Best databases for web apps (worth paying for?)

We asked 10 models: Which hosted databases are actually worth paying for? Each named its own top 10.

Asked 4 ways: List request · Buyer asking for advice · Search query · Worth paying for?. Share of voice pools every wording.

Agreement between models: 35%
Same model, run twice: 59%
Different picks: 27

When agreement between models is well below a model's agreement with itself, the split reflects real differences in taste rather than randomness.

The consensus

Each cell is the position that model gave the pick; blank means it left the pick off. Click a row for each model's reasoning.

#	Pick	Listed by	Claude Haiku 5.5	GPT-6 Luna	Gemini 4 Argon	Qwen 3.8 Flash	DeepSeek V4 Pro	GLM-5.3	Kimi K3	MiniMax M3	Mistral Large 4	Nemotron 3 Ultra
1	MongoDB Atlas	10/10	9	4	4	5	3	2	1	1	2	1
Kimi K3 (#1) The mature managed MongoDB with search, charts, and global clusters MiniMax M3 (#1) Best document DB hosting, generous free tier, strong operational tooling. GLM-5.3 (#2) The default managed NoSQL choice; excellent tooling and global deployment. Mistral Large 4 (#2) Fully managed, multi-cloud, great developer experience for document workloads at any scale. DeepSeek V4 Pro (#3) The managed MongoDB standard, global clusters, and excellent search capabilities. GPT-6 Luna (#4) Polished global document database with dependable automation and a rich ecosystem. Gemini 4 Argon (#4) The definitive managed document database with seamless multi-cloud scaling and built-in vector search. Qwen 3.8 Flash (#5) The only sane way to run managed MongoDB at any scale. Claude Haiku 5.5 (#9) Mature managed document database with broad tooling and multi-cloud availability.
2	Supabase	9/10	5	7	1	2	1	4	3	2	7
Gemini 4 Argon (#1) Unbeatable developer experience combining managed PostgreSQL with instant APIs, auth, and realtime subscriptions. DeepSeek V4 Pro (#1) Best Postgres platform with generous free tier, real-time, auth, and storage built in. Qwen 3.8 Flash (#2) Open-source Firebase alternative with excellent DX and generous free tier. MiniMax M3 (#2) Postgres plus auth and APIs, fast, developer-friendly, fair pricing. Kimi K3 (#3) Postgres plus auth, storage, and realtime at unbeatable value GLM-5.3 (#4) Postgres plus auth, APIs, and storage at very low cost. Claude Haiku 5.5 (#5) Postgres backend with auth, storage, and realtime, speeding up app development. GPT-6 Luna (#7) Convenient managed PostgreSQL bundled with useful auth, APIs, and realtime features. Mistral Large 4 (#7) Open-source Firebase alternative with real Postgres underneath; generous free tier, fair pricing.
3	PlanetScale	9/10	7		5	3	2	5	4	3	3	2
DeepSeek V4 Pro (#2) Serverless MySQL with branching workflow, perfect for modern dev teams. Qwen 3.8 Flash (#3) Instant online schema changes and branching make MySQL a joy to use. MiniMax M3 (#3) Serverless MySQL with branching and strong DX, worth it for MySQL users. Mistral Large 4 (#3) Serverless MySQL with branching workflows that make schema changes actually safe and easy. Kimi K3 (#4) Serverless MySQL with branching and non-blocking schema changes worth paying premium Gemini 4 Argon (#5) Unmatched horizontal scaling via Vitess with non-blocking schema migrations for massive MySQL workloads. GLM-5.3 (#5) Managed Vitess with painless schema branching; MySQL at scale. Claude Haiku 5.5 (#7) Scalable MySQL with non-blocking schema changes and a solid developer experience.
4	Amazon Aurora	6/10	1	1		1			2		6	4
Claude Haiku 5.5 (#1) Strong MySQL and PostgreSQL compatibility, scales well, and handles production load reliably. GPT-6 Luna (#1) Strong managed relational database with broad compatibility, scaling options, and mature AWS operations. Qwen 3.8 Flash (#1) Best blend of Postgres/MySQL compatibility, serverless scaling, and durability. Kimi K3 (#2) AWS-tuned Postgres/MySQL performance that justifies cost at scale Mistral Large 4 (#6) MySQL/Postgres compatibility with near-RDS performance at lower cost, excellent for production workloads.
