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Selfhost.dev vs
AivenSelfhost.dev and Aiven both run standard managed PostgreSQL, but Aiven makes you pick a tier and its first production-ready plan jumps to $250/mo with nothing between the $5 developer box and that. Selfhost.dev runs the same 2 CPU / 4 GB / 80 GB box for about $40, pay-as-you-go, with connection pooling, PG version choice, BYOC on your own AWS and 189 MCP tools included from the start.
Sign up, get a $5 credit on a real instance. No card needed.
TL;DR
The short
version.
Aiven jumps from a $5 developer box straight to $250/mo for its first production plan (2 CPU / 4 GB / 80 GB, single node). The same box on Selfhost.dev is about $40, roughly 6x less, prepaid and pay-as-you-go.
Selfhost.dev offers BYOC on your own AWS account at a transparent management fee, while Aiven reserves BYOC for enterprise custom pricing.
189 MCP tools you drive from Claude, Cursor or VS Code, editor-side. Aiven has no equivalent.
Pricing comparison
$5 to $250,
nothing in between.
Aiven asks you to pick a service tier first: Free, Developer, then Professional. The two cheap tiers are feature-limited and the first real production plan is a steep jump.
Free to start
- 1 CPU, 1 GB RAM, 1 GB storage
- Auto-powers-off when idle
- No backups, no pooling, no version choice
- $5 welcome credit on a real t4g.nano
- Granted at signup, no card needed
- Full features: pick your version, pooling
Small always-on
- 1 CPU, 1 GB RAM, 8 GB storage
- No pooling, no PG-version choice
- No custom IOPS or throughput
- t4g.nano 2 vCPU / 0.5 GB / 20 GB (1 GB ~$9)
- Pick your PG version, full config
- Pooling available, pick any AWS region
Production (4 GB, single node)
- 2 CPU, 4 GB RAM, 80 GB storage
- First production plan, single node
- t4g.medium $33.11 + 80 GB gp3 $6.40
- Backups, pooling, autoscaling, BYOC, 189 MCP tools
Feature by feature
Full
comparison.
| Feature | Selfhost.dev | Aiven |
|---|---|---|
| Production 4 GB plan | ~$40/mo | $250/mo (Professional) |
| Entry price | $5/mo (pay-as-you-go) | $5/mo (Developer) |
| Free to try | $5 credit on a real t4g.nano | Free tier: 1 GB, auto-off |
| Choose PG version | Any (16, 17, 18) | Professional only |
| Connection pooling | Included (PgBouncer) | Professional+ only |
| PG config tuning | Full tuning | Aiven-managed |
| Custom IOPS / throughput | Yes (gp3 tuning) | No |
| BYOC | Your AWS account | Enterprise (custom pricing) |
| AI management | 189 MCP tools, from Claude / Cursor / VS Code | No equivalent |
| Autoscaling | Included | Manual scaling |
| Backup retention | 7-30 days | None on Free/Dev, tiered above |
| Clouds | AWS only | AWS, GCP, Azure + more |
| Encryption | At rest (AWS KMS) + in transit | At rest + in transit |
| Beyond Postgres | Postgres, MySQL, Redis, ClickHouse | Kafka, Valkey, ClickHouse, more |
Deep dive
Where the
differences matter.
Cheap tiers are toys, production is a jump
Aiven's Free tier is a 1 GB box that powers off when idle, with no backups or pooling. Developer at $5 is always-on but still has no connection pooling, no PostgreSQL version choice and only continent-level region control. The first plan that is genuinely production-ready is Professional at $250/mo for a single-node 2 CPU / 4 GB / 80 GB instance. Selfhost.dev runs that same box for about $40, pay-as-you-go, with pooling, version choice, config tuning and 189 MCP tools included from the start. Pooling, automated backups, PITR and Multi-AZ are handled for you: production Postgres without a DBA hire or the 3am firefighting.
BYOC without enterprise pricing
Aiven restricts BYOC to enterprise contracts with custom pricing. Selfhost.dev offers BYOC on your own AWS account at a transparent management fee, accessible to startups and small teams, not just enterprise.
Multi-cloud breadth, if you need it
Aiven is a genuine multi-cloud platform: AWS, GCP, Azure and more, plus a wide catalog of services (Kafka, Valkey, ClickHouse, OpenSearch) beyond Postgres. If you need that spread on one vendor, Aiven is purpose-built for it. Selfhost.dev runs managed PostgreSQL on AWS with Graviton price/performance and stays focused on Postgres, so if Postgres is your stack you get deeper features, AI/MCP control and BYOC for a fraction of the cost. Comparing other managed Postgres options? See Selfhost.dev vs DigitalOcean or explore managed PostgreSQL.
Migration
Switching from Aiven?
We migrate you, free.
There is no migration tool to fight with, because you get people instead. A Selfhost.dev engineer plans and runs the move with you, end to end, at no extra cost.
Your Aiven plan, data size and Postgres version: the free cost audit form is enough. You get the exact monthly number and a migration plan before anything moves.
Aiven runs standard PostgreSQL, so your data moves with standard tooling: logical replication for a near-zero-downtime cutover or pg_dump and restore for smaller databases. Nothing proprietary in, nothing proprietary out.
We verify a restore on the new instance first and you flip the connection string only when you are satisfied. Your version and extensions come with you.
Free on every plan size. If the numbers do not work for you, you keep the breakdown.
