Aiven vs Turso
SEPT 2026 auditA comparison of Aiven and Turso built from values read directly from each provider's own documentation, with the source recorded against every figure.
The short answer
Choose Aiven if…
Teams who want more than one open-source data service from one vendor and one bill — Postgres beside Kafka, ClickHouse or OpenSearch — with the availability tier chosen per service rather than fixed.
Editorial · Palash Bagchi · approved
Choose Turso if…
Applications that want a database per tenant or per user — 100 databases on the free plan and unlimited above it make that a shape you can actually build.
Editorial · Palash Bagchi · approved
Consider something else if…
- Aiven: You want long recovery history on a cheap plan. Backup history is what the plan tiers buy here: two days on the entry paid plan against thirty at the top.
- Turso: It is SQLite, not Postgres: the metered units are rows read and written rather than compute, and the extension ecosystem you may be relying on is not there.
Neither quite fits? Every other option, ranked by iScore: Aiven alternatives · Turso alternatives
14 sourced criteria separate them — see where, with sources, below.
Pick the criteria you care about. The chart counts how many of them lean toward each provider — the same read as scanning the bars below, just totalled for the ones you chose.
Aiven 0
Turso 0
At a glance.
| Criterion | Aiven | Turso |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | ||
| Free tier | Yes — indefinite, but idle services are powered off | Yes |
| Kind of free offer | Always free | Free tier |
| Credit card to start | No | No |
| Entry paid plan | $5 a month for Developer — one VM, 1 CPU, 1 GB RAM, 8 GB storage, with no choice of cloud or region and no connection pooling. The first plan that behaves like a production service is Startup at $75 a month or $0.10 an hour, which is where the uptime SLA and multi-CPU sizing begin; Hobbyist sits between them at $12. | $4.99/month for Developer, the cheapest paid plan. Scaler is $24.92 and Pro $416.58. |
| Pricing model | Fixed plans quoted both monthly and hourly, with the plan setting CPU, RAM and storage together rather than metering them separately. Aiven describes the pricing as all-inclusive: backups, monitoring and support come with the plan instead of appearing as line items. Higher tiers buy node count and backup history — Business adds a standby node, Premium a second. | Per database, metered on rows rather than compute time: 500 million rows read and 10 million written a month on the free plan, 2.5 billion and 25 million on Developer, with overage at $1 per billion rows read and $1 per million written. |
| Infrastructure | ||
| Regions | 153 regions across six clouds — AWS 25, Google 42, Azure 39, OVH 22, UpCloud 16, DigitalOcean 9 — counted from Aiven's own reference list, which publishes the regions and no total. No magnitude is recorded, because Aiven states on that same page that the list differs per project and that not all service types are available in every cloud and region: the number is the platform's reach, not PostgreSQL's, and a bar drawn from it would be compared against providers whose counts are engine-specific. | Six AWS locations in the Platform API's location list: Tokyo (ap-northeast-1), Mumbai (ap-south-1), Ireland (eu-west-1), N. Virginia (us-east-1), Ohio (us-east-2) and Oregon (us-west-2). Read from the documented GET /v1/locations sample response; the same six AWS regions are offered for PrivateLink. |
| Data | ||
| Engine | PostgreSQL, alongside MySQL, ClickHouse, OpenSearch, Valkey, Kafka, Flink and Grafana. Aiven runs the upstream projects rather than a compatible reimplementation, which is why its own docs point at postgresql.org for per-release detail. | SQLite, via libSQL — Turso's own fork. Not Postgres or MySQL, so the query surface and the client libraries differ from every other database on this site. |
| Database branching | Limited — a full copy from the latest backup, not copy-on-write | Supported |
| Point-in-time recovery | Bounded by the plan's backup history, so 2 days on the entry paid plan and 30 at the top. Granularity is fine within that: full backups daily with write-ahead logs copied every 5 minutes or per new file, whichever comes first. | 10 days on Developer. 1 day on the free plan, 30 days on Scaler and 90 days on Pro. |
