Turso is a SQLite-compatible edge database built on libSQL, offering low-latency, multi-tenant databases with free and usage-based pricing.
Turso is a cloud-native database platform built around libSQL, an open-source, Rust-based fork of SQLite that Turso created and maintains. Founded in 2021 by Glauber Costa and Pekka Enberg under the earlier name ChiselStrike before rebranding to Turso, the company set out to bring SQLite's simplicity and portability to modern distributed applications.
Rather than encouraging a single large shared database, Turso is built around the idea that applications can and should use many small, cheap databases, potentially one per user, tenant, or device. This architecture suits multi-tenant SaaS products, edge and offline-first applications, and increasingly AI agent workloads that benefit from per-agent or per-session data isolation.
Turso databases can run embedded directly on-device, inside a browser via WebAssembly, or fully managed in Turso's cloud, and the platform is designed for an always-on architecture that avoids the cold-start delays common with serverless databases. Native vector search support also makes Turso a candidate database for retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) and other AI-driven applications.
Turso's core technical differentiator is libSQL, its open-source SQLite fork, which preserves full SQLite compatibility (including the SQL dialect and file format) while adding capabilities SQLite itself lacks out of the box, such as network replication, concurrent multi-writer support without locking conflicts, and native vector similarity search for embeddings.
The platform is built for extreme multi-tenancy: because individual Turso databases are lightweight and inexpensive to run idle, applications can economically provision one database per customer, user, or tenant rather than sharing a single instance, improving data isolation and simplifying per-tenant operations like backups or deletion.
Developer-facing features include Copy-on-Write database branching for testing and previews, device and edge synchronization for offline-first apps, and multi-platform support that lets the same database engine run embedded on a device, in a browser via WebAssembly, or centrally in the cloud.
Turso offers a free tier that includes 100 databases, 5GB of storage, 500 million monthly row reads, and 10 million monthly row writes, making it accessible for side projects and early-stage applications. Paid plans scale usage-based: a Developer plan runs around $4.99 per month, a Scaler plan around $24.92 per month adds unlimited databases with 24GB of included storage plus metered overages for storage, reads, and writes, and a Pro plan runs around $416.58 per month for higher-volume production workloads, with custom Enterprise pricing available for large-scale deployments.
Turso is a cloud-native, SQLite-compatible database platform built on libSQL, designed for applications that need many lightweight, low-latency databases.
Turso was founded in 2021 by Glauber Costa and Pekka Enberg, initially under the name ChiselStrike before rebranding to Turso.
Yes, Turso offers a free plan with 100 databases, 5GB of storage, 500 million monthly row reads, and 10 million monthly row writes.
libSQL is Turso's open-source, Rust-based fork of SQLite that adds features like replication, concurrent writers, and vector search while remaining SQLite-compatible.
Yes, Turso databases can run embedded on-device, in a browser via WebAssembly, or fully managed in Turso's cloud.
Yes, Turso includes native vector similarity search, making it suitable for retrieval-augmented generation and other AI workloads.
Turso uses tiered, usage-based pricing from a free plan up through Developer, Scaler, and Pro plans priced around $4.99, $24.92, and $416.58 per month respectively, plus custom Enterprise pricing.
Turso is optimized for provisioning many small, low-cost databases rather than one large shared instance, which suits multi-tenant and edge-first application architectures.