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Prisma Postgres vs Nile

SEPT 2026 audit

A comparison of Prisma Postgres and Nile built from values read directly from each provider's own documentation, with the source recorded against every figure.

Reviewed by Palash BagchiUpdated 22 criteria comparedSources last checked

The short answer

Choose Prisma Postgres if…

Prisma ORM users who want the database and the client from one vendor, with a pooled connection limit stated per plan rather than left to be discovered.

Editorial · Palash Bagchi · approved

Choose 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.

Editorial · Palash Bagchi · approved

Consider something else if…

  • Prisma Postgres: Four separate meters — requests, memory, vCPU and bandwidth — sit on top of the plan fee, so the monthly number is a floor rather than a bill.
  • 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.

Neither quite fits? Every other option, ranked by iScore: Prisma Postgres alternatives · Nile alternatives

8 sourced criteria separate them — see where, with sources, below.

Visit Prisma Postgres documentationVisit Nile documentation

No affiliate links, sponsored placements or paid rankings appear on this site. Ordering follows the sourced data and the stated criteria.

01.

At a glance.

CriterionPrisma PostgresNile
Pricing
Free tierYesYes — Ongoing $0 Free plan: 50M query tokens, 1 GB storage, 500 connections, no pauses.
Kind of free offerAlways freeFree tier
Entry paid plan
$10/month for Starter. Pro is $49 and Business $129, each including a larger request allowance.
$15/month for Pro, which carries a production SLA. Scale is $350/month.
Pricing modelA plan fee plus usage: requests, memory GB-hours, active vCPU-hours and outbound bandwidth are each metered — $1 per million requests beyond the allowance, $0.006 per GB-hour, $0.064 per vCPU-hour, $0.025 per GB out.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.
Limits
Storage (entry plan)500 MB on the free plan across 50 databases. Paid plans raise the database count to 1,000 and beyond.5 GB on Pro, then $1.00 per additional GB.
Execution
Managed connection poolingSupportedSupported
Data
EnginePostgreSQL.PostgreSQL, with tenant isolation as a first-class concept — databases, tenant databases and vector embeddings are all described as unlimited.
Connection limit
100 pooled connections on Starter and 10 direct; 10 pooled on Free, 500 on Pro and 1,000 on Business.
10,000 connections on Pro, with connection pooling included.
When idleScales to zero when idle, and Prisma states an idle app costs nothing.No cold start on Pro — Nile lists it as a plan feature rather than a behaviour to configure.
Backup retentionDaily backups with 7-day retention on Starter and Pro, 30 days on Business. The free plan has none.Three backups taken daily; restore is request-based through support and available on paid tiers only. No retention window is published.

Only criteria both providers publish appear here; a tinted cell marks a real difference. Criteria only one of them documents are listed below, and an absence there means we found no source — not that the feature is missing. How we source this.

The small bar above a value is inetGeek's own lean toward that side — computed from the same facts shown, never a number the provider published. See the picker below "The short answer" to weigh only the criteria you care about.

02.

Where they differ.

Kind of free offer

Prisma Postgres
Always free
Nile
Free tier
Sources (2) →
  • Pricing — Prisma ↗

    “Free $0 / month Free forever. No credit card required. Prisma Compute 1M requests / month 360 GB-hours memory / month 4 active vCPU-hours / month [...] 500 MB storage 50 databases”

    Read 2026-09-06 · official pricing · Report a correction

  • Pricing | Nile Database ↗

    “For prototyping or side projects. No pauses, always available [...] This enables us to provide unlimited DBs for free tier”

    Read 2026-09-13 · official pricing · Report a correction

Entry paid plan

Prisma Postgres
$10/month for Starter. Pro is $49 and Business $129, each including a larger request allowance.
Nile
$15/month for Pro, which carries a production SLA. Scale is $350/month.
Sources (2) →
  • Pricing — Prisma ↗

    “Starter $10 / month Prisma Compute 5M requests / month, then $1 per million [...] Pro $49 / month [...] Business $129 / month”

    Read 2026-09-06 · official pricing · Report a correction

  • Pricing — Nile ↗

    “Pro For launching production workloads. With production SLA $ 15 / month [...] Scale For scale, more security and global presence $ 350 / month”

    Read 2026-09-06 · official pricing · Report a correction

Pricing model

Prisma Postgres
A plan fee plus usage: requests, memory GB-hours, active vCPU-hours and outbound bandwidth are each metered — $1 per million requests beyond the allowance, $0.006 per GB-hour, $0.064 per vCPU-hour, $0.025 per GB out.
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.
Sources (2) →
  • Pricing — Prisma ↗

    “5M requests / month, then $1 per million $0.006 per GB-hour memory $0.064 per active vCPU-hours $0.025 per GB outbound bandwidth”

    Read 2026-09-06 · official pricing · Report a correction

  • Pricing — Nile ↗

    “Pay for queries Not for instances [...] 0.05 per million additional tokens Storage 5 GB $1.00 per additional GB”

    Read 2026-09-06 · official pricing · Report a correction

Storage (entry plan)

Prisma Postgres
500 MB on the free plan across 50 databases. Paid plans raise the database count to 1,000 and beyond.
Nile
5 GB on Pro, then $1.00 per additional GB.
Sources (2) →

Engine

Prisma Postgres
PostgreSQL.
Nile
PostgreSQL, with tenant isolation as a first-class concept — databases, tenant databases and vector embeddings are all described as unlimited.
Sources (2) →

Connection limit

Prisma Postgres

100 pooled connections on Starter and 10 direct; 10 pooled on Free, 500 on Pro and 1,000 on Business.

