CockroachDB Cloud

CockroachDB Cloud is a fully managed distributed SQL service for teams running transactional applications across regions or cloud providers. It is strongest for organizations that need relational consistency, automated operations and geographic resilience without managing sharding themselves. The main decision is whether shared capacity and a 99.99% SLA are sufficient, or whether dedicated infrastructure, compliance features and 99.999% multi-region availability justify the higher bill.

Overview

The service takes care of provisioning, automatic scaling, rolling upgrades and managed backups. It supports ACID transactions while scaling reads and writes horizontally, so a growing workload does not require manual sharding. Multi-active clusters are designed for continuous operation, and deployments can span regions or combine AWS, Azure and GCP. That makes the platform a practical fit for globally distributed applications, though the broad deployment options matter less for a small, single-region project.

Operations can be automated with the Cockroach Labs Terraform provider and Cloud APIs. Managed data pipelines, native drivers and integrations for streaming, monitoring, AI, developer and infrastructure tools make it easier to connect the database to an existing cloud stack. Point-in-time recovery and high availability are supported.

Key features

Resilience and scale

CockroachDB Cloud advertises availability up to 99.999%, but the contractual level depends on the plan. Standard provides a 99.99% availability SLA; Mission Critical reaches 99.999% with multi-region deployment. Automatic horizontal scaling and on-demand compute and storage reduce capacity planning, while multi-region placement can keep data near users.

Security and compliance

TLS protects node-to-node and client-server traffic, cloud-provider disk encryption protects data at rest, and column-level encryption provides finer control over sensitive fields. CockroachDB Cloud Advanced is described as HIPAA-ready and certified for PCI-DSS SAQ-A and SAQ-D requirements. Cockroach Labs also reports ISO 27001, 27017 and 27018 certifications, plus annual SOC 2 Type II and SOC 3 certification. These controls are most relevant to regulated workloads; they do not by themselves make every plan equivalent.

Pricing

New Cloud organizations receive a 30-day trial with $400 in credits. The trial ends after 30 days or when the credits run out, and clusters are then paused. Cockroach Continuum pricing applies to new organizations or deployments from September 15, 2026; existing customers stay on their current plans unless they opt in through their account team.

Current plans

Standard — $0.06 a month. Cloud usage is billed monthly and metered by the minute; the displayed rate is for AWS us-east-1 and varies by region. Shared infrastructure, single- or multi-region AWS and GCP deployment, usage-based storage, a 99.99% SLA and row-level security suit development and production workloads that can accept shared capacity.

Mission Critical — $0.16 a month. Dedicated infrastructure, AWS/GCP/Azure deployment, provisioned storage, egress controls and a 99.999% multi-region SLA target teams with demanding uptime or isolation requirements. It is the more defensible choice for critical systems, but costs substantially more.

Basic — free. It includes 50 million RUs and 10 GiB of storage each month, up to 30K RU/sec (about 60 vCPUs), and compute and storage that scale to zero. This is appropriate for small applications and experimentation, not sustained high-volume production. Pricing applies to clusters created before September 15, 2026.

Cockroach Continuum Standard — $0.09 a month. The published usage price is $0.092 per vCPU-hour, approximately $203/month for 2 vCPUs and 100 GB. It provides shared infrastructure, a 99.99% SLA, AWS and GCP, usage-based storage and a 1-hour P1 support response.

Cockroach Continuum Mission Critical — $0.16 a month. The published usage price is $0.162 per vCPU-hour, approximately $1,528/month for 12 vCPUs and 100 GB. Dedicated infrastructure, 99.999% multi-region availability, all three clouds, egress controls, CMEK, PCI DSS and HIPAA compliance, and a 30-minute P1 response target are aimed at regulated, business-critical deployments.

Advanced — $0.60 a month. Four vCPUs start at $0.60/hour, with unlimited scaling and up to 99.999% availability. This is a legacy option for clusters created before September 15, 2026.

All published usage rates are starting figures rather than a predictable flat subscription, so region, consumption and deployment shape will drive the final bill.

Platforms

CockroachDB Cloud is available through an API, on Linux and via the web. Its cloud-provider deployment model supports AWS and GCP on Standard, with Azure added on Mission Critical.

Who it's for

Choose it for financial services, payments, healthcare, identity, AI infrastructure and other systems where transactional correctness, geographic distribution and managed operations outweigh infrastructure cost. It is also a sensible choice for teams that want Terraform and API automation. A small application needing only a local database or a fixed, simple bill is less likely to benefit from its distributed architecture.

Pros and cons

Pros: automatic scaling and backups reduce database administration; ACID transactions work across horizontally scaled workloads; multi-region and multi-cloud deployment supports global resilience; strong encryption and reported compliance credentials serve regulated teams; the 30-day, $400-credit trial gives meaningful evaluation room.

Cons: shared and dedicated plans have materially different availability and isolation; usage metering and regional rates make costs harder to forecast; Basic quotas are limited to 50 million RUs and 10 GiB monthly; Azure support and the strongest SLA require Mission Critical; trial clusters pause when the time or credit limit is reached.

Alternatives

MySQL is the better fit when broad self-hosted and desktop platform coverage, a freemium model and a GPL-licensed Community Edition matter more than managed distributed deployment.

CrateDB suits buyers seeking a freemium service with a documented free shared tier of 2 vCPUs, 2 GiB RAM and 8 GiB storage.

VoltDB is worth considering for individual developers and early exploration through its free Developer Edition.

TBase is a free alternative for teams targeting Android, iOS, desktop or self-hosted environments.

OceanBase Database offers a free open-source Community Edition with full kernel capabilities.

TiDB Cloud is a credible alternative when a free Starter tier with 25 GiB row storage, 25 GiB column storage and 250M RUs is the priority.

YugabyteDB Anywhere fits teams wanting a self-hosted option with a free evaluation license lasting up to 32 consecutive days.

Amazon RDS is the alternative for buyers committed to AWS managed relational databases and eligible Free Tier usage.

For broader comparisons, see Distributed SQL Databases, Spatial Databases and Database Software.

Verdict

CockroachDB Cloud is a strong recommendation for teams that need managed, transactionally consistent databases across regions or clouds, especially when uptime, automation and compliance are central requirements. Choose Standard or Basic for cost-conscious workloads; choose Mission Critical when dedicated capacity and a 99.999% multi-region SLA are worth the premium. Look elsewhere if your application is small, self-hosting is preferred, or predictable low-cost pricing matters more than distributed resilience.