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InfluxDB Cloud Serverless

DB 3.1/10

Fully managed serverless time-series database (InfluxDB 3, Apache Arrow + Parquet) with a free tier for low-volume metrics and IoT workloads.

InfluxDB Cloud Serverless scores 3.1/10 for free value in DB. The main constraint: Free Plan with no credit card: up to 2 buckets, write rate of 5 MB per 5 minutes, read rate of 300 MB per 5 minutes, and 30-day data retention.

Category DB Kind Managed time-series DB Caveats Hard 30-day retention (cannot write data older than 30 days), tight 5 MB/5min write rate, only 2 buckets, multi-tenant with no high availability, and the advertised $250 credit applies only when upgrading to the Usage-Based Plan, not to the free tier. Card required No Eligibility anyone

Free value score

3.1 / 10
Show the math
Overall 3.1/10
value = 3.1/100
weighted_components_v1
Capacity 1/10
value = 0 $/mo
fixed_log_v1
Operations 3.8/10
value = 3.8/100
policy_score_v1
Production fit 7.1/10
value = 7.1/100
policy_score_v1

Key metrics

0.001 GB Storage policy_default: Conservative scoring fallback: no comparable included storage allowance is published in this item.
1 reads/mo Reads policy_default: Conservative scoring fallback: no comparable monthly read allowance is published in this item.
1 writes/mo Writes policy_default: Conservative scoring fallback: no comparable monthly write allowance is published in this item.
300 MB Egress
Serverless Compute no compute quota
2 DB Databases

What you get

No credit card required for the Free Plan

Fully managed serverless InfluxDB 3 engine built on Apache Arrow and Parquet

SQL and InfluxQL query support over Flight and HTTP APIs

Available on AWS, Google Cloud, and Azure regions

Limitations

  • 2 buckets

    Free Plan is limited to 2 buckets (databases), excluding the internal _monitoring and _tasks buckets. More buckets require the Usage-Based Plan.

  • 30-day data retention

    Data is retained for only 30 days and is then deleted; you also cannot write historical data older than 30 days. Longer retention requires upgrading to the Usage-Based Plan.

  • Write rate 5 MB / 5 min

    Data-in is capped at 5 MB of uncompressed normalized line protocol per fixed 5-minute window (about 17 KB/s); exceeding it returns HTTP 429 until the window resets.

  • Read rate 300 MB / 5 min

    Query/read HTTP response payload is capped at 300 MB per 5-minute window (about 1000 KB/s); exceeding it returns HTTP 429 until the window resets.

  • Query scan limits

    Each query may process at most 500 partitions and 1000 Parquet files; larger queries return a ResourceExhausted error and must be split by time boundaries.

  • No high availability

    Cloud Serverless is multi-tenant shared infrastructure with no high availability or performance isolation; HA and single-tenancy require Cloud Dedicated.

  • Storage-engine schema limits

    The InfluxDB 3 storage engine caps each database at 500 tables (measurements) and each table at 200 columns; these apply to all accounts including the Free Plan.

  • Query processing time cap

    Global non-adjustable limit of 90 seconds query processing time per query, plus 1500 seconds of total query time per 30-second window.

  • Single organization

    The Free Plan does not allow creating additional organizations; multiple organizations require the Usage-Based Plan.

Sources

time-series database iot metrics monitoring serverless managed influxdb
Open service Source ← All DB