Based on this page: ·
On now or still deciding?
What's the bill you're looking at?
Roughly how much a month, all in?
Matched to RDS, we bill 3.0x less in ap-south-1 (Mumbai) and 2.1x less in us-east-1.
2 vCPU / 4 GB with 20 GB: $24.54/mo in Mumbai, $35.27/mo in us-east-1, against an estimated $73.75/mo on RDS.
See a real RDS bill, before and after →Neon meters compute hours and sleeps. We bill one fixed hourly rate and never sleep.
{price} Same number in a quiet month and a launch month.
Price your size →Two ways off the Supabase bill and you can keep the Supabase stack.
Self-host Supabase on a project server from about $0.02/hr or move just the database to a dedicated Postgres. {price}
How self-hosted Supabase works here →An enterprise client is moving production ClickHouse to us at up to 60% less.
Worked example: off ClickHouse Cloud Scale to always-on managed ClickHouse, $891.86 to $364.03 a month, 59%.
See the ClickHouse bill, before and after →A PaaS bills per service. A project server is one bill for everything on it.
Worked example: a studio consolidated client hosting onto project servers, $390.00 to $82.66 a month, 78%.
See that bill, before and after →A managed database for as low as $5 a month. Dedicated Postgres or MySQL on AWS, with restore, pooling and Multi-AZ failover when you want it.
{price} Postgres and MySQL price the same.
Price your size →A managed database for as low as $5 a month. Dedicated Postgres or MySQL on AWS, with restore, pooling and Multi-AZ failover when you want it.
{price}
Price your size →A managed database for as low as $5 a month. Dedicated Postgres or MySQL on AWS, with restore, pooling and Multi-AZ failover when you want it.
{price} Pay-as-you-go credits, top up from $5, no plan tiers.
Price your size →Most setups map onto two shapes: dedicated databases on AWS and a project server for everything else.
{price} Project servers from about $0.02/hr.
Price your size →Under $200 a month, the calculator beats a human reply. Price it there first.
What's it for?
Where do your users mostly sit?
Dedicated managed Postgres or MySQL, with point-in-time restore, pooling and Multi-AZ failover when you want it.
{region} If you need scale-to-zero or instant branching, Neon fits better than we do.
What managed Postgres includes →Managed ClickHouse for events at volume or TimescaleDB on managed Postgres for time-series next to your app data.
Worked example: off ClickHouse Cloud Scale, $891.86 to $364.03 a month, 59%. {region}
See the ClickHouse bill, before and after →pgvector on managed Postgres: one database instead of a second vendor.
{region} TimescaleDB is one click away on the same instance if you also have time-series.
When a dedicated vector DB is worth it →A project server from about $0.02/hr: push to GitHub and it deploys, several apps and their databases on one box.
Auto-deploy on push, PR previews, custom domains. The $5 welcome credit covers the start of it, no card and you can pause it to $0.
How Projects work →Project servers: many sites per server, one bill.
Worked example: a studio consolidated client hosting, $390.00 to $82.66 a month, 78%.
See that bill, before and after →Most things fit dedicated databases on AWS plus a project server for the apps.
{region}
See it in the live demo →What are you trying to do?
Which editor?
We migrate you, free, on every plan size.
An engineer runs it with you: match the instance, replicate or dump and restore, test the restore, cut over.
See one migration, step by step →The Supabase stack, one click, on a server of your own.
One click from the template, on a project server from about $0.02/hr. Nothing to build or wire up.
The Supabase deploy guide →Paste one config and your editor can run the whole backend.
Run it once, sign in when the browser opens and all 189 tools register.
An hourly instance you pause when done.
Restore a snapshot into a second instance, point staging at it, pause it when idle.
Price a small instance →Push to GitHub and it's live: auto-deploy, PR previews, custom domains.
A project server from about $0.02/hr runs several apps and their databases.
Deploy guides by framework →The one that matters most:
A managed database for as low as $5 a month. Project servers from about $0.02 an hour.
The smallest dedicated Postgres, a t4g.nano with 1 GB, is about $5.34 a month in ap-south-1 (Mumbai) and about $6.41 in us-east-1 and the $5 welcome credit covers its first days. Pay-as-you-go credits, top up from $5, no tiers.
Price your size →When production needs help, you talk to the engineers who run it and a founder reads every request.
Outages, restores, performance issues and migrations reach the people operating the platform. No response-time promise or uptime percentage we cannot prove.
How support and recovery work →Failover, point-in-time restore and backups cover the common ways a database fails.
Multi-AZ failover is a toggle on every engine, Postgres and MySQL add point-in-time restore and all engines get automated backups, live metrics and alerts.
The reliability and recovery details →We migrate you, free. An engineer plans and runs the move with you.
Match the instance, replicate or dump and restore, test the restore, cut over. Any plan size, no extra cost.
See one migration, step by step →Run it in your own AWS account with BYOC, in the region you need.
Encryption in transit and at rest on every managed instance. We do not hold SOC 2 or HIPAA today and we will say so before you spend an hour.
What we can and cannot certify →Fair enough. The live demo is the fastest way to see it.
Or claim $5 to start, no card needed.
Watch the live demo →Our founder
You've already sent us your setup from this browser. A founder will reply to it; no need to send it twice.
Got it. I'll reply to within two working days, from my own inbox.
Noted. One note when it changes, nothing else.