Cloud has self-serve pricing. Usage-based — pay for writes and retention. Reads, fan-out, and data delivery are free and unlimited. +excerpt: >- + Electric Cloud now has self-serve pricing. Pay for writes and retention — reads and data delivery are free. Most simple apps will run for free on PAYG. +authors: [balegas] +image: /img/blog/electric-cloud-pricing/header.jpg +tags: [cloud, pricing] +outline: [2, 3] +post: true +published: true +--- + +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. Pay as you go (PAYG) waives bills under $5/month, giving you 5 million writes per month at zero cost. 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](/cloud/pricing) +- [Electric Cloud docs](/docs/intro) +::: + +Electric Cloud has been running production workloads since the [public beta](/blog/2025/04/07/electric-cloud-public-beta-release) — long enough to be confident in the platform's reliability and cost structure. We know many teams need published pricing before they commit. Now it's here. + +## How pricing works + +### The model + +Two billing dimensions: writes and retention. + +- **$1 per million writes** to any stream. Each write covers up to 10KB; larger messages auto-chunk and each chunk counts as a write. +- **$0.10 per GB-month** retention. +- **No charge** for reads, fan-out, concurrent users, connections, or data delivery. + +Some services that run additional infrastructure carry 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, adding $2 per million writes emitted to the shape log from the replication stream. 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](/cloud/pricing) for the full breakdown and worked examples. + +### The tiers + +- **Pay as you go** — $0/month. No commitment, no credit card required. Bills under $5/month waived. +- **Pro** — $249/month. No commitment. 10% usage discount. The 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 (6-month commitment). 20% usage discount. Same prepaid credit model. Direct access to founders and hands-on support to accelerate your time to market. + +### Why reads are free + +Electric delivers data through CDN infrastructure. Caching and request-collapsing handle concurrency at the edge, so reads never hit origin. + +Your costs scale with writes, not 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 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 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 base + $2 Postgres Sync) = $1.50 +- Writes from initial sync and subset queries (~2K rows per shape across 500 users): ~1M rows → $1.00 +- Retention: ~2GB → $0.20 +- **Total: ~$2.70/month → waived on PAYG** + +You're only charged for what gets emitted after filtering — a change that matches zero shapes costs nothing. + +## Get started + +Sign up at [Electric Cloud](https://dashboard.electric-sql.cloud). Start on PAYG, free below $5, no credit card required. See the full details on the [pricing page](/cloud/pricing), including a calculator to model your workload. + +Already on Electric Cloud? You'll receive an email when billing is enabled for your workspace. + +*** + +- [Sign up for Electric Cloud](https://dashboard.electric-sql.cloud) +- [Pricing calculator](/cloud/pricing#calculator) +- [Electric Cloud docs](/docs/intro) diff --git a/website/public/img/blog/electric-cloud-pricing/header.jpg b/website/public/img/blog/electric-cloud-pricing/header.jpg new file mode 100644 index 0000000000..04b072e3e8 Binary files /dev/null and b/website/public/img/blog/electric-cloud-pricing/header.jpg differ