Upstash

Serverless data for modern developers

As of 30 August 2026, Upstash has a free plan and paid plans start at $10/month. Upstash provides serverless Redis, Kafka, and QStash services with per-request pricing. Softwr lists it under Cloud. Upstash is made by Upstash Inc, launched in 2020, available on API, Web.

Visit siteVisit Upstash

Overview

What Upstash does

Upstash provides serverless Redis, Kafka, and QStash services with per-request pricing. Built for edge computing and serverless architectures with global replication.

What people use it for

Caching
Session storage
Real-time messaging
Rate limiting
Serverless backends

Where it falls short

Concrete and checkable, so you can decide whether any of them matter to you. This is the half of a review a vendor will not write about Upstash.

HTTP-based REST API only, no TCP connections means higher latency than self-hosted or connection-pooled Redis
Rate limiting occurs when traffic exceeds configured budget cap or request limits
Kafka service discontinued in March 2025, requiring migration to Upstash Workflow or alternatives
Limited Redis feature support compared to self-hosted Redis or Redis Cloud
High-request-volume workloads can accumulate significant costs due to per-request pricing model

Cross-shopped

What people choose instead of Upstash

Each pairing was judged by two reviewers asking whether a buyer would genuinely weigh the two against each other. The ones that failed were deleted rather than published.

Upstashvs
Neon
Neon: Serverless Postgres with per-request billing model similar to Upstash's pricing approach
Upstashvs
PlanetScale
PlanetScale: Serverless MySQL database with similar edge-first architecture and REST API support
Upstashvs
FaunaDB
FaunaDB: Serverless multi-model database with global replication and per-request pricing
Upstashvs
Vercel
Vercel: Serverless platform that integrates with Upstash and serves similar developer audience
Upstashvs
Netlify
Netlify: Serverless platform with native edge function support and comparable deployment model

Pricing

What Upstash costs

Taken from the vendor's own pricing page. Prices move, so check before you buy.

Free

256 MB data
500K commands per month
10 GB bandwidth
Single region

Pay-as-you-go

$0.2 /per 100K commands

Per-request billing
Storage at $0.25/GB
Unlimited commands
Global replication

Fixed Plan

$10 /mo

250 MB Redis
Predictable pricing
Global replication available at higher tiers

Capabilities

Features

Serverless Redis
Serverless Kafka
QStash
Global Replication
REST API
Edge Functions Support
Rate Limiting
Caching
Vercel
Integration with Vercel
Netlify
Integration with Netlify
Cloudflare Workers
Integration with Cloudflare Workers
AWS Lambda
Integration with AWS Lambda

Answered, with sources

Questions people ask

Each answer names the page it came from, so you can check it rather than take our word for it.

Does Upstash have a free tier?

Yes. The free tier provides 256 MB of data and 500,000 commands per month with 10 GB of bandwidth in a single region, no credit card required.

Source

How does Upstash work with edge platforms like Vercel and Cloudflare Workers?

Upstash uses a REST API instead of TCP connections, enabling it to work from Vercel Edge, Cloudflare Workers, and AWS Lambda without persistent connections or connection pooling.

Source

What programming languages are supported?

Upstash provides native SDKs for Python, Node.js, Go, and Rust. Java, C#, and PHP developers can use the REST API or community libraries.

Source

Is Upstash Kafka still available?

No. Upstash Kafka was deprecated on September 11, 2024 and fully discontinued on March 11, 2025. Upstash Workflow is now recommended for durable serverless messaging and task queuing.

Source

How is Upstash pricing structured?

Upstash uses per-request pricing at $0.20 per 100K commands for Redis, $0.25/GB for storage, and $0.40 per 100K requests for Vector database. Idle applications cost nothing.

Source

Can Upstash be used with AWS Lambda?

Yes. Upstash works with AWS Lambda via its REST API, eliminating the need for connection pooling and making it ideal for stateless serverless functions.

Source

Behind it

Who makes Upstash

Company: Upstash Inc
Based in: San Francisco, CA
Founders: Enes Akar, Mehmet Dogan, Bilal Yasar

Timeline

Upstash over time

Discontinued2025-03-11
Upstash Kafka service fully discontinued
Source
Funding2022-03-01$1.9m
Seed round of $1.9M led by Mango Capital and AngelList
Source
Launch2021-01-01
Upstash Redis launched as first product
Source
Founded2020-01-01
Upstash founded to build serverless data platforms
Source

Keep looking

Where to go from Upstash

Best Cloud software for

Compare Upstash with

Other Cloud software

Neon
Serverless Postgres for modern developers
Free plan10 researched notes
Beam Cloud
Serverless GPU computing with sub-second cold starts and multi-cloud support
Free, then $89/mo10 researched notes
Deno Deploy
Serverless JavaScript at the edge
Free, then $20/mo12 researched notes
Cerebrium
Serverless GPU infrastructure for real-time AI inference and applications
Free, then $100/mo10 researched notes
Koyeb
High-performance serverless infrastructure for APIs, inference, and databases
From $29/mo9 researched notes
Render
A modern cloud platform for the next generation
Free plan12 researched notes
Lambda (AWS Serverless)
Run code without thinking about servers
Free plan12 researched notes
Serverless Framework
Build and deploy serverless applications on AWS Lambda
Free, then $4/credit9 researched notes
DigitalOcean
The developer cloud
Free, then $4/mo12 researched notes
Fly.io
Deploy web applications globally
From $29/mo14 researched notes
Railway
Ship software instantly
Free plan13 researched notes
Fastly
High performance edge computing platform
Free plan13 researched notes
Rancher
Kubernetes management platform for multiple clusters
Open source9 researched notes
Azure Functions
Event-driven serverless compute on Azure
Free plan8 researched notes
Hetzner Cloud
Affordable cloud servers in Europe
Free, then €3.29/mo13 researched notes
$Infracost logo$
Infracost
Cloud cost estimates in pull requests, with governance in the paid tier
Free, then $250/mo12 researched notes
Jaeger
Open-source end-to-end distributed tracing
Open source8 researched notes
Deno Deploy
Serverless JavaScript at the edge
Free, then $20/mo12 researched notes

Softwr does not host reviews and shows no star rating for Upstash, because a rating we did not collect is not ours to publish. What is here is the pricing and platform detail from the vendor’s own pages, limitations we could state concretely, and alternatives a reviewer confirmed people weigh against it. Tell us if any of it is wrong.