MotherDuck review

Paid plans start at $250, which sits above the databases median entry price of €4.38. That figure is an entry point rather than a typical monthly spend, so the free tier is where most small workloads sit before usage grows.

Yes, a free tier is part of the pricing, so new projects can be built and queried before any paid commitment. The paid side begins at $250, which is where cost stops being trivial and storage billed at $0.04 starts to matter.

Queries run on DuckDB. Working in that engine locally and letting MotherDuck run the hosted copy keeps development and production on the same query dialect, which suits analytics work where query shape changes often.

Storage is billed at $0.04, so the data you hold is priced separately from the $250 entry point. Steady datasets stay affordable, and the free tier gives small volumes somewhere to sit before paid usage starts.

Restore points come from 90-day snapshot retention, so a scheduled snapshot history is part of the service rather than something you assemble. That shortens recovery after a bad load and does not change the $250 entry point.

Support runs on community, so questions are answered through the community. Teams that want a direct channel during an incident should weigh that first, since the paid plan at $250 does not add one.

RisingWave lists $0.23 to start, UCloud lists $0.96 and Vultr lists $2.50, all below MotherDuck's $250. MotherDuck is the pick when hosted DuckDB and a free tier matter more than entry cost.