| Read replicas | Supported | Limited — Embedded replicas run inside your app; managed multi-region Data Edge replica locations are deprecated for new users. |
| Backup retention | By plan: none on Hobbyist, 2 days on Startup, 14 on Business, 30 on Premium. The magnitude is Startup's 2 days, the entry paid plan. Aiven's high-availability page states 2 days for Hobbyist where the backups page states none — the backups page is the more specific of the two and is what is recorded here. | Continuous rather than scheduled: backups are taken at every COMMIT and kept for the plan's restore window — 24 hours on Free, 10 days on Developer, 30 on Scaler, 90 on Pro. Turso publishes no separate backup retention setting. |
| Support | ||
| Support on entry paid plan | Documentation on the free tier; email with best-effort same or next business day responses on paid plans. Faster responses and phone support are three further tiers, charged separately. | Community support on Free and on Developer ($4.99/month), the entry paid plan. Priority email support starts at Pro ($416.58/month); Enterprise adds 24x7. |
| Compliance | ||
| SOC 2 | We also provide ISAE 3000/SOC2 Type II reports. | Volume-level encryption at rest is described as part of Turso's SOC 2 standards; the docs point to Turso's trust center for details. |
| HIPAA | Our services are ISO 27000-series, GDPR, CCPA, HIPAA and PCI-DSS compliant. | Turso states it is HIPAA compliant and will provide a HIPAA compliance BAA letter to Pro plan and Enterprise users on request. |
| Encryption at rest | All data is fully encrypted end-to-end at rest and in transit. | All databases in Turso Cloud are encrypted at rest at the volume level, which Turso describes as part of its SOC 2 standards. |
| Private networking / VPC | Deploy services directly into your own cloud account for data residency and VPC peering. | AWS PrivateLink VPC endpoints keep traffic to Turso databases inside AWS's private network; offered in six AWS regions. |
Where they differ.
Kind of free offer
- Aiven
- Always free
- Turso
- Free tier
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Free plans — Aiven docs ↗
“You don't need a credit card to create a free service and you can use them indefinitely free of charge. Free services do not have any time limitations. However, Aiven reserves the right to: Power off free services with no initial usage within the first few hours after the service is running. [...] Power off free services with no continuative activity on the service.”
Read 2026-09-09 · official docs · Report a correction
- Turso Pricing ↗
“Start free, no credit card required.”
Read 2026-09-13 · official pricing · Report a correction
Entry paid plan
- Aiven
- $5 a month for Developer — one VM, 1 CPU, 1 GB RAM, 8 GB storage, with no choice of cloud or region and no connection pooling. The first plan that behaves like a production service is Startup at $75 a month or $0.10 an hour, which is where the uptime SLA and multi-CPU sizing begin; Hobbyist sits between them at $12.
- Turso
- $4.99/month for Developer, the cheapest paid plan. Scaler is $24.92 and Pro $416.58.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Plans & Pricing — Aiven ↗
“Free $0 / month [...] 1 GB total storage Cannot select a specific cloud or region No integrations or connection pooling Developer $5 / month [...] 8 GB total storage Cannot select a specific cloud or region No integrations or connection pooling Hobbyist starting from $12 / month $0.02 / hour [...] Startup starting from $75 / month $0.10 / hour [...] 99.99% uptime SLA Business starting from $180 / month $0.25 / hour”
Read 2026-09-09 · official pricing · Report a correction
- Pricing — Turso ↗
“Developer $ 4.99 /month Get Developer Scaler $ 24.92 /month Get Scaler Pro $ 416.58 /month”
Read 2026-09-06 · official pricing · Report a correction
Pricing model
- Aiven
- Fixed plans quoted both monthly and hourly, with the plan setting CPU, RAM and storage together rather than metering them separately. Aiven describes the pricing as all-inclusive: backups, monitoring and support come with the plan instead of appearing as line items. Higher tiers buy node count and backup history — Business adds a standby node, Premium a second.
