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RisingWave review

Updated September 28, 2026 · DeployCue Editorial Team · Facts checked September 26, 2026

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Our verdict

RisingWave suits developers and small teams who want managed streaming and vector database work without a large first bill, and it also offers a free tier. Its entry pricing of $0.23 sits well below the field median of €13.15, and the company behind it, RisingWave Labs, was founded in 2021, so plan for self-service support.

Key facts

Best for
Teams wanting a low-cost managed streaming database with a free tier to try.
Price from
$0.227↗
Free tier
Yes↗
Legal entity
RisingWave Labs↗
Founded
2021↗
Support channels
Help-centre, Community↗
Official website
risingwave.com

Facts checked September 26, 2026, 3 sources

Listed in

Pros and cons

Pros

  • Entry pricing of $0.23 is far below the site median of €13.15
  • A free tier lets a team evaluate streaming and vector workloads before paying, and most database brands here offer one
  • Support through help centre and community keeps self-service and peer answers available at no direct cost

Cons

  • Support runs on help centre and community only, so there is no stated live chat or phone line for a database that needs quick answers during an incident
  • RisingWave is run by RisingWave Labs, founded in 2021, so it is a young operation next to long-established cloud vendors
  • The starting figure of $0.23 is a per-unit entry point rather than a whole cluster, and a serious deployment bills well above the €13.15 typical entry price
RisingWave

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Scored 8.9 / 10 by DeployCue.

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Who it suits

  • Teams prototyping streaming ingestion on a tight budget, using the free tier before any spend
  • Engineers who value a low $0.23 entry figure over a broad service catalogue
  • Developers comfortable handling support themselves through help centre and community

Who should look elsewhere

  • Teams that want chat or phone support, since support runs on help centre and community
  • Buyers who need a long vendor track record, given RisingWave Labs was founded in 2021

Pricing

RisingWave's published entry figure is $0.23, which is the point at which pricing on its plan starts. Compare that with a median entry figure of €13.15 across the brands here, and against the €13.15 median specifically among databases. The same pattern holds in the vector databases group, where the median is €13.15. Among the three alternatives on this page, Aiven starts at $5, Vultr at $2.50 and UCloud at $0.96, so RisingWave sits at the bottom of the entry field. Readers should note what kind of number $0.23 is. A streaming database bills for the compute, storage and replication you switch on, so the entry figure is the floor rather than a working production cluster. Real deployments on these platforms sit well above that floor, with the site maximum reaching €876.09 and the databases ranking going as high as €876.09. A median of €13.15 is a fair expectation for a normal setup. RisingWave also offers a free tier, and that matters more than the headline figure for anyone still deciding. Most database brands on this site include one, at 84.5% for the ranking and 81.7% site-wide, so a free tier alone does not separate the field. What the free tier does is let a team put streaming ingestion and retrieval queries through their own data before committing budget. Once usage grows, the bill is metered, and the relevant measure becomes the €9.15 median node price rather than the €2.37 lower end. Storage runs on its own line, and per-unit storage across the field centres on €0.01 a month.

Who runs it

The company behind the product is RisingWave Labs, which was founded in 2021. That places RisingWave among the newer names in managed data infrastructure, and it shapes how teams should read vendor risk: a young organisation with a shorter operating record than the hyperscale cloud providers, though a focused specialisation compared with their broad catalogues. Support is delivered through help centre and community. In practice that means a help centre for product documentation and troubleshooting guides, and a community forum where engineers answer one another. Teams on a critical streaming pipeline should plan for their own people to carry much of the diagnostic load, and to treat community answers as unverified. Help centres are common across the databases ranked here, at 89%, so documentation quality is a differentiator rather than the presence of one. No licence, certification or regulator appears against this vendor.

How RisingWave compares

Frequently asked questions

How much does RisingWave cost to start?+

RisingWave lists a starting figure of $0.23 on its pricing page, which sits below the €13.15 median across the brands on this site. It ranks in the top stretch of the 70 brands compared on that figure, at position 2. Treat the number as an entry point, not a working cluster price.

Is there a free tier?+

Yes, RisingWave offers a free tier, and that is more common than it sounds: 84.5% of the database brands on this site include one. The entry figure of $0.23 is for teams that outgrow the free allowance.

What support does RisingWave offer?+

Support runs on help centre and community. That means a help centre for self-service questions and a community forum for peer answers. No chat, phone or ticket channel is stated, so plan for the time your own engineers spend on diagnosis.

Who runs RisingWave?+

The company behind RisingWave is RisingWave Labs, which was founded in 2021. That is a young operation, so it carries more of the risk profile of an early-stage vendor than a long-established public cloud provider would.

How does it compare with managed database alternatives?+

Aiven, whose entry figure is $5, may suit teams that need PostgreSQL and a wider managed data stack under one roof. UCloud starts at $0.96 and Vultr at $2.50, so RisingWave at $0.23 remains the cheapest of the four to enter.

What kind of database is it?+

The streaming database is the reason most teams look here, and RisingWave positions itself for change data capture work alongside existing MySQL setups. The listing also places it in the vector databases group, so retrieval workloads are a fair second use.

What do bigger deployments cost?+

Pricing at RisingWave scales with what you use, and that is where the entry figure of $0.23 stops being representative. A production deployment with sustained storage, compute and replication lands closer to the upper end of the €876.09 range seen across the site.

Sources

Compiled from 3 source pages, checked September 26, 2026. We did not open an account.

Not confirmed yet: Database engines.

RisingWave

RisingWave

Teams wanting a low-cost managed streaming database with a free tier to try.

8.9/10See alternatives