MotherDuck

motherduck.com · Compute · 1 record · JSON

MotherDuck Compute

caveatemailno cardDvolume-quota

motherduck.com/pricing/ · cloud VM · compute/motherduck · JSON · compare

Free tier	Lite plan, quoted from the FAQ: 'We also offer a Lite plan with 10 GB of storage and 10 hours of Pulse compute per month included. A credit card is not required to sign up for the free trial or use the Lite plan.' The plan card adds 'Up to 3 internal active users and 2 service accounts' and '10 hrs Pulse compute per month included'. unit hours; metered on wall-clock; perpetual-free
Price	none stated
Per-object cap	not applicable
Retention	not applicable
Egress	not stated
Identity	email no card: the FAQ states 'A credit card is not required to sign up for the free trial or use the Lite plan', and the docs state 'Lite without a credit card includes 30 minutes per day at no charge'. No hold exists because no payment method is taken. The signup fields are not quoted, so the email requirement is inferred rather than read, and debit and prepaid acceptance are not stated.
Limits	volume-quota 10 Pulse compute-hours a month fails before the 10 GB of storage: Pulse is metered per query with a one-second minimum, so a dashboard refreshed every minute exhausts the hours while storage is still nearly empty. source 10 Pulse compute-hours a month fails before the 10 GB of storage: Pulse is metered per query with a one-second minimum, so a dashboard refreshed every minute exhausts the hours while storage is still nearly empty.
Binding	volume-quota 10 Pulse compute-hours a month fails before the 10 GB of storage: Pulse is metered per query with a one-second minimum, so a dashboard refreshed every minute exhausts the hours while storage is still nearly empty.
Interface	unknown inferred from the tooling the provider documents; not probed
Tooling	not stated
Composes with	DuckDB over 10 GB of managed Parquet is the cheapest analytical layer found, and a local DuckDB client connects to it with the same SQL, so a query developed on the free tier runs unchanged anywhere.
Reliability	no reliability event recorded
Notes	The free tier is Pulse only: Standard, Jumbo and Mega instances require the Business plan. Without a card the plan is 'Lite (with limits)', capped at 30 minutes of Flight compute a day and no scheduling. Historical retention is 1 day on Lite, so time travel is not a backup.
Evidence rung	documented
Checked	2026-10-22 (live); stale on 2026-11-21
Parsed numbers	`$.limits[0].value` limit:volume-quota 10.0 GB

Evidence (3)

date	source	what it proved
2026-10-22	motherduck.com/pricing/	'We also offer a Lite plan with 10 GB of storage and 10 hours of Pulse compute per month included. A credit card is not required to sign up for the free trial or use the Lite plan.', quoted
2026-10-22	motherduck.com/docs/about-motherduck/billing/pricing/	'The Lite plan includes 10 CU hours on Pulse per month. Additional usage is billed at the rates above.' and storage 'Includes 10 GB / month', quoted
2026-10-22	motherduck.com/docs/about-motherduck/billing/pricing/	'Lite without a credit card includes 30 minutes per day at no charge' for Flight compute; Lite plan databases retain 1 day of historical data

More fields (1)

{
 "wave2": {
  "class": "analytics-free-tier",
  "free_tier_kind": "perpetual-free",
  "shape": {
   "vcpu": null,
   "ram_gib": null,
   "disk_gib": 10
  }
 }
}

Unknown or withheld values (9)

$.egress.metered egress-unknown
$.egress.terms not-stated
$.interface interface-unknown
$.per_object_cap.notes process
$.per_object_cap.stated not-applicable
$.reliability_note none-observed
$.retention.notes process
$.retention.stated not-applicable
$.tooling not-stated