Compare monthly retainers, per-unit management and scoped projects. Confirm coverage and responsibilities in your proposal.
All prices are shown in USD and are indicative. Your proposal confirms the final scope, taxes, payment terms, and billing currency.
Reserve a defined block of SRE hours for recurring operations and engineering work.
A monthly bank of engineering hours. Extra hours and unused-hour treatment are agreed in your proposal.
For teams that need a predictable block of database engineering time.
Includes 40 database engineering hours per month
For growing teams with recurring database operations and review work.
Includes 80 database engineering hours per month
For larger estates that need more engineering capacity and on-call coverage.
Includes 160 database engineering hours per month
Response figures are initial-response targets. Covered severities, response-clock rules, exclusions, annual terms, and final scope are confirmed in the service agreement.
Base-plan scope is shown below. Human on-call add-ons are separate where available. Response figures are initial acknowledgement targets, with covered severities, clock rules, and exclusions defined in the service agreement. They are separate from resolution time.
| Feature | Starter | Growth | Scale | Custom Enterprise |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Engineering allowance | 40 hours/month | 80 hours/month | 160 hours/month | Agreed allocation |
| Initial response target | 4 hours · During covered hours | 2 hours · During covered hours | 30 minutes · P1 incidents | Defined in agreement |
| Automated monitoring | Basic | Advanced | Advanced with custom alerting | Defined in scope |
| Human coverage | Business hours | Business hours | 24x7 on-call | Defined in agreement |
| 24x7 human on-call in base plan | Not included | Not included | Included | Defined in agreement |
| Architecture review | Not included | Cadence defined in agreement | Cadence defined in agreement | Defined in scope |
| Engineering capacity | Shared service capacity | Shared service capacity | Reserved capacity; team shape agreed | Agreed for your environment |
| Custom dashboards | Not included | Basic | Included | Defined in scope |
| Database controls review | Not included | Not included | Available when scoped | Defined in scope |
Scroll the comparison horizontally on smaller screens. Per-unit management and projects have their own scope and allowances.
Prices are indicative; the proposal confirms scope and commercial terms. Scroll the comparison horizontally on smaller screens.
| Decision | Monthly retainer | Per-unit management | Scoped project |
|---|---|---|---|
| Suitable work | Recurring operations, performance tuning, and engineering priorities that change over time. | Ongoing management of an agreed database estate. | A defined audit, migration, upgrade, or improvement with a clear completion point. |
| Indicative starting price | From $2,000/month for 40 engineering hours. | From $100/month for 1 standalone instance ($100/instance). HA clusters and regions have separate rates and minimums. | From $1,000 for a defined project. The selected work determines the range. |
| Engineering allowance | 40, 80, 160 hours/month by plan. Additional work and unused-hour treatment are agreed in the proposal. | Management responsibilities are defined in the service schedule; no fixed bank of engineering hours is included. | Deliverables, dependencies, and acceptance criteria are agreed for the project. |
| Human incident coverage | Scale includes 24x7 on-call. Other retainers can add separately priced on-call coverage. Response targets depend on the plan and agreement. | Automated monitoring and human response are separate. Human coverage, severity, and response targets are scoped in the service schedule. | Ongoing incident coverage requires a separate agreement. Any post-project support window is stated in the proposal. |
| What to confirm | Monthly priorities, hours, covered work, access approvals, and reporting cadence. | Billable topology, responsibilities, change approvals, and human coverage. | Outcome, access, change windows, delivery milestones, and handover. |
Customize Your Plan
Add a defined service to a standard plan or discuss a custom operating scope. Add-on eligibility, combinations, and final pricing are confirmed in the proposal.
Coverage outside business hours; severities and response targets are set in the service agreement.
Scheduled automated restore tests with recovery reports; cadence is confirmed in the proposal.
Grafana or Datadog dashboards scoped to agreed KPIs and alerts.
Integration with your incident-management platform.
Capacity analysis and workload-growth projections.
Engineering time beyond a retainer allocation.
For organizations that need a custom operating scope across a complex database estate.
Reference estate: 50+ database instances
Common Questions
Understand the work, coverage, and commercial terms before choosing a plan.
Retainers provide an agreed bank of database engineering time: Starter includes 40 hours per month, Growth includes 80 hours per month, Scale includes 160 hours per month. Per-unit management is priced by estate units and does not include a fixed bank of SRE hours. Its responsibilities, engineering work, and human coverage are defined in the service schedule. Projects have a separate scope and indicative price range.
Standalone instances, primary-and-replica HA clusters, and regions in a distributed estate are different billing units. The published minimums are 1 standalone instance, 2 HA clusters, or 2 regions when that unit type is selected. Confirm the topology and billable units during scoping.
Automated monitoring and human incident response are separate. Scale includes 24x7 on-call; the other retainers can include a separately priced human on-call add-on. Per-unit coverage is scoped in the service schedule. The proposal confirms covered severities and response terms, and on-call coverage does not create an unlimited engineering-hours allowance.
An initial response target covers acknowledgement during the agreed coverage window. The service agreement defines severity, when the response clock starts, escalation, and exclusions. Diagnosis, mitigation, and resolution are separate activities whose timing depends on the incident.
The displayed annual option applies a 10% discount to the retainer. Add-on terms are confirmed in the proposal. Review the billing schedule, cancellation, refund, and plan-change terms in the agreement before choosing annual billing.
Review the required work, engineering allowance, and coverage with the delivery team. Agree any additional hours, changed responsibilities, fees, and effective dates before proceeding. Unused-hour treatment and changes to the billing commitment must be stated in the proposal or service agreement.
Confirm the estate, covered work, response terms, access, approval paths, reporting, and handover. The proposal should also identify billing currency, taxes, third-party costs, payment terms, and exclusions. Website prices are indicative service estimates, not a binding quote.
The published startup option is a separate eligibility-based offer with basic monitoring and 2 hours of support per month. Ask the team to confirm eligibility, the operating scope, and applicable terms before relying on that option for ongoing coverage.
Eligible seed and pre-seed companies can apply for basic monitoring and 2 support hours per month at an indicative $100/month.
Planning an access or procurement review? Read about our approach to database access and responsibilities and confirm the documents your team needs during scoping.
Share your database estate, coverage needs, and engineering priorities. We will map them to a retainer, per-unit scope, or project proposal with the applicable terms.
Website amounts are indicative. The proposal confirms billable units, work, coverage, taxes, third-party costs, and commercial terms.