Upstash

upstash.com

Serverless Redis and Kafka with per-request pricing for edge and global applications.

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Database

Overview

Upstash is a serverless data platform designed for modern applications and AI agents. It provides multiple data and messaging services—Redis, Vector databases, QStash messaging, Workflow orchestration, Search, and Box containers—all accessible via HTTP/REST APIs with global low latency and per-request pricing.

The platform is built for developers who want to avoid infrastructure management. It scales automatically, replicates data across 8+ regions worldwide, and charges only for what you use, with pricing that scales to zero. Upstash supports serverless and edge environments including Vercel, Cloudflare Workers, and Fastly Edge.

Upstash also provides developer-friendly tooling including SDKs for TypeScript and Python, a CLI, MCP Server integration for AI agents, and "Skills" packages for AI coding assistants like Claude Code and OpenAI Codex.

Key features

  • Serverless Redis with HTTP/REST API
  • Vector database for semantic search
  • QStash messaging and task scheduling
  • Workflow orchestration for serverless functions
  • Global replication across 8+ regions
  • Pay-as-you-go per-request pricing
  • Multi-region failover and high availability
  • AI agent integrations and Skills packages
  • CLI and MCP Server tooling
  • 99.99% uptime guarantee
Pros
  • No infrastructure or server management required
  • Global low latency with automatic multi-region replication
  • Flexible pricing scales to zero; pay only for actual usage
  • HTTP/REST API works seamlessly with serverless and edge functions
  • Excellent developer experience with SDKs, CLI, and AI agent support
  • 99.99% uptime SLA available
  • Persistent storage with in-memory speed
  • Automatic scaling handles traffic spikes without configuration
Cons
  • Free tier limited to 256MB data and 500K commands/month
  • Pay-as-you-go pricing can become expensive at high scale without budget caps
  • Storage costs apply beyond first 1GB per database
  • Bandwidth charges apply beyond 200GB/month on pay-as-you-go
  • Enterprise features and HIPAA compliance require custom pricing
  • Learning curve for developers unfamiliar with serverless patterns
Use this if
You need a serverless database with global low latency, want to avoid infrastructure management, have variable traffic patterns, or are building AI agents and edge applications.
Skip this if
You require on-premises deployment, need a traditional relational database, or have extremely high-volume workloads where per-request pricing becomes prohibitively expensive.

Best for

Serverless and edge applicationsAI agents and coding assistantsGlobal low-latency data accessVariable traffic with unpredictable scalingMicroservices and event-driven architecturesDevelopers avoiding infrastructure management

Alternatives

Redis CloudAWS DynamoDBVercel KVCloudflare Durable ObjectsFirebase Realtime Database

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