5	Neon	8/10	3	6	2	4	4	6		5		8
Gemini 4 Argon (#2) Serverless PostgreSQL with instant branching and scale-to-zero makes modern development workflows effortless. Claude Haiku 5.5 (#3) Serverless Postgres with branching and scale-to-zero, great for developer workflows. Qwen 3.8 Flash (#4) Serverless Postgres with branching and autosuspend; perfect for modern apps. DeepSeek V4 Pro (#4) Serverless Postgres with instant branching, bottomless storage, and great DX. MiniMax M3 (#5) Serverless Postgres with branching, autoscaling, generous free tier. GPT-6 Luna (#6) Modern hosted PostgreSQL with standout branching and scale-to-zero developer workflows. GLM-5.3 (#6) Serverless Postgres with scale-to-zero; great value for modern apps.
6	Amazon RDS	7/10	8		3			1	9	9	4	3
GLM-5.3 (#1) Best all-around managed relational database: reliable, mature, broad engine support. Gemini 4 Argon (#3) Battle-tested reliability, deep AWS integration, and predictable performance for mission-critical relational workloads. Claude Haiku 5.5 (#8) Long-proven managed relational engines with mature operations, backups, and replication.
7	Snowflake	5/10		5		6		3			1	9
Mistral Large 4 (#1) Best-in-class separation of compute and storage, handles massive analytics without tuning headaches. GLM-5.3 (#3) Dominant cloud data warehouse for analytics; usage-based pricing scales brilliantly. Qwen 3.8 Flash (#6) Effortless separation of storage/compute; genuinely worth its premium pricing.
8	Google Cloud SQL	6/10	6	2				7	10	10		5
GPT-6 Luna (#2) Reliable, straightforward managed PostgreSQL and MySQL with minimal operational overhead. Claude Haiku 5.5 (#6) Simple managed MySQL, PostgreSQL, and SQL Server with automated backups and patching.
9	CockroachDB	6/10		8	6	8	5		5			10
DeepSeek V4 Pro (#5) Survives entire region failures, ideal for global apps needing strong consistency. Kimi K3 (#5) Truly distributed SQL with multi-region survivability worth the premium Gemini 4 Argon (#6) Effortless multi-region horizontal scaling with strict serializable transactions and resilient, self-healing architecture. GPT-6 Luna (#8) A compelling managed SQL choice for resilience across regions and distributed workloads. Qwen 3.8 Flash (#8) Distributed SQL with strong consistency and cloud-native elasticity.
10	Redis	4/10		10					8	4	5
MiniMax M3 (#4) Managed Redis from the creators, reliable, worth paying over self-hosting. Mistral Large 4 (#5) The managed Redis you want in production; clustering and failover handled without pager duty. GPT-6 Luna (#10) Reliable managed Redis for caching, sessions, and low-latency data structures.
11	Amazon DynamoDB	5/10	4	9	10			10			8
Claude Haiku 5.5 (#4) Serverless key-value store with predictable single-digit millisecond latency at any scale. GPT-6 Luna (#9) Worth paying for when serverless key-value scale and predictable low-latency access matter. GLM-5.3 (#10) Unmatched latency and scale for high-traffic key-value workloads.
12	Google Cloud Spanner	2/10	2									7
Claude Haiku 5.5 (#2) Globally consistent relational database with near-unlimited horizontal scaling and high availability.
13	Azure SQL Database	3/10	10	3				8
GPT-6 Luna (#3) Excellent managed SQL Server experience, especially for Microsoft-centric applications. GLM-5.3 (#8) Best fit for Microsoft shops; strong security and Hyperscale tier.
14	Turso	3/10			7	9	6
DeepSeek V4 Pro (#6) SQLite at the edge with ultra-low latency, perfect for globally distributed reads. Gemini 4 Argon (#7) Edge-hosted SQLite offering sub-millisecond reads globally and ultra-cheap multi-tenant database architectures.
15	PostgreSQL	2/10							6	6
No reasons recorded.

12 lower-scoring picks are not shown; every ballot below lists them in full.