Nile

10,000 connections on Pro, with connection pooling included.

Sources (2) →

When idle

Prisma Postgres
Scales to zero when idle, and Prisma states an idle app costs nothing.
Nile
No cold start on Pro — Nile lists it as a plan feature rather than a behaviour to configure.
Sources (2) →

Backup retention

Prisma Postgres
Daily backups with 7-day retention on Starter and Pro, 30 days on Business. The free plan has none.
Nile
Three backups taken daily; restore is request-based through support and available on paid tiers only. No retention window is published.
Sources (2) →
  • Pricing — Prisma ↗

    “Backups Free — Starter Daily, 7-day retention Pro Daily, 7-day retention Business Daily, 30-day retention”

    Read 2026-09-06 · official pricing · Report a correction

  • Backup and Restore ↗

    “This is available for paid tiers only. We hope to make this process self-serve soon. [...] We take three backups daily to ensure your data is well-protected.”

    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.

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03.

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.

What the free plan includesPrisma Postgres: 1 million requests, 360 GB-hours of memory and 4 active vCPU-hours a month, with 500 MB of storage, free forever and no credit card.
Credit card to startPrisma Postgres: No
When the free offer endsPrisma Postgres: Never — the free tier has no time limit.
Startup credit programPrisma Postgres: Prisma for Startups: database bill covered up to $10,000 for one year, plus 1:1 guidance. Venture-funded track requires pre-seed/seed/Series-A funding raised in the last 12 months and founded in the last 5 years; bootstrapped track requires ≥5k MRR for 6 months and 2 full-time team members.
Memory (entry plan)Nile: No memory figure published: serverless compute is billed in query tokens, abstract units of CPU and memory, 50 million included on the Free plan.
RegionsNile: Two regions selectable for a new database: AWS_US_WEST_2 (AWS US West, Oregon) and AWS_EU_CENTRAL_1 (AWS Europe, Frankfurt). The separate list-available-regions endpoint enumerates a third value, AZURE_EASTUS.
Database branchingNile: Not supported — Pricing marks Branching 'Coming soon': one branch Free, 50 Pro, unlimited Scale.
Support on entry paid planPrisma Postgres: Community support on Free and Starter; standard support on Pro; premium on Business.
SOC 2Nile: Listed on the pricing plan comparison as 'Coming soon'; the Free and Pro columns show '-' for SOC 2.Prisma Postgres: not stated on its own page when read on 2026-09-21 — corrections welcome · every such claim about Prisma Postgres.
GDPR / data residencyNile: Region choice covers residency: a database can be provisioned in eu-central-1 (Frankfurt), which Nile presents as easing EU data-residency rules. From Nile's 2024-04-10 regions announcement; the live API region enum still lists AWS_EU_CENTRAL_1.Prisma Postgres: not stated on its own page when read on 2026-09-21 — corrections welcome · every such claim about Prisma Postgres.
Encryption at restNile: Stated for Nile Auth: all communication is encrypted using TLS and all stored data is encrypted at rest. Read in the Nile Auth FAQ; Nile publishes no platform-wide security page.Prisma Postgres: not stated on its own page when read on 2026-09-21 — corrections welcome · every such claim about Prisma Postgres.
Dedicated infrastructureNile: Provisioned compute is dedicated to a single Nile customer; tenants can be placed on either serverless or provisioned compute. The pricing page separately marks Provisioned Compute 'Coming soon' (upto 4 VCPU on Pro).
04.

Questions this comparison answers.

Entry paid plan: Prisma Postgres or Nile?

Prisma Postgres: $10/month for Starter. Pro is $49 and Business $129, each including a larger request allowance.

Nile: $15/month for Pro, which carries a production SLA. Scale is $350/month.

Storage (entry plan): Prisma Postgres or Nile?

Prisma Postgres: 500 MB on the free plan across 50 databases. Paid plans raise the database count to 1,000 and beyond.

Nile: 5 GB on Pro, then $1.00 per additional GB.

Should I choose Prisma Postgres or Nile?

Pick Prisma Postgres if Prisma ORM users who want the database and the client from one vendor, with a pooled connection limit stated per plan rather than left to be discovered.

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.

Provider pages

Prisma PostgresServerless Postgres from the Prisma ORM team, billed on requests and compute with a pooled connection limit per plan.NilePostgres reshaped around tenants, with per-tenant databases and vector embeddings included rather than metered separately.

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Comments

Every page here is sourced and dated.