Free database and observability credits: trials, free tiers and startup programs

Model credits get most of the attention, but an AI product also needs somewhere to keep its data and a way to see what it is doing in production. Six offers for that went public on Perq today: ClickHouse Cloud, CockroachDB Cloud, TiDB's AI startup program, New Relic, Pydantic Logfire and Grafana Cloud. We grouped them with the data and observability offers we already track into a new pack. Every offer was re-checked on the vendor's own page this morning (Oct 25, 2026); each card shows the quote we matched and when.

Data observability pack

Databases and warehouses

• ClickHouse ($300 in ClickHouse Cloud credits for 30 days)
• Cockroach Labs ($400 in CockroachDB Cloud credit for a 30-day trial)
• Snowflake (30-day trial with $400 in free credits)
• Databricks (Up to $400 in free usage on trial)
• Neon (Free Postgres plan, no time limit, no card (100 CU-hours/project))
• MotherDuck (Lite plan starting from $0)
• PingCAP (TiDB Cloud) (Up to $100,000 in TiDB Cloud credits)

The trials work differently from the free tiers, so it helps to know which clock you are on:

• Time-boxed trial credit. ClickHouse Cloud gives new organizations $300 in credits for 30 days, and the trial ends when the credits are used up or the 30 days pass, whichever comes first. CockroachDB Cloud gives $400 for a 30-day trial, with no credit card needed for the Standard tier. Snowflake's trial is 30 days with $400 in free credits, and Databricks offers up to $400 in free usage on its trial. Start these when you have a real workload to test, not the day you sign up.
• No time limit. Neon's free Postgres plan has no time limit and needs no card (100 CU-hours per project). MotherDuck's Lite plan starts from $0 for solo practitioners. These suit side projects and prototypes that may sit idle for weeks.
• Startup program. TiDB's AI startup program offers up to $100,000 in TiDB Cloud credits to AI startups at the pre-seed to Series B stage. PingCAP decides who qualifies; the page lists fit criteria rather than hard rules.

Observability

• Grafana Labs (Always-free Grafana Cloud tier: 10k active metric series and 50 GB logs per month, 14-day retention)

• New Relic (100 GB/month of free data ingest + 1 free full platform user)

• Pydantic Logfire ($20/month of free usage (10 million spans, logs or metrics) on every plan)

• Helicone (10,000 free requests/month)

• Datadog (A year of Datadog, up to $100k in credits)

• Langfuse (50% off entire Langfuse bill for 12 months)

• Always-free tiers, no card. Grafana Cloud's free tier covers 10k active metric series and 50 GB of logs per month with 14-day retention. New Relic's free tier gives 100 GB per month of data ingest and one full platform user; on the free tier, ingest stops when you pass 100 GB until the next month or until you upgrade. Pydantic Logfire includes $20 per month of free usage (10 million spans, logs or metrics) on every plan, and its Personal plan is hard-capped at $0.

• LLM-specific. Helicone's Hobby tier is 10,000 free requests per month. Langfuse's startup program is 50% off the entire bill for 12 months for early-stage teams that are bootstrapped or raised under $5M.

• Startup program. Datadog for Startups offers a year of Datadog, up to $100k in credits, for early-stage companies.

Where to start

Based only on the eligibility and limits each vendor publishes:

1. Prototyping alone or without funding: pick from the no-card free tiers (Neon or MotherDuck for data, Grafana Cloud, New Relic or Logfire for telemetry). New Relic's free tier stops ingest at its cap and Logfire's Personal plan is hard-capped at $0, so a noisy job hits a limit instead of a bill there.
2. Evaluating a database for production: run the 30-day trials one at a time, so each trial's credit covers a real load test instead of expiring unused.
3. Funded AI startup: apply to TiDB's and Datadog's startup programs, which carry the largest stated amounts here. Approval and final amounts are up to each vendor.

This pack has no "up to" total, because it mixes trials, free tiers and applications; pick the ones that fit your stage. More data and observability offers are with early-access subscribers now and will join the pack once they are public. Subscribe to get new offers first.

Spotted something out of date? Email ops@avatar33.com and we will re-check the vendor page.

Originally published on Perq, where every listing carries a source link and a last-verified date. Perq is run by Avatar 8 LLC.