Is SurrealDB or Timeplus better?

Neither clearly leads. SurrealDB starts at Free and Timeplus at Free, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.

Which is cheaper, SurrealDB or Timeplus?

SurrealDB starts at Free and Timeplus at Free.

Does SurrealDB or Timeplus run on more platforms?

SurrealDB runs on web, api, windows, mac, linux. Timeplus runs on Linux, macOS, Docker, Kubernetes, Web.

Can I use SurrealDB for free?

Both have a free tier, so you can try either at no cost before committing.

What is SurrealDB best used for?

SurrealDB is most often used for ai agent memory and retrieval-augmented generation, applications needing documents, graphs and vectors in one database, knowledge graph construction from unstructured data, regulated workloads requiring soc2/iso27001/hipaa-eligible hosting. Of those, ai agent memory and retrieval-augmented generation and applications needing documents, graphs and vectors in one database are not what Timeplus is typically brought in for.

What can SurrealDB do that Timeplus cannot?

SurrealDB covers Multi-model engine, ACID transactions, Hybrid retrieval, Horizontal scaling. Timeplus covers Streaming SQL, Unified streaming and historical, ClickHouse-based engine, Single binary deployment.

Databases · head to head

SurrealDB vs Timeplus

SurrealDB

Databases

Multi-model database combining documents, graphs, vectors and time-series

From: Free
Rated: -

Full review Website

Timeplus

Databases

Streaming SQL engine built on ClickHouse internals, shipping as one small binary

From: Free
Rated: -

Full review Website

The short version

Each has a real cost: SurrealDB the listed $0.192/node/hr Scale pricing lacks transparent higher-tier rates, requiring a sales conversation for full production sizing.; Timeplus proton, the free version, is single-node by design, so any requirement for high availability or horizontal scale forces the commercial licence; the open source edition is a trial in practical terms.
They diverge on capability: SurrealDB covers Multi-model engine, Timeplus covers Streaming SQL.
Prices and features above were last checked on 31 August 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which SurrealDB and Timeplus actually diverge.

Attributes where SurrealDB and Timeplus differ
Attribute	SurrealDB	Timeplus
Pricing model	usage-based	Per month for cloud, quoted for self-hosted
Platforms	web, api, windows, mac, linux	Linux, macOS, Docker, Kubernetes, Web
Founded	2022	Unknown

Identical on both: starting price (Free), free tier (Yes), user rating (Not yet rated), category (Databases).

What each one covers

Drawn from each product's published feature list. An absence here means we hold no record of it - not that the product lacks it.

Only in SurrealDB

Multi-model engine
ACID transactions
Hybrid retrieval
Horizontal scaling
Multi-region disaster recovery
FIPS-compliant cryptography

Only in Timeplus

Streaming SQL
Unified streaming and historical
ClickHouse-based engine
Single binary deployment
External streams
Materialised views

What people use each for

The jobs each tool is most often brought in to do.

SurrealDB

AI agent memory and retrieval-augmented generationnot Timeplus
Applications needing documents, graphs and vectors in one databasenot Timeplus
Knowledge graph construction from unstructured datanot Timeplus
Regulated workloads requiring SOC2/ISO27001/HIPAA-eligible hostingnot Timeplus

Timeplus

Real-time alerting on Kafka topics where standing up a Flink cluster is more work than the use case justifiesnot SurrealDB
Fraud or anomaly detection that must join a live event stream against recent history in one querynot SurrealDB
Streaming ETL from Kafka or MySQL change data capture into ClickHouse without writing Javanot SurrealDB
A small data team that needs continuous aggregation but has no platform engineers to operate JVM infrastructurenot SurrealDB

Where each one falls short

Documented limitations, not opinions. Every one is a constraint you would hit in normal use.

SurrealDB

The listed $0.192/node/hr Scale pricing lacks transparent higher-tier rates, requiring a sales conversation for full production sizing.
As a newer multi-model database, it has a smaller ecosystem of drivers, ORMs and community tooling than established single-model databases.
HIPAA compliance is only available as an Enterprise add-on rather than included in standard paid tiers.
Combining multiple data models in one engine can add query-planning complexity compared to purpose-built single-model databases.

