Firestore vs TiDB Cloud
Firestore
cloud.google.com
TiDB Cloud
pingcap.comSide by side
| Figure | Firestore | TiDB Cloud |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | Yes | — |
| Open source | — | Yes |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | — | Yes |
| iOS | Yes | — |
| Android | Yes | — |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | — | Yes |
| Plans published | 9 | 13 |
| Spec score · Database Software | 9.2 (#4) | 9.2 (#5) |
| Spec score · Databases And Backend | 9.0 (#3) | 8.6 (#7) |
| Encryption | Firestore encrypts data at rest automatically and uses TLS for data in transit. | Data at rest and network traffic are encrypted; supported TLS versions are 1.2 and 1.3. |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Integrations | The product page names Google AI Studio, remote MCP, LangChain, and LlamaIndex integrations for building generative AI applications. | Official integrations include Kubernetes via TiDB Operator, Prometheus, Grafana, Datadog, New Relic, Kafka, Flink, Confluent, Airbyte, Amazon AppFlow and dbt. |
| Product | Firestore is a fully managed, serverless document database for building AI, web, and mobile applications. | TiDB Cloud is a fully managed cloud database service built around an open-source distributed SQL database with MySQL compatibility. |
| Rating on G2 | 4.2 out of 5 from 97 reviews. | 4.6 out of 5 from 66 reviews |
| Rating on Gartner Peer Insights | 4.0 out of 5 from 6 ratings. | 4.9 out of 5 from 165 ratings |
| Security | Firestore integrates with Cloud IAM, Cloud Identity Platform, and Firebase Authentication for identity-based access controls and data validation. | TiDB Cloud supports email and password login, standard SSO, organization SSO, private endpoints, public endpoints, and console audit logging across all four listed plans. |
| What it does | Firestore is a fully managed, scalable JSON document database for mobile, web, and server applications. | TiDB Cloud is a fully managed distributed SQL database service for transactional, analytical, vector-search and AI workloads. |
Plans
Firestore
- Standard edition — document readsPrice not published
- Standard edition — document writesPrice not published
- Standard edition — document deletesPrice not published
- Standard edition — stored dataPrice not published
- Free quotaFree
- Free quotaFree
- Standard edition pay-as-you-go$0.03 a month
- Enterprise editionPrice not published
- Standard editionPrice not published
TiDB Cloud
- TiDB Cloud StarterFree
- TiDB Cloud EssentialPrice not published
- TiDB Cloud Premium$1,800 a month
- TiDB Cloud Dedicated$0.22 a month
- StarterFree
- TiDB Cloud StarterFree
- Essential$400 a month
- Dedicated$1,376 a month
- Premium$1,800 a month
- TiDB Cloud Premium Preview$1,800 a month
In their own words
Firestore
Firestore is a fully managed, serverless document database for building AI, web, and mobile applications. It stores flexible JSON data and supports vector search, full-text search, geospatial queries, and ACID transactions on JSON or BSON-compatible documents. Client SDKs for Android, iOS, and web provide real-time updates and automatic syncing for offline access. Firestore can replicate data across multiple regions with strong consistency; multi-region deployments have a stated 99.999% SLA-backed availability. Integrations named for generative AI application work include Google AI Studio, remote MCP, LangChain, and LlamaIndex. Identity controls connect with Cloud IAM, Cloud Identity Platform, and Firebase Authentication. Data is encrypted before it is written to disk, with customer-managed keys available through Cloud KMS. The free quota applies to one database per project and includes 1 GiB of storage, daily read, write, and delete allowances, and 10 GiB monthly outbound transfer. New customers receive $300 in credits, separate from that quota. Server client libraries bypass Firestore Security Rules, so server access needs IAM controls.
TiDB Cloud
TiDB Cloud is a managed cloud database service built around an open-source distributed SQL database with MySQL compatibility. It supports transactional and analytical workloads, horizontal scaling, multi-region deployment, and geo-partitioning across Starter, Essential, Premium, and Dedicated plans. Starter includes up to 25 GiB of row storage, 25 GiB of column storage, and 250 million Request Units per month per organization, for up to the first five instances. Its on-demand compute scales to zero when idle, and vector storage and search are in public preview. CSV, Parquet, and SQL file imports are supported across the listed plans. Email and password login, SSO options, private and public endpoints, and console audit logging are listed across all four plans. Prometheus, Grafana, and Datadog integrations are listed for Essential, Premium, and Dedicated in public preview. All users can submit billing and account support tickets; guaranteed technical-ticket response times require paid support plans. The service is available through web and API platforms. Starter is free; the Dedicated plan is listed as starting at $0.22 a month and from $1376 / month.