{"question":"compare upstash redis to elasticache","results":[{"title":"Upstash vs AWS ElastiCache: Serverless Redis Pricing and Performance in 2026 (2026-08-03)","section":null,"text":"Upstash Redis and AWS ElastiCache both provide managed Redis. Almost everything else is different, e.g. how you connect or the pricing structure.\n\nIn this guide I wanna do an up-to-date 2026 comparison with current numbers and a live throughput run to see how both perform.\n\nWhat is the difference between Upstash Redis and AWS ElastiCache?\n\nElastiCache is AWS hosting the Redis OSS or Valkey engine on nodes inside your VPC (virtual private cloud, AWS's private network), billed per node-hour or per metered serverless usage. Upstash is a serverless Redis-compatible database with its own engine, reachable from anywhere over HTTPS or TCP.\n\nWith ElastiCache we pick node types, replica counts, subnets, and security groups, and your clients must run inside (or peer with) the VPC. With Upstash we create a database and get a URL and a token and can just start.","kind":"blog","url":"https://upstash.com/blog/upstash-vs-aws-elasticache-serverless-redis-pricing-and-performance-2026","publishedAt":"2026-08-03","score":0.7859},{"title":"Upstash vs AWS ElastiCache: Serverless Redis Pricing and Performance in 2026 (2026-08-03)","section":"Which is cheaper for a small or idle workload?","text":"Which is cheaper for a small or idle workload?\n\nUpstash. An idle Upstash database costs $0 on pay-as-you-go, and 5 million commands a month cost $10. Every ElastiCache option bills a minimum whether you send one command or none:\n\n| Option | Cost for an idle month |\n| --- | --- |\n| Upstash free tier | $0 |\n| Upstash pay-as-you-go | $0 |\n| ElastiCache Serverless, Valkey | $6.13 minimum |\n| ElastiCache cache.t4g.micro node, Valkey | $9.34 |\n| ElastiCache Serverless, Redis OSS | $91.25 minimum |\n\nThe free tiers differ in kind. Upstash's free tier is permanent: 256 MB and 500,000 commands a month. AWS accounts created after July 15, 2025 get $100 in credits plus up to $100 more for activating other AWS services, and the credits run out.","kind":"blog","url":"https://upstash.com/blog/upstash-vs-aws-elasticache-serverless-redis-pricing-and-performance-2026","publishedAt":"2026-08-03","score":0.7783},{"title":"Upstash vs AWS ElastiCache: Serverless Redis Pricing and Performance in 2026 (2026-08-03)","section":"Where does ElastiCache win?","text":"Where does ElastiCache win?\n\nOn network cost inside AWS, and AWS-native tooling. Same-AZ traffic between EC2 and ElastiCache is free, and metrics and access control go through CloudWatch and IAM.\n\nIf you're on AWS already with a majority of products, I think it makes sense to stay on AWS for Redis/Valkey, too.\n\nWhich should you pick?\n\nElastiCache is better when everything runs inside one AWS VPC and you have someone to manage nodes. Upstash is better if you're using another runtime to connect, want a better developer experience or are using agents to write your code (see our Upstash Redis skill!s). Both Upstash and ElastiCache handle extremely high throughput and low latency.\n\n|  | Upstash Redis | AWS ElastiCache |\n| --- | --- | --- |\n| Billing | Per command, or flat $10 to $1,500/month | Per node-hour, or metered Serverless |\n| Idle cost | $0 | $6.13 to $91.25 minimum, depending on engine |\n| Throughput | High sustained, 16,000 commands/sec on Fixed, 100,000+ on dedicated nodes | Also high sustained on dedicated nodes |\n| Access | HTTPS from anywhere, plus TCP | TCP inside your VPC |\n| Free tier | 256 MB, 500K commands/month, permanent | $100 to $200 in credits |\n| Global replication | Read regions picked from 18 regions, no fixed limit | Active-passive, 2 secondary regions max |\n| Setup | Create database, get URL and token | VPC, subnets, security groups, node sizing |\n\nSupabase compared ElastiCache, Redis Cloud, and DynamoDB before picking Upstash for its global edge caching, global replication, the REST API, and predictable cost at high bandwidth.