Turbopuffer pricing guide details
Pricing Overview
Turbopuffer's pricing changelog states that the Launch plan has a $16/month minimum. Customers with $16 or less of usage in a month pay $16; customers with more than $16 of usage pay based on usage. The supplied evidence does not list public prices for other plans, storage, queries, or writes, so buyers should consult Turbopuffer's pricing page for the bill-calculation details relevant to their workload.
The changelog also records pricing changes that can affect usage estimates: the base queried-data rate was reduced from $5/PB to $1/PB in February 2026, with marginal discounts for larger queried-data sizes. For namespace pinning, the minimum billable namespace size increased from 64 GB to 128 GB in August 2026; a pinned namespace smaller than 128 GB is billed as 128 GB.
Plan Comparison
Turbopuffer offers three platform tiers. All tiers include the full database feature set (vector search, full-text search, hybrid search, metadata filtering, and multi-tenancy). The tiers differ primarily in compliance, support, and deployment options.
| Feature | Launch ($16/mo minimum) | Scale ($256/mo minimum) | Enterprise (Custom) |
|---|---|---|---|
| All Database Features | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Multi-Tenancy | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Single-Tenancy / BYOC | No | No | Yes |
| SOC2 Report & GDPR-ready DPA | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| HIPAA-ready BAA | No | Yes | Yes |
| Single Sign-On (SSO) | No | Yes | Yes |
| CMEK (Per Namespace) | No | No | Yes |
| Private Networking | No | No | Yes |
| Support | Community Slack & Email | Private Slack, 8-5 Hours | Private Slack, 24/7, SLA |
| Uptime SLA | No | No | 99.95% |
On top of the platform fee, usage charges apply across all tiers: storage is billed per logical GB, queries are billed per GB of namespace data queried (with volume discounts at the 32 GB and 128 GB thresholds), and writes are billed per GB written with batch discounts up to 50%. Namespace pinning, introduced in April 2026, offers an alternative billing model where pinned namespaces are charged in GB-hours instead of per-query pricing.
Hidden Costs and Considerations
The biggest pricing trap with Turbopuffer is how query billing works. You are billed based on the total size of the namespace searched, not the data your query actually reads. For multi-tenant deployments with uneven tenant sizes, one large namespace can inflate query costs dramatically. One real-world benchmark showed estimates of $220/month ballooning to $1,000+/month due to this mechanic. Cold-start queries against namespaces not in cache can take up to 4 seconds at p99, which carries an implicit cost in user experience. There is no free tier -- the $16/month minimum applies from day one.
Cost Estimates by Team Size
Because Turbopuffer bills on usage (storage volume, query volume, and write throughput) rather than per-seat, team size is less relevant than workload size. Still, we can provide rough estimates based on typical vector search workloads.
| Workload Profile | Storage | Query Load | Estimated Monthly Cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Solo / Prototype (1M vectors, 768-dim, ~3 GB) | ~3 GB | Low (<1 QPS) | $16 - $90 |
| Small Team (10M vectors, 768-dim, ~30 GB) | ~30 GB | Moderate (~5 QPS) | $90 - $250 |
| Mid-Size (100M vectors, 1536-dim, ~600 GB) | ~600 GB | Moderate-High (~40 QPS) | $500 - $2,000 |
These estimates assume warm namespaces and fairly uniform tenant sizes. Multi-tenant deployments with skewed data distribution will push costs higher, particularly on the query side. At the prototype level, the $16/month platform minimum is the floor -- usage charges add relatively little. At mid-size scale, query costs dominate the bill.
How Turbopuffer Pricing Compares
Turbopuffer's core advantage is storage cost. At $0.02/GB on object storage, it undercuts every SSD-first competitor by an order of magnitude. Pinecone charges $0.33/GB for serverless storage. Qdrant offers a free tier for small workloads but scales to dedicated cluster pricing. ChromaDB provides a free open-source option with cloud plans starting at $5/month.
The tradeoff is clear: Turbopuffer wins on storage-heavy, read-light workloads where most data sits cold. Competitors win when you need a free entry point, guaranteed low latency on every query, or predictable per-unit pricing without namespace-size billing surprises.
| Tool | Pricing Model | Starting Price | Best For |
|---|---|---|---|
| Turbopuffer | Platform fee + usage-based | $16/month | Large-scale vector storage with cold/warm access patterns |
| Pinecone | Usage-based (serverless) | $0 (free tier) | Teams needing consistent sub-10ms latency and a free starting point |
| Qdrant | Freemium + managed clusters | $0 (free tier) | Open-source-first teams wanting self-hosted or managed flexibility |
| ChromaDB | Usage-based | $0 (open-source) | Prototyping and lightweight AI applications |
Cursor, Notion, and Linear all chose Turbopuffer specifically because their workloads feature massive vector datasets with bursty access patterns -- exactly where the object-storage architecture delivers 10x savings. If your workload is smaller or demands always-hot performance, we recommend starting with Pinecone or Qdrant's free tiers to validate your access patterns before committing to Turbopuffer's $16/month minimum.