Best offer on record: Turso Free Plan (permanent free tier). 4 verified findings, checked 2026-10-22.
Offers
Turso Free Plan (permanent free tier) high confidence
Free forever, $0/month, no trial window and no trial credits. Verified today (2026-10-22) on the official pricing page: 100 databases; 5 GB total database storage; 500 million rows read/month; 10 million rows written/month; 3 GB monthly embedded syncs; 1-day point-in-time restore; community support. Overage rates (apply once overages are enabled): storage $0.75/GB, rows read $1/billion, rows written $1/million, syncs $0.35/GB. Point-in-time restore and database branching add no usage charge; idle databases cost only storage.
Eligibility
Open to everyone (individuals, students, companies); no .edu email, no minimum-age, no funding requirements. Sign up with GitHub. Credit card NOT required (page states 'Start free, no credit card required'). No region restriction is published for the free plan; you choose the primary location of each database. Commercial use on Free is allowed with no per-seat or revenue cap.
How to claim
1) Go to turso.tech and sign up (GitHub login). 2) The Free plan is applied automatically — no activation, no coupon. 3) Create databases via dashboard or `turso db create` CLI. 4) Connect with SDKs (@libsql/client etc.) or the stateless HTTP API. Optional: enable/disable 'Overages' in billing settings to control what happens past quotas.
Expiry
No expiry — standing $0/month tier with no end date and no renewal. (Contrast: third-party pages that call it a '365-day student grant' are wrong; the grant framing is aggregator content, not Turso's.)
Gotchas
Task's pre-known numbers are stale: 9 GB belongs to the paid Developer plan, the free tier is 5 GB; '1 GB egress' no longer exists — Turso meters rows read/written and syncs, not GB of egress. The first limit you hit is 10M rows written/month (~333k writes/day). A full-table-scan SELECT costs one row-read per row, so unindexed queries burn the 500M read quota fast. If overages are disabled, hitting a cap blocks that metric instead of billing. Free plan has no audit logs, no DPA/IP allow lists/SSO (paid-only features). Edge read replicas were stopped for new accounts in Jan 2025; embedded replicas (sync to a local SQLite file, included in the 3 GB sync quota) are the replacement. No trial credits are granted to new accounts.
Turso Startup Program (Turso for Startups) high confidence
Launched 2026-05-11. For early-stage venture-backed startups: 'generous Turso credits' (dollar amount NOT published — sized at approval), plus priority access to Turso's engineering team for onboarding and architecture reviews, early access to unreleased features, and co-marketing (blog features, case studies). Verified today on the official turso.tech/startups page.
Eligibility
All three published criteria: (1) venture-backed startup with at least one round of funding; (2) building an early-stage product or actively scaling; (3) verifiable funding from recognized investors or accelerators. No company-age limit and no funding-cap published; bootstrapped/unfounded startups do NOT qualify under published criteria (they can use the free tier). No .edu/education track — the program explicitly targets VC-backed founders. Credit card not required to apply.
How to claim
1) Open https://turso.tech/startups and fill in the application form (full name, company email, role, startup description, year founded, major investor/accelerator, latest round). 2) Applications reviewed on a rolling basis; Turso typically responds within a few business days. 3) Once accepted, credits are applied to your account and you start building immediately.
Expiry
Credit amount and spend window are not published. Confirm the dollar value and activation/expiry dates in writing at approval; unused credit balances on programs like this are typically forfeited, and after credits run out you move to standard usage-based pricing (Developer $4.99/mo billed yearly, $5.99 monthly, then overages).
Gotchas
Amount 'set at approval' — do not plan budgets around it. Review is selective (VC-backed, verifiable funding), not automatic. Program page carries no published terms page; co-marketing is an opportunity, not a guarantee. After the 2026-10-02 Supabase acquisition, watch for the program migrating into Supabase's ecosystem — the page was live as of today, but terms may consolidate.
Student / education offer: none exists (free tier is the de-facto student offer) medium confidence
No Turso education license, no .edu-verified student program, no student discount page exists. Searches of turso.tech (pricing, startups, partners, blog) surface no education offer; the free tier described in finding 1 is what students use, and it is open to anyone without verification. Third-party 'Turso student deal' listings (e.g., The Modelverse, agentdeals) merely repackage the free tier and add fabricated '365-day grant / .edu verification' framing that Turso does not state.
Eligibility
N/A — no student eligibility criteria because no student program exists. Free tier requires no .edu email and no verification of any kind.
How to claim
N/A — nothing to claim beyond the free-tier signup (finding 1).
Expiry
N/A
Gotchas
Do not cite aggregator 'student deal' pages (thefreebie/Modelverse/agentdeals-style): they invent verification steps and expiry dates ('Oct 17, 2027 tripwire', '365-day grant') that are not in Turso's official pages. Only turso.tech is authoritative.
Trial credits for new accounts: none high confidence
No time-boxed trial credits (e.g., $X for 30 days) are offered on the official pricing page or blog. The only credits on the table are the unpublished startup-program credits (finding 2). New accounts simply get the free tier; paid plans start at Developer $4.99/mo billed yearly ($5.99 monthly), Scaler $24.92 ($29 monthly), Pro $416.58 ($499 monthly), Enterprise custom.
Eligibility
N/A
How to claim
N/A
Expiry
N/A
Gotchas
If a vendor page advertises a 'free trial with credits' for Turso, treat it as aggregator noise unless it links turso.tech terms.