# Nile vs TigerData

Canonical: https://inetgeek.com/compare/nile-vs-tigerdata/

Every value below is read from Nile's and TigerData's own documentation. See https://inetgeek.com/methodology/ for how.

## At a glance

| Criterion | Nile | TigerData |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Entry paid plan | $15/month for Pro, which carries a production SLA. Scale is $350/month. | Compute starts at $30/month on Performance, billed hourly, with storage charged separately. Scale starts at $36/month. |
| Pricing model | Priced on queries rather than instances, with a $15 base for Pro. Nile's own framing is "Pay for queries, not for instances", and additional tokens are $0.05 per million. | Compute and storage are billed separately and hourly rather than as one plan price — compute from $30 a month, storage at $0.177 per GB-month, with the headline storage figure resting on an assumed 5x compression ratio. |
| Engine | PostgreSQL, with tenant isolation as a first-class concept — databases, tenant databases and vector embeddings are all described as unlimited. | PostgreSQL with TimescaleDB, aimed at time-series, real-time analytics and events. A self-managed edition exists for on-prem and private cloud. |

## Where they differ

### Entry paid plan

- Nile: $15/month for Pro, which carries a production SLA. Scale is $350/month. ([source](https://www.thenile.dev/pricing))
- TigerData: Compute starts at $30/month on Performance, billed hourly, with storage charged separately. Scale starts at $36/month. ([source](https://www.tigerdata.com/pricing))

### Pricing model

- Nile: Priced on queries rather than instances, with a $15 base for Pro. Nile's own framing is "Pay for queries, not for instances", and additional tokens are $0.05 per million. ([source](https://www.thenile.dev/pricing))
- TigerData: Compute and storage are billed separately and hourly rather than as one plan price — compute from $30 a month, storage at $0.177 per GB-month, with the headline storage figure resting on an assumed 5x compression ratio. ([source](https://www.tigerdata.com/pricing))

### Engine

- Nile: PostgreSQL, with tenant isolation as a first-class concept — databases, tenant databases and vector embeddings are all described as unlimited. ([source](https://www.thenile.dev/pricing))
- TigerData: PostgreSQL with TimescaleDB, aimed at time-series, real-time analytics and events. A self-managed edition exists for on-prem and private cloud. ([source](https://www.tigerdata.com/pricing))

## Which should you choose?

Pick Nile if Multi-tenant SaaS where every customer wants isolation — Nile makes a database per tenant the default shape rather than something you build on top of Postgres.

Pick TigerData if Time-series and analytics workloads that want to stay in Postgres — TimescaleDB's compression is the reason the storage line is affordable at volume.

Consider something else: Nile — Several of the features on its own pricing table are marked Coming soon, including branching, backups and provisioned compute, so what is bought today is narrower than the table suggests.

Consider something else: TigerData — The advertised storage price assumes 5x compression, so a workload that does not compress that well pays materially more than the figure suggests.

## Documented by only one

- Storage (entry plan): Nile: 5 GB on Pro, then $1.00 per additional GB.
- Managed connection pooling: Nile: Supported
- Connection limit: Nile: 10,000 connections on Pro, with connection pooling included.
- When idle: Nile: No cold start on Pro — Nile lists it as a plan feature rather than a behaviour to configure.
- Point-in-time recovery: TigerData: 3 days on Performance, with cross-region backups available for disaster recovery on higher tiers.
- Read replicas: TigerData: Supported
- Storage price: TigerData: $0.177 per GB-month on Performance and $0.212 on Scale. TigerData notes the effective price assumes 5x compression, which is an average rather than a guarantee.

## Questions this comparison answers

**Entry paid plan: Nile or TigerData?**

Nile: $15/month for Pro, which carries a production SLA. Scale is $350/month.
TigerData: Compute starts at $30/month on Performance, billed hourly, with storage charged separately. Scale starts at $36/month.

**Should I choose Nile or TigerData?**

Pick Nile if Multi-tenant SaaS where every customer wants isolation — Nile makes a database per tenant the default shape rather than something you build on top of Postgres.
Pick TigerData if Time-series and analytics workloads that want to stay in Postgres — TimescaleDB's compression is the reason the storage line is affordable at volume.