Most divisive

Picks most models listed, at very different positions

MongoDB Atlas#1 for Kimi K3 #9 for Claude Haiku 5.5
Amazon RDS#1 for GLM-5.3 #9 for MiniMax M3
Snowflake#1 for Mistral Large 4 #9 for Nemotron 3 Ultra

Hot takes

Picks that appear on only one ballot

Azure Database for PostgreSQL at #6, only Nemotron 3 Ultra
Cloudflare D1 at #7, only Qwen 3.8 Flash
Upstash at #8, only Gemini 4 Argon
Aiven for PostgreSQL at #8, only DeepSeek V4 Pro
PostgreSQL on managed clouds (RDS/Cloud SQL) at #8, only MiniMax M3
ClickHouse Cloud at #9, only Gemini 4 Argon
Aiven at #9, only DeepSeek V4 Pro
Railway at #10, only DeepSeek V4 Pro
Databricks at #10, only Mistral Large 4

Every ballot

Hover a pick to find it on the other ballots. Marked picks appear on no other ballot.

Claude Haiku 5.5

Amazon Aurora
Google Cloud Spanner
Neon
Amazon DynamoDB
Supabase
Google Cloud SQL
PlanetScale
Amazon RDS
MongoDB Atlas
Azure SQL Database

33% with consensus · 63% self-consistent

GPT-6 Luna

Amazon Aurora
Google Cloud SQL
Azure SQL Database
MongoDB Atlas
Snowflake
Neon
Supabase
CockroachDB
Amazon DynamoDB
Redis

35% with consensus · 83% self-consistent

Gemini 4 Argon

Supabase
Neon
Amazon RDS
MongoDB Atlas
PlanetScale
CockroachDB
Turso
Upstash
ClickHouse Cloud
Amazon DynamoDB

51% with consensus · 85% self-consistent

Qwen 3.8 Flash

Amazon Aurora
Supabase
PlanetScale
Neon
MongoDB Atlas
Snowflake
Cloudflare D1
CockroachDB
Turso
Fauna

63% with consensus · 61% self-consistent

DeepSeek V4 Pro

Supabase
PlanetScale
MongoDB Atlas
Neon
CockroachDB
Turso
Fauna
Aiven for PostgreSQL
Aiven
Railway

57% with consensus · 84% self-consistent

GLM-5.3

Amazon RDS
MongoDB Atlas
Snowflake
Supabase
PlanetScale
Neon
Google Cloud SQL
Azure SQL Database
BigQuery
Amazon DynamoDB

53% with consensus · 50% self-consistent

Kimi K3

MongoDB Atlas
Amazon Aurora
Supabase
PlanetScale
CockroachDB
PostgreSQL
PostgreSQL on Amazon RDS
Redis
Amazon RDS
Google Cloud SQL

73% with consensus · 25% self-consistent

MiniMax M3

MongoDB Atlas
Supabase
PlanetScale
Redis
Neon
PostgreSQL
PostgreSQL on Amazon RDS
PostgreSQL on managed clouds (RDS/Cloud SQL)
Amazon RDS
Google Cloud SQL

80% with consensus · 44% self-consistent

Mistral Large 4

Snowflake
MongoDB Atlas
PlanetScale
Amazon RDS
Redis
Amazon Aurora
Supabase
Amazon DynamoDB
BigQuery
Databricks

52% with consensus · 53% self-consistent

Nemotron 3 Ultra

MongoDB Atlas
PlanetScale
Amazon RDS
Amazon Aurora
Google Cloud SQL
Azure Database for PostgreSQL
Google Cloud Spanner
Neon
Snowflake
CockroachDB

71% with consensus · 12% self-consistent

Who agrees with whom

Overlap between two models' lists, weighted toward the top · 100 means identical · Color runs from 18 (lightest) to 72 (darkest)

	Claude Haiku 5.5	GPT-6 Luna	Gemini 4 Argon	Qwen 3.8 Flash	DeepSeek V4 Pro	GLM-5.3	Kimi K3	MiniMax M3	Mistral Large 4	Nemotron 3 Ultra
Claude Haiku 5.5		53	28	58	21	24	34	21	18	27
GPT-6 Luna	53		21	59	20	31	37	19	27	31
Gemini 4 Argon	28	21		48	71	46	37	46	30	33
Qwen 3.8 Flash	58	59	48		56	34	54	49	34	35
DeepSeek V4 Pro	21	20	71	56		36	44	56	31	38
GLM-5.3	24	31	46	34	36		39	44	57	49
Kimi K3	34	37	37	54	44	39		72	42	58
MiniMax M3	21	19	46	49	56	44	72		46	54
Mistral Large 4	18	27	30	34	31	57	42	46		51
Nemotron 3 Ultra	27	31	33	35	38	49	58	54	51