Database & Data Management · pricing
MotherDuck pricing
MotherDuck publishes 3 tiers. Below is each one, what it adds over the tier beneath it, and where the ladder stops being worth climbing for most people.
- Entry price
- Free, then $250/month
- Model
- Usage-based
- Tiers
- 3
- Free tier
- Yes
MotherDuck plans, side by side
Every published tier in ascending order of price, with the number of features each one lists. An absence here means the record does not itemise it, not that the tier lacks it.
| Plan | Price | Features listed | Step up from the tier below |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lite | Free | 5 | Entry tier |
| Business | $250/month | 5 | +$250/month, 5 more features |
| Enterprise | On request | 4 | Priced on request |
What each tier adds
The set difference between each tier's feature list and the one beneath it. Where a tier lists nothing new, the vendor has either stopped repeating the inherited list or the tier raises limits rather than adding capability, the record does not distinguish the two, so this page does not either.
Lite
FreeThe entry tier. It covers up to 3 internal active users, 2 service accounts, 10gb free storage, 10 hours pulse compute/month, community support.
Business
$250/monthOver Lite, this tier adds:
- Up to 10 internal active users
- Unlimited service accounts
- 5 instance types with read-scaling replicas
- 90-day snapshot retention
- 99.9% availability SLA
Enterprise
On requestOver Business, this tier adds:
- Unlimited internal users and service accounts
- Fixed-cost capacity pricing
- AWS PrivateLink, IP allowlisting
- HIPAA BAA available
Where MotherDuck stops being free
Lite, Free
- Up to 3 internal active users
- 2 service accounts
- 10GB free storage
- 10 hours Pulse compute/month
- Community support
Business, $250/month
The first thing you pay for:
- Up to 10 internal active users
- Unlimited service accounts
- 5 instance types with read-scaling replicas
- 90-day snapshot retention
- 99.9% availability SLA
What the product covers
The full MotherDuck feature record, grouped as the catalogue groups it. This is the product as a whole; the record does not map every feature onto a specific tier.
core
- Serverless DuckDB instances
- Cloud storage querying
- Flights
- Read-scaling replicas
integration
- MCP server
analytics
- Dives
People bring MotherDuck in for ad-hoc analytics on gigabyte-to-terabyte datasets, querying data lake files in s3/gcs/azure without ingestion, ai agent data analysis via mcp, scheduled data pipeline transformations. If that is not the job you are buying for, the alternatives to MotherDuck are worth a look before you commit to a tier.
How that compares in Database & Data Management
Too few database & data management tools in this directory publish a starting price to quote a meaningful median, so the table below is a like-for-like list rather than a ranking.
| Tool | Entry price | Model | Rated | Head to head |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MotherDuck (this page) | Free, then $250/month | usage-based | - | |
| Timescale | $30/month | subscription | - | vs MotherDuck |
| SurrealDB | Free | usage-based | - | vs MotherDuck |
| DataGrip | Free, then $8.25/month | subscription | - | vs MotherDuck |
| Ninox | On request | subscription | - | vs MotherDuck |
| Grist | On request | subscription | - | vs MotherDuck |
| Knack | On request | subscription | - | vs MotherDuck |
Ratings are aggregated from third-party sources and imported with each catalogue entry, they are not reviews hosted on Softwr. How each figure is used is set out on the MotherDuck badges page.
Before you pay for MotherDuck
Three things this page cannot tell you, and all three change the bill. The record carries a price and a billing period but not the unit - per-seat and flat-rate pricing are indistinguishable in this data, so a five-person team may be looking at five times the figure above. It carries no annual rate, so any discount for paying yearly is not something this page can quote. And it carries no trial length.
What it can tell you is the shape of the ladder: 3 tiers between Free and On request, with the jump itemised above. Because there is a free tier, the cheapest way to answer the rest is to use it before paying anything.
MotherDuck runs on web, api, and is published by MotherDuck of Seattle, Washington. The full record is on the MotherDuck review, and the rest of the category is under best database & data management tools.
MotherDuck pricing questions
- How much does MotherDuck cost?
- MotherDuck publishes 3 tiers, from Free for Lite up to On request for Enterprise. The entry tier costs nothing.
- Does MotherDuck have a free plan?
- Yes. The Lite tier costs nothing and covers up to 3 internal active users, 2 service accounts, 10gb free storage. Paying starts at $250/month for Business.
- What is the difference between Lite and Business on MotherDuck?
- Business costs $250/month against Free, and adds up to 10 internal active users, unlimited service accounts, 5 instance types with read-scaling replicas, 90-day snapshot retention.
- Is the Enterprise plan on MotherDuck worth it?
- That depends entirely on whether you need what it adds, which on the published record is unlimited internal users and service accounts, fixed-cost capacity pricing, aws privatelink, ip allowlisting, hipaa baa available. It costs On request against $250/month for Business. Softwr has not used either tier, so this page can tell you what changes, not whether it is worth the difference to you.
- Which database & data management tools can I use without paying?
- 3 of the 7 database & data management tools listed alongside MotherDuck have a free tier: SurrealDB, DataGrip, Cloudinary.
- What am I actually paying for with MotherDuck?
- The record lists 6 features across 3 areas: core, integration, analytics. In practice it is brought in for ad-hoc analytics on gigabyte-to-terabyte datasets, querying data lake files in s3/gcs/azure without ingestion, ai agent data analysis via mcp.
- Does MotherDuck charge per user?
- The record carries a price and a billing period for each of its 3 tiers, but not the unit that price is charged in. Per-seat and flat-rate billing look identical in this data, so check the vendor's page before budgeting for a team.
- Are these MotherDuck prices current?
- They are what the catalogue entry holds, refreshed when the entry is. Vendors change pricing without notice and nobody at Softwr re-verifies each tier by hand, so treat this as a structured summary and the vendor's own pricing page as the authority.
- What should I compare MotherDuck against before paying?
- The closest database & data management tools in this directory are Timescale, SurrealDB, DataGrip, Ninox. Each has a side-by-side comparison with MotherDuck covering price, platforms and features.