- Turso
- Per database, metered on rows rather than compute time: 500 million rows read and 10 million written a month on the free plan, 2.5 billion and 25 million on Developer, with overage at $1 per billion rows read and $1 per million written.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Plans & Pricing — Aiven ↗
“Aiven's pricing is all-inclusive and transparent, providing you with the confidence [...] Startup starting from $75 / month $0.10 / hour [...] Business starting from $180 / month $0.25 / hour [...] Everything in Startup, plus high availability Premium starting from $270 / month $0.37 / hour”
Read 2026-09-09 · official pricing · Report a correction
- Pricing — Turso ↗
“Monthly Rows Read Free 500 Million Developer 2.5 Billion + $1 / Billion Scaler 100 Billion + $0.80 / Billion [...] Monthly Rows Written Free 10 Million Developer 25 Million + $1 / Million”
Read 2026-09-06 · official pricing · Report a correction
Regions
- Aiven
- 153 regions across six clouds — AWS 25, Google 42, Azure 39, OVH 22, UpCloud 16, DigitalOcean 9 — counted from Aiven's own reference list, which publishes the regions and no total. No magnitude is recorded, because Aiven states on that same page that the list differs per project and that not all service types are available in every cloud and region: the number is the platform's reach, not PostgreSQL's, and a bar drawn from it would be compared against providers whose counts are engine-specific.
- Turso
- Six AWS locations in the Platform API's location list: Tokyo (ap-northeast-1), Mumbai (ap-south-1), Ireland (eu-west-1), N. Virginia (us-east-1), Ohio (us-east-2) and Oregon (us-west-2). Read from the documented GET /v1/locations sample response; the same six AWS regions are offered for PrivateLink.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Available cloud regions — Aiven docs ↗
“This is a reference list of the default cloud regions available per provider on the Aiven Platform. note The list of available clouds can differ per project. Not all Aiven service types are available for all cloud providers and regions.”
Read 2026-09-09 · official docs · Report a correction
- List Locations - Turso Platform API ↗
“"aws-ap-northeast-1" : "AWS AP NorthEast (Tokyo)" , "aws-ap-south-1" : "AWS AP South (Mumbai)" , "aws-eu-west-1" : "AWS EU West (Ireland)" , "aws-us-east-1" : "AWS US East (Virginia)" , "aws-us-east-2" : "AWS US East (Ohio)" , "aws-us-west-2" : "AWS US West (Oregon)"”
Read 2026-09-13 · official docs · Report a correction
Engine
- Aiven
- PostgreSQL, alongside MySQL, ClickHouse, OpenSearch, Valkey, Kafka, Flink and Grafana. Aiven runs the upstream projects rather than a compatible reimplementation, which is why its own docs point at postgresql.org for per-release detail.
- Turso
- SQLite, via libSQL — Turso's own fork. Not Postgres or MySQL, so the query surface and the client libraries differ from every other database on this site.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Aiven for PostgreSQL® — Aiven docs ↗
“Aiven for PostgreSQL is the perfect fit for your relational data. A scalable SQL database solution that can be up and running within a few minutes. [...] Find a comprehensive per-release documentation on the PostgreSQL project website.”
Read 2026-09-09 · official docs · Report a correction
- Pricing — Turso ↗
“Embedded Replicas Database Branching Backups & Recovery Platform API Turso Database Quickstart”
Read 2026-09-06 · official site · Report a correction
Database branching
- Aiven
- Limited — a full copy from the latest backup, not copy-on-write
- Turso
- Supported
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Fork a service — Aiven for PostgreSQL® — Aiven docs ↗
“Fork your Aiven for PostgreSQL® service to create an independent copy for testing, debugging, or development without affecting the original service. Fork an Aiven service to create a complete copy of it from its latest backup. Forked services are independent and don't share resources with or increase the load on the original service. Common use cases for forking include: Creating a snapshot to analyze an issue. Creating a development copy of your production environment.”
