Databases · pricing
NATS pricing
NATS publishes a single tier. Below is what it costs, what it covers, and how that compares with the databases tools listed alongside it.
- Entry price
- Free
- Model
- Open source, no licence fee
- Tiers
- 1
- Free tier
- Yes
NATS 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| NATS | Free | 3 | Entry tier |
Where NATS stops being free
NATS, Free
- Full functionality
- No usage limits
- Community support
No paid tier on record
NATS lists a free tier and no priced tier above it in the record we hold.
What the product covers
The full NATS 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.
Other
- Very low latency
- JetStream
- Single binary
- Request-reply
People bring NATS in for service-to-service messaging where latency is the binding constraint, edge and iot messaging where a lightweight broker matters, replacing a heavier broker when the workload does not need its guarantees. If that is not the job you are buying for, the alternatives to NATS are worth a look before you commit to a tier.
How that compares in Databases
Too few databases 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| NATS (this page) | Free | Open source, no licence fee | - | |
| Apache Solr | Free | Open source, no licence fee | - | vs NATS |
| Redpanda | Free | Source-available community edition with paid enterprise and cloud tiers | - | vs NATS |
| OpenSearch | Free | Open source, no licence fee; managed services billed separately | - | vs NATS |
| RabbitMQ | Free | Open source, no licence fee; managed services billed separately | - | vs NATS |
| Meilisearch | Free | Open source, no licence fee; managed cloud billed separately | - | vs NATS |
| Typesense | Free | Open source, no licence fee; managed cloud billed separately | - | vs NATS |
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 NATS badges page.
Before you pay for NATS
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: a single tier at Free. Because there is a free tier, the cheapest way to answer the rest is to use it before paying anything.
NATS runs on linux, macos, windows, docker, kubernetes, and is published by Synadia of Los Angeles, California, United States. The full record is on the NATS review, and the rest of the category is under best databases tools.
NATS pricing questions
- How much does NATS cost?
- NATS publishes a single tier, NATS, at Free.
- Does NATS have a free plan?
- Yes. The NATS tier costs nothing and covers full functionality, no usage limits, community support.
- Which databases tools can I use without paying?
- 8 of the 8 databases tools listed alongside NATS have a free tier: Apache Solr, Redpanda, OpenSearch, RabbitMQ, Meilisearch.
- What am I actually paying for with NATS?
- The record lists 4 features across 1 area: other. In practice it is brought in for service-to-service messaging where latency is the binding constraint, edge and iot messaging where a lightweight broker matters, replacing a heavier broker when the workload does not need its guarantees.
- Does NATS charge per user?
- The record carries a price and a billing period for each of its 1 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 NATS 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 NATS against before paying?
- The closest databases tools in this directory are Apache Solr, Redpanda, OpenSearch, RabbitMQ. Each has a side-by-side comparison with NATS covering price, platforms and features.