TBase vs TiDB Cloud

TBase is Tencent-published, open-source database software for distributed hybrid transactional and analytical processing. It provides database and data warehouse services through one cluster and supports an extended subset of SQL, including transactions, foreign keys, user-defined types, and functions. A cluster uses Coordinator Nodes to plan queries, DataNodes to store user data, and a Global Transaction Manager. Tables can be distributed or replicated, with queries sent to DataNodes and results gathered. Deployment is self-hosted; setup guidance describes compiling from source and deploying across one or more hosts, including basic x86 servers. Administrators can use pgxc_ctl to configure and manage clusters. Table options include shard, partitioned shard, hot-and-cold partitioned shard, and replication tables. Shard-table distribution-key values, lengths, and types cannot be modified. Replication tables keep a full copy on every DataNode, and the guide cautions against using them for large tables. Monitoring includes session memory, DataNode operator details, and cluster-wide active sessions. TBase is listed as free under the BSD 3-Clause License.

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.