Read 2026-09-09 · official docs · Report a correction
- Pricing — Turso ↗
“Embedded Replicas Database Branching Backups & Recovery [...] Do Database Branches cost money?”
Read 2026-09-06 · official site · Report a correction
Point-in-time recovery
- Aiven
- Bounded by the plan's backup history, so 2 days on the entry paid plan and 30 at the top. Granularity is fine within that: full backups daily with write-ahead logs copied every 5 minutes or per new file, whichever comes first.
- Turso
- 10 days on Developer. 1 day on the free plan, 30 days on Scaler and 90 days on Pro.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Aiven for PostgreSQL® backups — Aiven docs ↗
“Aiven for PostgreSQL® databases are automatically backed up, with full backups made daily, and write-ahead logs (WAL) copied at 5 minute intervals, or for every new file generated. All backups are encrypted using pghoard, an open source tool developed and maintained by Aiven.”
Read 2026-09-09 · official docs · Report a correction
- Pricing — Turso ↗
“Point-In-Time Restore Free 1 day Developer 10 days Scaler 30 days Pro 90 days”
Read 2026-09-06 · official pricing · Report a correction
Read replicas
- Aiven
- Supported
- Turso
- Limited — Embedded replicas run inside your app; managed multi-region Data Edge replica locations are deprecated for new users.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Use read replicas — Aiven for PostgreSQL® — Aiven docs ↗
“Create and use Aiven for PostgreSQL® read-only replicas Use Aiven for PostgreSQL® read-only replicas to reduce the load on the primary server and optimize query response”
Read 2026-09-09 · official docs · Report a correction
- Embedded Replicas - Turso Documentation ↗
“Embedded Replicas keep a local read replica of a Turso Cloud database: reads run locally from the file in microseconds, and writes are sent to the cloud primary and then reflected back to the replica.”
Read 2026-09-13 · official docs · Report a correction
Backup retention
- Aiven
- By plan: none on Hobbyist, 2 days on Startup, 14 on Business, 30 on Premium. The magnitude is Startup's 2 days, the entry paid plan. Aiven's high-availability page states 2 days for Hobbyist where the backups page states none — the backups page is the more specific of the two and is what is recorded here.
- Turso
- Continuous rather than scheduled: backups are taken at every COMMIT and kept for the plan's restore window — 24 hours on Free, 10 days on Developer, 30 on Scaler, 90 on Pro. Turso publishes no separate backup retention setting.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Aiven for PostgreSQL® backups — Aiven docs ↗
“Backup retention time by plan The number of stored backups and the backup retention time depends on the service plan that you have selected. Plan Type Backup Retention Time Hobbyist None Startup 2 days Business 14 days Premium 30 days”
Read 2026-09-09 · official docs · Report a correction
- Point-in-Time Recovery - Turso Documentation ↗
“Free plan users can restore to any point in time within the last 24 hours. Developer, Scaler, and Pro users can restore to any point in time within the last 10, 30, or 90 days, respectively.”
Read 2026-09-13 · official docs · Report a correction
Support on entry paid plan
- Aiven
- Documentation on the free tier; email with best-effort same or next business day responses on paid plans. Faster responses and phone support are three further tiers, charged separately.
- Turso
- Community support on Free and on Developer ($4.99/month), the entry paid plan. Priority email support starts at Pro ($416.58/month); Enterprise adds 24x7.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Aiven Pricing ↗
“Support Offers three additional support tiers with separate charge that include faster response times and phone support Support via documentation Support through email with best-effort responses during the same or next business day”
Read 2026-09-14 · official pricing · Report a correction
- Turso Pricing ↗
“1 day community sign up developer $4.99/month [...] 30 day retention priority email + support get pro enterprise custom pricing [...] 24x7 priority email + support”
Read 2026-09-14 · official pricing · Report a correction
SOC 2
- Aiven
- We also provide ISAE 3000/SOC2 Type II reports.
