# Nile

Canonical: https://inetgeek.com/databases/nile/

Postgres reshaped around tenants, with per-tenant databases and vector embeddings included rather than metered separately.

## Who it suits

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.

Consider something else if 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.

## iScore

67 / 100 (80% interval 61–73), rank 10 of 14 in databases — interval overlaps the next rank, so this is an ordering, not a finding.

inetGeek's own reading, computed from sourced facts against category peers by disclosed rules. Not a provider claim. Intervals are 80%; a provider with few documented facts is pulled toward the category middle rather than scored on what little is known.
Read this score with care:
- Capacity and limits is thin: 3 of 7 criteria are scored, so it sits near the category middle with a wide interval (41–53). Read the interval, not the point.
- Capabilities is thin: 2 of 5 criteria are scored, so it sits near the category middle with a wide interval (68–81). Read the interval, not the point.
- Trust and compliance is thin: 4 of 13 criteria are scored, so it sits near the category middle with a wide interval (72–85). Read the interval, not the point.
- Adoption is thin: 0 of 1 criteria are scored, so it sits near the category middle with a wide interval (8–99). Read the interval, not the point.
- Documented but not scored, because the page states it as text with no comparable number or a yes/limited/no (a one-time, usage-based or other-vendor price, or a per-site choice): backup_retention, entry_plan_memory. Read them on the provider page; the score neither rewards nor penalises what it could not compare.

Method: https://inetgeek.com/iscore/. Full output with every criterion's basis: https://inetgeek.com/scores.json. Every databases peer ranked: https://inetgeek.com/databases/nile/alternatives/

- Price: 70 (58–82), weight 25%, 3 of 6 criteria scored; scored for peers, not here — undocumented or stated without a number or a yes/limited/no: egress_overage_price, free_card_required, free_expires
- Capacity and limits: 47 (41–53), weight 20%, 3 of 7 criteria scored; scored for peers, not here — undocumented or stated without a number or a yes/limited/no: backup_retention, entry_plan_memory, pitr_window, read_replicas
- Capabilities: 74 (68–81), weight 20%, 2 of 5 criteria scored; scored for peers, not here — undocumented or stated without a number or a yes/limited/no: backtrack, read_replicas, scale_to_zero
- Trust and compliance: 79 (72–85), weight 15%, 4 of 13 criteria scored; scored for peers, not here — undocumented or stated without a number or a yes/limited/no: audit_logs, customer_managed_keys, hipaa_eligible, iso27001, pci_dss, private_networking, rbac, support_included, uptime_sla
- Evidence: 83 (83–83), weight 10%, 4 of 4 criteria scored
- Adoption: 53 (8–99), weight 10%, 0 of 1 criteria scored

## What the documentation says

### Pricing

- Free tier: Yes — Ongoing $0 Free plan: 50M query tokens, 1 GB storage, 500 connections, no pauses. ([source](https://www.thenile.dev/pricing), read 2026-09-13)
- Kind of free offer: Free tier ([source](https://www.thenile.dev/pricing), read 2026-09-13)
- Entry paid plan: $15/month for Pro, which carries a production SLA. Scale is $350/month. ([source](https://www.thenile.dev/pricing), read 2026-09-06)
- 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. ([source](https://www.thenile.dev/pricing), read 2026-09-06)

### Limits

- Storage (entry plan): 5 GB on Pro, then $1.00 per additional GB. ([source](https://www.thenile.dev/pricing), read 2026-09-06)
- Memory (entry plan): No memory figure published: serverless compute is billed in query tokens, abstract units of CPU and memory, 50 million included on the Free plan. ([source](https://www.thenile.dev/pricing), read 2026-09-13)

### Execution

- Managed connection pooling: Supported ([source](https://www.thenile.dev/pricing), read 2026-09-06)

### Infrastructure

- Regions: 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. ([source](https://www.thenile.dev/docs/api-reference/databases/create-a-database), read 2026-09-13)

### Data

- Engine: 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), read 2026-09-06)
- Connection limit: 10,000 connections on Pro, with connection pooling included. ([source](https://www.thenile.dev/pricing), read 2026-09-06)
- When idle: No cold start on Pro — Nile lists it as a plan feature rather than a behaviour to configure. ([source](https://www.thenile.dev/pricing), read 2026-09-06)
- Database branching: Not supported — Pricing marks Branching 'Coming soon': one branch Free, 50 Pro, unlimited Scale. ([source](https://www.thenile.dev/pricing), read 2026-09-13)
- Backup retention: Three backups taken daily; restore is request-based through support and available on paid tiers only. No retention window is published. ([source](https://www.thenile.dev/docs/support/backup_restore), read 2026-09-13)

### Compliance

- SOC 2: Listed on the pricing plan comparison as 'Coming soon'; the Free and Pro columns show '-' for SOC 2. ([source](https://www.thenile.dev/pricing), read 2026-09-13)
- GDPR / data residency: 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. ([source](https://www.thenile.dev/blog/2024-04-10-saas-anywhere), read 2026-09-13)
- Encryption at rest: 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. ([source](https://www.thenile.dev/docs/auth/help/faq), read 2026-09-13)
- Dedicated infrastructure: 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). ([source](https://www.thenile.dev/docs/getting-started/architecture), read 2026-09-13)

## Compared with

- [Nile vs Neon](https://inetgeek.com/compare/neon-vs-nile/)
- [Nile vs Supabase](https://inetgeek.com/compare/supabase-vs-nile/)
- [Nile vs Prisma Postgres](https://inetgeek.com/compare/prisma-postgres-vs-nile/)
- [Nile vs Aiven](https://inetgeek.com/compare/aiven-vs-nile/)
- [Nile vs Amazon Aurora](https://inetgeek.com/compare/amazon-aurora-vs-nile/)
- [Nile vs Amazon RDS](https://inetgeek.com/compare/amazon-rds-vs-nile/)
- [Nile vs Crunchy Bridge](https://inetgeek.com/compare/crunchy-bridge-vs-nile/)
- [Nile vs Neo4j](https://inetgeek.com/compare/neo4j-vs-nile/)
- [Nile vs PlanetScale](https://inetgeek.com/compare/nile-vs-planetscale/)
- [Nile vs ScaleGrid](https://inetgeek.com/compare/nile-vs-scalegrid/)
- [Nile vs TigerData](https://inetgeek.com/compare/nile-vs-tigerdata/)
- [Nile vs Turso](https://inetgeek.com/compare/nile-vs-turso/)