SQLite

marina db create notes --engine sqlite

Your first SQLite database is free at 200 MB, permanently. Not a trial, not a first month: that database has no bill attached to it and never will, until you make it bigger.

What it is, and what it is not

This is SQLite as a service, reached over HTTPS with a token. It is not a file on your app’s disk, which matters more than it sounds:

• Your data survives a deploy. An app’s filesystem is replaced every time it ships; a SQLite file sitting in it is gone. This is not in the app.
• Anything can reach it. A script on your laptop, a function somewhere else, a second app. It is a URL and a token.
• A local SQLite driver will not open it. It speaks HTTP, so you need a libSQL client rather than the SQLite library your language ships with. Most ecosystems have one.

If you need something a SQLite client must open as a file, you want Postgres instead.

Connecting

marina db url notes

That prints the URL and the token, and needs db:credentials, which is a scope of its own and in no preset. A credential that can deploy your app does not get to read your database token by accident.

Attach it to an app and there is nothing to copy:

marina db attach notes

Sizes and what they cost

Sizes go in 100 MB steps, from 200 MB to 10 GB. It is the same rate as every other database here, charged at a finer grain so small is actually small, and the pricing page has it.

marina db create notes --engine sqlite --storage-mb 500

The free 200 MB is one per account, and it is the first one. Growing it past 200 MB makes it a paid database, and that is one-way: the free tier does not come back if you shrink again later, and shrinking is not offered anyway.

Letting it grow itself

marina db create notes --engine sqlite --autoscale --autoscale-max-mb 2000

With --autoscale it grows as it fills, in 100 MB steps, up to the ceiling you set, and you are billed for what it actually holds. Without it, a database that fills up starts refusing writes, which your app will see as a disk-full error.

Autoscale is the right default for anything you are not watching. The ceiling is what keeps it from being a blank cheque.

Backups

Snapshotted daily, like every managed database here. What that covers is worth two minutes before you rely on it.