Independent · sourced · Updated June 2026
Best Data Warehouse (2026)
The cheapest data warehouse is Firebolt at $0/mo. 5 offer a free tier (Firebolt, MotherDuck, Starburst). This page compares 8 options on entry price, free tier, HIPAA/SOC 2 and best-for — every figure linked to its source, updated June 2026.
8 options compared on price, free tier, compliance and fit — ranked cheapest-first. Every figure links to the vendor's own page and the date we captured it; quote-only tiers show “—”, never a guess.
Key takeaways
- Cheapest: Firebolt at $0/mo (Firebolt Core).
- Free tier: Firebolt, MotherDuck, Starburst, Databricks, Google BigQuery.
- HIPAA-ready: Firebolt, MotherDuck, Amazon Redshift, Azure Synapse Analytics, Databricks, Google BigQuery, Snowflake.
- Tracked: 8 vendors, data current through 2026-06-15.
Comparison
| # | Data Warehouse | Entry price | Free | HIPAA | SOC 2 | Best for | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Firebolt | $0/mo Firebolt Core | Yes | Yes | Yes | Product teams embedding analytics in high-concurrency customer-facing applications | firebolt.io |
| 2 | MotherDuck | $0/mo Lite | Yes | Yes | Yes | Small-to-mid data teams wanting the simplicity and speed of DuckDB at cloud scale | motherduck.com |
| 3 | Starburst | $0/mo Free | Yes | — | — | Enterprises federating queries across multiple heterogeneous data sources without data movement | starburst.io |
| 4 | Amazon Redshift | — | No | Yes | Yes | AWS-native organizations wanting deep integration with the AWS analytics ecosystem | quote-only |
| 5 | Azure Synapse Analytics | — | No | Yes | Yes | Microsoft Azure shops wanting a unified SQL + Spark analytics platform | quote-only |
| 6 | Databricks | — | Yes | Yes | Yes | Data engineering and ML teams that need a unified lakehouse platform | quote-only |
| 7 | Google BigQuery | — | Yes | Yes | Yes | Google Cloud and Google Workspace shops wanting zero-ops analytics | quote-only |
| 8 | Snowflake | — | No | Yes | Yes | Enterprise multi-cloud analytics requiring unified governance | quote-only |
Prices are the lowest published self-serve monthly rate as captured on the linked source. Annual-billing and usage details are on each vendor's record in our open dataset.
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Frequently asked questions
What is the cheapest data warehouse?
Firebolt has the lowest published entry price at $0/mo (Firebolt Core), as of 2026-06-15.
Which data warehouse have a free plan?
Firebolt, MotherDuck, Starburst, Databricks, Google BigQuery offer a free tier.
Which data warehouse support HIPAA?
Firebolt, MotherDuck, Amazon Redshift, Azure Synapse Analytics, Databricks, Google BigQuery, Snowflake state HIPAA support (a BAA). Always confirm current scope with the vendor.
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How we compiled this
Pricing sourced from official vendor pages and reputable 2026 pricing-comparison articles where official pages returned truncated/JS-only content or timed out. All figures are USD, US-East / AWS US region defaults unless noted. Usage-metered services have monthlyUsd=null with unit rates in notes. 'Contact sales' tiers have monthlyUsd=null. BigQuery official page truncated on every fetch; figures corroborated via airbyte.com (Sep 2025 article) and cdcalculators.com (2026). Databricks official page shows no prices; figures from cloudzero.com (last updated May 26 2026) and cloudzero.com via WebSearch. Azure Synapse official pricing page timed out on every fetch; figures from cloudwebschool.com (last verified Mar 19 2026) and costbench.com (2026). Snowflake official PDF binary-only; figures from select.dev (Jan 2025 article verified against cloudzero.com Apr 2026 article). All accessedAt dates set to 2026-06-14 per dataset spec.
Last verified 2026-06-15. We re-check published prices and compliance on a recurring cadence and update this page when they change.
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