Cheapest Managed Redis and Valkey (2026): Prices Compared
Managed Redis and Valkey prices compared: free tiers, the cheapest 1 GB plans and replicated databases on Redis Cloud, ElastiCache, Upstash, Aiven, Memorystore, DigitalOcean and KiviDB Cloud, from...
Which service is cheapest depends on how much data you keep and whether it needs a replica. These are the published prices of the main managed Redis and Valkey services, read from their own pricing pages on November 2, 2026, including the sizes where KiviDB Cloud is not the cheapest.
Cheapest at each size
| What you need | Cheapest we found | Price |
|---|---|---|
| A free hobby cache | Aiven for Valkey free plan (1 GB) or Upstash free tier (250 MB) | $0 |
| Under 1 GB, paid | Heroku Mini (25 MB) or Redis Cloud Essentials 250 MB | $3 to $5 a month |
| 1 GB, one node | KiviDB Cloud | $14.52 a month |
| 5 GB with a replica in another zone | KiviDB Cloud Pro | $95.54 a month |
| 25 GB with a replica in another zone | KiviDB Cloud Pro | $392.70 a month |
Other services' list prices as read on November 2, 2026 from each provider's own pricing page, US regions, monthly at 730 hours. KiviDB Cloud from the live rate card. Free tiers limit commands, connections or durability; read the limits before running production on one.
The smallest paid plan of about 1 GB
One node, no replica: the usual starting point for a cache or a small production app.
| Service | Plan | Memory | Monthly | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| KiviDB Cloud | Essentials 1 GB | 1 GB | $14.52 | AWS; 99.5% committed availability |
| DigitalOcean Managed Valkey | 1 GiB | 1 GiB | $15.00 | Single node, not highly available |
| Redis Cloud | Essentials 1 GB | 1 GB | $18.00 | AWS us-east-1, no replica, no persistence |
| Amazon ElastiCache for Valkey | cache.t4g.small | 1.37 GiB | $18.69 | us-east-1, burstable node |
| Upstash Redis | Fixed 1 GB | 1 GB | $20.00 | |
| Render Key Value | 1g | 1 GB | $20.00 | |
| Google Memorystore for Valkey | shared-core-nano | 1.4 GB | $23.21 | us-central1 |
| Aiven for Valkey | Startup-1 | 1 GB | $24.82 | AWS us-east-1; $18.98 on DigitalOcean |
Other services' list prices as read on November 2, 2026 from each provider's own pricing page, US regions, monthly at 730 hours. KiviDB Cloud from the live rate card. KiviDB Cloud's 1 GB is $28.79 a month on Google Cloud and $35.70 on Azure.
With a replica, for production
A primary and a replica in another zone, so the database survives losing one. This is where prices separate most.
| Dataset, with a replica | KiviDB Cloud | Redis Cloud | Amazon ElastiCache | Memorystore | Dragonfly Cloud |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5 GB | $95.54 | $258 | $174 | $180 | $143 |
| 25 GB | $393 | $1,708 | $480 | $562 | $550 |
| 100 GB | $1,570 | $3,416 | $1,918 | $2,246 | $2,200 |
Monthly, 730 hours, a primary and one replica in another zone, US regions. KiviDB Cloud: Pro on AWS from the live rate card. Others: each service's cheapest published configuration that holds the dataset, from its list price as read on October 5, 2026; the exact configurations are listed under "How we compared" on the home page. Upstash charges $200 a month per database for multi-zone high availability, on top of the plan.
Free tiers, and their limits
| Service | Memory | Limits |
|---|---|---|
| Upstash Redis | 250 MB | 500,000 commands and 10 GB of bandwidth a month |
| Aiven for Valkey | 1 GB | One node, no backups, cloud and region chosen by Aiven |
| Redis Cloud | 30 MB | 30 connections, 100 operations a second |
| Render Key Value | 25 MB | No persistence; data is lost on restart |
| KiviDB Cloud | 100 MB | Seven days on a shared instance, then a paid plan |
Other services' list prices as read on November 2, 2026 from each provider's own pricing page, US regions, monthly at 730 hours. KiviDB Cloud from the live rate card.
Under 1 GB, where others cost less
KiviDB Cloud's smallest paid database is 1 GB. For a cache of a few hundred megabytes, these cost less.
| Service | Plan | Memory | Monthly | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Heroku Key-Value Store | Mini | 25 MB | $3.00 | No persistence, no high availability |
| Redis Cloud | Essentials 250 MB | 250 MB | $5.00 | AWS us-east-1, no replica |
| Amazon ElastiCache for Valkey | cache.t4g.micro | 0.5 GiB | $9.34 | us-east-1 |
| Upstash Redis | Fixed 250 MB | 250 MB | $10.00 |
Other services' list prices as read on November 2, 2026 from each provider's own pricing page, US regions, monthly at 730 hours. KiviDB Cloud from the live rate card.
What else to compare
- A replica, and where it lives A single node loses its availability, and possibly its data, when the machine does. Check whether a plan's size includes the replica: on some, a 1 GB replicated plan holds half a gigabyte.
- Per-request charges Serverless plans bill by the command. They cost little when idle and a lot under steady traffic.
- Limits Connections, operations a second and bandwidth are capped on many small plans.
- Cores Redis and Valkey run commands on one thread. KiviDB uses every core, so a larger node buys throughput, not only memory.
Against each service
- KiviDB Cloud vs Redis Cloud: Essentials and Pro.
- KiviDB Cloud vs ElastiCache: Valkey and Redis OSS on AWS.
- KiviDB Cloud vs Upstash: A flat price against a price per command.
- KiviDB Cloud vs Memorystore: Valkey and Redis on Google Cloud.
Questions
What is the cheapest managed Redis?
Free: Aiven's 1 GB Valkey plan or Upstash's 250 MB tier. For a paid 1 GB database on one node, KiviDB Cloud at $14.52 a month was the lowest we found on November 2, 2026. For a replicated production database of 5 GB or more, KiviDB Cloud cost the least of the services we priced: $95.54 a month for 5 GB.
What is the cheapest managed Valkey?
Aiven has a free 1 GB Valkey plan. DigitalOcean's 1 GiB Valkey is $15 a month, and ElastiCache's cache.t4g.small $18.69 in us-east-1. KiviDB Cloud, which is Valkey-compatible, is $14.52 for 1 GB on AWS.
Is ElastiCache Serverless cheaper than a node?
For a small cache that is idle most of the day, it can be: it bills about $0.084 per GB-hour of data stored (at least 100 MB) plus a charge per request. Under steady traffic, a node usually costs less.
Why does a replica cost so much more?
A replica is a second machine in another zone, so most services double the price, and some sell high availability as a separate add-on.
Price your own configuration
The pricing page quotes any size, cloud and region before you create anything.