Services¶

In the realm of CrateDB Cloud services, understanding your options is crucial for optimizing both performance and costs. This section of the documentation provides an in-depth look at the various service plans we offer, catering to a wide range of use-cases from small-scale applications to enterprise-level deployments. Our service plans are engineered for scalability, reliability, and performance.

Shared

non-critical workloads

Single Node
Up to 8 shared vCPUs
Up to 12 GiB RAM
Up to 1 TiB storage
Backups (once per day)
Single-AZ
Development support

Dedicated

production workloads

Up to 9 Nodes
Up to 144 vCPUs
Up to 495 GiB RAM
Up to 72 TiB storage
Backups (once per hour)
Multi-AZ
Basic Support

AWS / Azure Private Link
Uptime SLAs
Premium support available

Custom

large production workloads

Any cluster size
Custom compute options
Dedicated master nodes
Unlimited Storage
Custom Backups
Premium Support
AWS / Azure Private Link
Uptime SLAs

Shared¶

CrateDB Cloud’s Shared Plan provides an affordable and easy-to-setup option for users who require basic database functionalities. The plan is built around the principle of cost-effectiveness and is particularly well-suited for development, testing, or non-critical production environments.

Node sizes

Plan	Size	vCPUs	RAM	Storage
Shared	CRFREE*	up to 2	2 GiB	8 GiB
Shared	S2	up to 2	2 GiB	8 GiB to 1TiB
Shared	S4	up to 3	4 GiB	8 GiB to 1TiB
Shared	S6	up to 4	6 GiB	8 GiB to 1TiB
Shared	S12	up to 8	12 GiB	8 GiB to 1TiB

Variable Performance
Since your cluster will be sharing vCPUs with other clusters, the performance may vary depending on the overall load on the underlying machine. This variability makes it less predictable compared to Dedicated Plans, where your database is running on dedicated resources.

Fair-Use Principle
The Shared Plan operates on a fair-use principle. All users are expected to utilize the shared resources responsibly so that the system remains equitable and functional for everyone.

Note

*CRFREE: This plan is aimed at new users who want to test and evaluate CrateDB Cloud and is perpetually free to use. Every user can deploy one free tier cluster in their organization without adding a payment method. Free tier clusters will be suspended if they are not used for 4 days, and deleted after 10 more days of inactivity. They cannot be scaled or changed.

Dedicated¶

CrateDB Cloud’s Dedicated Plan is designed to provide robust, scalable, and high-performance database solutions. Unlike the Shared Plan, the Dedicated Plan offers dedicated resources, including dedicated vCPUs, to meet the demands of high-availability and high-throughput environments.

Node sizes

Plan	Size	vCPUs	RAM	Storage
Dedicated	CR1	2	7 GiB	32 GiB to 8 TiB
Dedicated	CR2	4	14 GiB	32 GiB to 8 TiB
Dedicated	CR3	8	28 GiB	32 GiB to 8 TiB
Dedicated	CR4	16	55 GiB	32 GiB to 8 TiB

All Dedicated Plans can be scaled from 1 to 9 nodes. Depeding on the number of nodes, the overall cluster size can be scaled up to the following limits:

Cluster sizes

Plan	Size	vCPUs	RAM	Storage
Dedicated	CR1	up to 18	up to 63 GiB	up to 72 TiB
Dedicated	CR2	up to 36	up to 126 GiB	up to 72 TiB
Dedicated	CR3	up to 72	up to 252 GiB	up to 72 TiB
Dedicated	CR4	up to 144	up to 495 GiB	up to 72 TiB

High Availability
While it’s possible to start with just one node, for applications requiring high availability and fault tolerance, we recommend using at least three nodes. This ensures data replication and allows the cluster to handle node failures gracefully.

Dedicated nodes are automatically deployed across three availability zones, and the specific zone for each node cannot be manually configured. A single dedicated node is placed in one zone, two nodes are distributed across two zones, and three or more nodes utilize all three availability zones, with nodes distributed as uniformly as possible. While a node count that is a multiple of three (e.g., 3, 6, 9, 12, etc.) provides optimal distribution across zones, it is not strictly required for high availability.

Dedicated master nodes¶

By default, every node in a cluster is master-eligible: on top of storing and querying data, any node can be elected to manage the cluster state—keeping track of which nodes are members, where shards live, and coordinating changes to that metadata. On smaller clusters this shared arrangement works fine. On large or busy clusters it can work against you, because the elected master competes for CPU and memory with the same query and ingest traffic it is meant to coordinate—the data node under the most load is also the one holding the cluster together.

Dedicated master nodes split those two jobs apart. The cluster runs a small, separate pool of nodes that only manage the cluster state; they hold no data and answer no queries, so coordination stays responsive no matter how hard the data nodes are working. In practice this means steadier cluster management and cleaner failover on larger deployments.

When to use them
Consider dedicated master nodes once a cluster grows past a handful of data nodes, sustains heavy ingest or query load, or has strict availability requirements. Smaller clusters don’t need them—the data nodes take on the master role without any trouble.

How they work

You opt into dedicated master nodes when deploying a cluster. They are available on the larger dedicated sizes (CR3 and up).
The pool always runs an odd number of nodes—three by default, optionally five—so a master can always be elected by a majority (quorum). An even number adds cost without improving fault tolerance, so it isn’t offered.
Master nodes are distributed across availability zones like data nodes, and each is deployed with its own storage. Their size and count are set when the cluster is created and stay fixed when you scale the data nodes up or down.

Billing
Dedicated masters are billed as additional nodes: compute for each master while the cluster is running, plus their storage. Suspending a cluster pauses master compute along with the data nodes; master storage keeps being billed, the same way data storage does. See billing for details.

Custom¶

For organizations with specialized requirements that go beyond the Shared and Dedicated Plans, CrateDB Cloud offers custom solutions tailored to your specific needs. Our sales team and solutions engineers work closely with you to architect and deploy a custom cluster configuration, ensuring optimal performance, scalability, and security for your mission-critical applications.

Whether you have stringent compliance mandates, complex integrations, or unique scalability challenges, our custom solutions provide the flexibility and expertise to meet your business objectives and technical requirements.