Our take
Pick Estuary if data teams who will stay on Developer Free at $0 (10 GB / month, 2 connector instances) while they open a first Captures list, then buy Cloud at $0.50 / GB + $100 / connector / month when they outgrow 10 GB or need a third instance. Pick RisingWave if streaming teams who will burn the 7-day Cloud trial (no setup), then pay $0.227 per RWU-hour on Basic — or stay on Apache 2.0 self-managed when they
streaming SQL database
Best for
Estuary CDC pipelines you start at $0
RisingWave Always-on SQL views you start with a 7-day Cloud trial or Apache 2.0 on your metal
Free plan
Estuary $0 · free up to 10 GB / month. 2 concurrent connector instances. No card on the Free tile we fetched
RisingWave No free plan
Lowest paid
Estuary Cloud $0.50
RisingWave Not published by the vendor
Next step up
Estuary Worked example on the page $100
RisingWave
Runs where
Estuary Hosted
RisingWave Hosted
Watch out
Estuary Free is 10 GB and 2 connector instances
RisingWave Cloud Basic is a 7-day trial, then RWU-hours
Last checked
Estuary 2026-10-23 · estuary.dev/pricing
RisingWave 2026-10-22 · risingwave.com/pricing
data teams who will stay on Developer Free at $0 (10 GB / month, 2 connector instances) while they open a first Captures list, then buy Cloud at $0.50 / GB + $100 / connector / month when they outgrow 10 GB or need a third instance.
Read the Estuary pagestreaming teams who will burn the 7-day Cloud trial (no setup), then pay $0.227 per RWU-hour on Basic — or stay on Apache 2.0 self-managed when they will operate Kubernetes themselves.
Read the RisingWave page