\n\nIf your workload looks like that, low-latency reads from many regions and clients that run outside a VPC, the same reasoning applies. If you prefer one busy backend in us-east-1, a reserved ElastiCache node is good too.","kind":"blog","url":"https://upstash.com/blog/upstash-vs-aws-elasticache-serverless-redis-pricing-and-performance-2026","publishedAt":"2026-08-03","score":0.7783},{"title":"AWS ElastiCache Pricing Explained (2026): Full Cost Breakdown with Examples (2026-07-14)","section":"ElastiCache vs Upstash Redis: Pricing Comparison","text":"ElastiCache vs Upstash Redis: Pricing Comparison\n\nUpstash Redis has three pricing models:\n\n- pay-as-you-go: $0.20 per 100K commands, the first 1 GB of storage free and $0.25 per GB after that. An idle database costs $0.\n- fixed plans: a flat monthly price with no per-command billing, from $10 (250 MB, 50 GB bandwidth) up to $1,500 (500 GB, 20 TB bandwidth, 16,000 commands per second)\n- enterprise: 100K+ commands per second, data sizes up to 10 TB, and unlimited bandwidth on a custom contract\n\n|  | ElastiCache Serverless (Valkey) | ElastiCache node-based | Upstash Redis |\n| --- | --- | --- | --- |\n| Billing unit | GB-hours + ECPUs | node-hours | commands + storage |\n| Idle monthly cost | $6.13 minimum | $9.34 (cheapest node) | $0 |\n| Free tier | $100-$200 in credits | 750 hrs of t3.micro (older accounts) | 256 MB, 500K commands/month |\n| Fixed-price option | Savings Plan, up to 30% off | reserved nodes, up to 55% off | fixed plans, $10 to $1,500/month |\n\nUpstash Pricing as of July 2026\n\nExample for a small workload: a dev cache running 1M commands per month with under 1 GB of data costs $2 on Upstash pay-as-you-go (10 x $0.20), against the $6.13 idle minimum on Valkey serverless and $91.25 on Redis OSS serverless.\n\nFor steady production traffic, fixed plans fill the same role as reserved nodes: one flat monthly price you can budget for. The difference is the commitment. A reserved node needs a 1-year or 3-year contract (which carries risk), while a fixed plan is easy to cancel anytime.\n\nThe 50,000 requests-per-second example above moves about 131 TB per month at 1 KB per request. Upstash easily supports those workloads on an enterprise plan: 100K+ commands per second, unlimited bandwidth, dedicated resources, and VPC peering.","kind":"blog","url":"https://upstash.com/blog/aws-elasticache-pricing-explained-2026-full-cost-breakdown","publishedAt":"2026-07-14","score":0.7612},{"title":"Upstash vs AWS ElastiCache: Serverless Redis Pricing and Performance in 2026 (2026-08-03)","section":"Can you reach ElastiCache from a serverless or edge function?","text":"Can you reach ElastiCache from a serverless or edge function?\n\nNo. ElastiCache has no public endpoint. Clients connect over TCP from inside the VPC. Edge runtimes like Vercel or Cloudflare Workers don't allow TCP connections, so they can't connect to ElastiCache directly. Upstash uses plain HTTPS through its REST API, which works from Workers, Vercel Edge, and browsers (Upstash also supports TCP btw).\n\nThe REST API is also request-based rather than connection-based, so AWS Lambda functions skip connection pool management entirely. Zapier ran into this in production: their rate limiting ran in Vercel edge middleware, which couldn't open TCP connections to their existing Redis instance, so they moved global rate limiting and malicious IP blocking to Upstash over HTTP.\n\nHow does global replication compare?\n\nUpstash replicates to read regions you pick from 18 regions across AWS and GCP, with no fixed limit on how many. ElastiCache Global Datastore is active-passive and allows at most two secondary regions, so writes go through one primary region.\n\nUpstash's own tests show reads under 1 ms and writes under 5 ms from the same region at the 99th percentile, and reads and writes under 50 ms from the same continent. You can run the read test yourself at latency.upstash.com. Each read region costs half the Fixed plan's monthly price, and on pay-as-you-go a write bills once per region it replicates to, so 100,000 writes with one read region cost $0.40.\n\nLive latency chart on latency.upstash.com","kind":"blog","url":"https://upstash.com/blog/upstash-vs-aws-elasticache-serverless-redis-pricing-and-performance-2026","publishedAt":"2026-08-03","score":0.7609}]}