Timeplus

Proton, the free version, is single-node by design, so any requirement for high availability or horizontal scale forces the commercial licence; the open source edition is a trial in practical terms.
It is a young project against Apache Flink’s decade of production history, so the hiring pool, the connector library and the body of known failure modes are all much smaller.
Inheriting ClickHouse internals also inherits ClickHouse constraints: memory-hungry queries, awkward updates and a SQL dialect that is not portable to other engines.
Exactly-once semantics and state recovery guarantees are less battle-tested than Flink checkpointing, which matters if the pipeline moves money.
Cloud pricing is by provisioned instance size rather than usage, so a bursty workload pays for peak capacity around the clock or has to be resized by hand.

Pricing, plan by plan

SurrealDB

Free

StartFree
- 1 free instance, then from $0.021/hr
- 1GB storage free forever
- Vertical scaling to terabytes
Scale$0.192/month
- $0.192/node/hr
- Production-grade fault tolerance
- Horizontal scaling to petabytes
Enterprise$undefined/month
- Self-hosted, custom pricing
- Clustered fault-tolerant deployments
- FIPS-compliant cryptography

Timeplus

Free

Timeplus ProtonFree
- Apache 2.0 licence
- Single node only
- Full streaming SQL engine
Timeplus Cloud$199/month
- One to thirty-two CPUs
- 4 GB to 128 GB memory
- From 250 GB SSD storage
Self-hosted or BYOC$undefined/year
- Multi-node clustering
- Kubernetes or bare metal
- Customisable compute and storage

Which should you pick?

Choose SurrealDB if

You need multi-model engine.
You want to start without paying.
You work on web, api, windows, mac, linux.
You also want acid transactions.

SurrealDB review

Choose Timeplus if

You need streaming sql.
You want to start without paying.
You work on Linux, macOS, Docker, Kubernetes, Web.
You also want unified streaming and historical.

Timeplus review

Questions people ask

Is SurrealDB or Timeplus better?: Neither clearly leads. SurrealDB starts at Free and Timeplus at Free, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, SurrealDB or Timeplus?: SurrealDB starts at Free and Timeplus at Free.
Does SurrealDB or Timeplus run on more platforms?: SurrealDB runs on web, api, windows, mac, linux. Timeplus runs on Linux, macOS, Docker, Kubernetes, Web.
Can I use SurrealDB for free?: Both have a free tier, so you can try either at no cost before committing.
What is SurrealDB best used for?: SurrealDB is most often used for ai agent memory and retrieval-augmented generation, applications needing documents, graphs and vectors in one database, knowledge graph construction from unstructured data, regulated workloads requiring soc2/iso27001/hipaa-eligible hosting. Of those, ai agent memory and retrieval-augmented generation and applications needing documents, graphs and vectors in one database are not what Timeplus is typically brought in for.
What can SurrealDB do that Timeplus cannot?: SurrealDB covers Multi-model engine, ACID transactions, Hybrid retrieval, Horizontal scaling. Timeplus covers Streaming SQL, Unified streaming and historical, ClickHouse-based engine, Single binary deployment.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

SurrealDB: What does SurrealDB cost?

SurrealDB Cloud's Start plan is free with one free instance (then from $0.021/hr), the Scale plan runs $0.192/node/hr for production workloads, and Enterprise self-hosted deployments use custom pricing.

Source

Timeplus: Is Timeplus open source?

The core engine, Timeplus Proton, is Apache 2.0. Timeplus Enterprise and Cloud are commercial.

SurrealDB: Is there a free plan and what are its limits?

Yes, the Start plan includes one free instance with 1GB of storage free forever and 1GB of outbound data transfer per month, aimed at prototypes and development.

Source

Timeplus: What is the difference from Flink?

Timeplus is one binary with SQL as the only interface; Flink is a JVM cluster with a Java and SQL API and far more operational surface.

SurrealDB: How is billing handled?

Customers are invoiced monthly based on actual usage in a pay-as-you-go model with no long-term commitments, though commitment-based discounts are available.

Source

Timeplus: Can Proton run in production?

It can, but it is single-node only, so there is no high availability without the commercial edition.

Timeplus: How much is the cloud?

From 199 US dollars a month, sized by CPU and memory, with a fourteen day trial.

SurrealDB vs Timeplus

SurrealDB

Timeplus

The short version

Where they differ

What each one covers

Only in SurrealDB

Only in Timeplus

What people use each for

SurrealDB

Timeplus

Where each one falls short

SurrealDB

Timeplus

Pricing, plan by plan

SurrealDB

Timeplus

Which should you pick?

Choose SurrealDB if

Choose Timeplus if

Questions people ask

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Related pages

More on SurrealDB

More on Timeplus

Keep looking

Other head to heads