- Turso
- Volume-level encryption at rest is described as part of Turso's SOC 2 standards; the docs point to Turso's trust center for details.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Security, Privacy & Compliance | Aiven ↗
“We also provide ISAE 3000/SOC2 Type II reports.”
Read 2026-09-22 · official site · Report a correction
- BYOK Encryption - Turso Documentation ↗
“All databases are encrypted-at-rest at the volume level in the Turso Cloud, as part of our SOC2 standards. See our trust center for details.”
Read 2026-09-13 · official docs · Report a correction
HIPAA
- Aiven
- Our services are ISO 27000-series, GDPR, CCPA, HIPAA and PCI-DSS compliant.
- Turso
- Turso states it is HIPAA compliant and will provide a HIPAA compliance BAA letter to Pro plan and Enterprise users on request.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Security, Privacy & Compliance | Aiven ↗
“Our services are ISO 27000-series, GDPR, CCPA, HIPAA and PCI-DSS compliant.”
Read 2026-09-22 · official site · Report a correction
- Turso is for Healthcare ↗
“Turso is HIPAA compliant We can provide HIPAA compliance BAA letter for Pro plan and Enterprise users upon request”
Read 2026-09-13 · official site · Report a correction
Encryption at rest
- Aiven
- All data is fully encrypted end-to-end at rest and in transit.
- Turso
- All databases in Turso Cloud are encrypted at rest at the volume level, which Turso describes as part of its SOC 2 standards.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Security, Privacy & Compliance | Aiven ↗
“All data is fully encrypted end-to-end at rest and in transit.”
Read 2026-09-22 · official site · Report a correction
- BYOK Encryption - Turso Documentation ↗
“All databases are encrypted-at-rest at the volume level in the Turso Cloud, as part of our SOC2 standards.”
Read 2026-09-13 · official docs · Report a correction
Private networking / VPC
- Aiven
- Deploy services directly into your own cloud account for data residency and VPC peering.
- Turso
- AWS PrivateLink VPC endpoints keep traffic to Turso databases inside AWS's private network; offered in six AWS regions.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Aiven - Your AI-ready Open Source Data Platform ↗
“Deploy services directly into your own cloud account for data residency and VPC peering.”
Read 2026-09-21 · official site · Report a correction
- Turso Cloud Private Endpoints ↗
“Set up an AWS VPC endpoint to securely access Turso databases through AWS PrivateLink, keeping all traffic within AWS's private network. [...] us-east-1 us-east-2 us-west-2 eu-west-1 ap-south-1 ap-northeast-1”
Read 2026-09-13 · official docs · Report a correction
When these numbers change, hear about it. Sources are re-checked monthly; a repricing goes out as a short note.
Documented by only one.
These criteria are published by one provider and not the other. An absence here means we have not found a source, not that the feature is missing — except where we say we read the other provider's own page on a given date and it does not state it. Those rows lean, and the provider can correct them with a link.
Questions this comparison answers.
Entry paid plan: Aiven or Turso?
Aiven: $5 a month for Developer — one VM, 1 CPU, 1 GB RAM, 8 GB storage, with no choice of cloud or region and no connection pooling. The first plan that behaves like a production service is Startup at $75 a month or $0.10 an hour, which is where the uptime SLA and multi-CPU sizing begin; Hobbyist sits between them at $12.
Turso: $4.99/month for Developer, the cheapest paid plan. Scaler is $24.92 and Pro $416.58.
Should I choose Aiven or Turso?
Pick Aiven if Teams who want more than one open-source data service from one vendor and one bill — Postgres beside Kafka, ClickHouse or OpenSearch — with the availability tier chosen per service rather than fixed.
Pick Turso if Applications that want a database per tenant or per user — 100 databases on the free plan and unlimited above it make that a shape you can actually build.
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