turso

Turso is a distributed SQLite-compatible database built on libSQL (their open source fork of SQLite). Your data lives at the edge, close to your users, with automatic replication across locations.

The libSQL engine is free and open source under MIT. You can self-host it and get SQLite compatibility with added features: native HTTP API, built-in replication, vector search extensions, and the ability to embed it directly in your application like regular SQLite.

Turso's managed platform has a free tier (500 databases, 9GB storage, 25M row reads/mo), a Scaler plan at $20/mo (10K databases, 24GB storage, 100B row reads), and a Pro plan at $85/mo with higher limits. Solo devs: the free tier is generous for side projects. Small teams: free or Scaler at $20/mo covers most apps. Growing teams: evaluate if SQLite semantics fit your workload. Large orgs: probably need Postgres.

The catch: this is SQLite, not Postgres. No stored procedures, limited concurrent writes, simpler type system. If your app needs complex queries or high write throughput, you want a traditional database. Turso shines for read-heavy workloads where low latency matters: think edge applications, mobile app backends, and per-user databases. The ecosystem is newer and smaller than Postgres or even PlanetScale.