If you’re using MongoDB, whether it’s the Community Edition, Enterprise Advanced, or Atlas, you’ve probably asked yourself at some point: what is this actually costing us? And the answer isn’t always easy to pin down.
The reality is that there’s no one-size-fits-all price tag. Your infrastructure, usage patterns, and team setup all factor in. That’s why we built a MongoDB Pricing Calculator, so you can plug in your own data and get a better estimate based on your specific environment.
What we can do here is walk through the biggest drivers behind MongoDB pricing: what you’re paying for, what you aren’t getting with the free version, and how certain decisions can quietly increase your costs over time.
Breaking down MongoDB pricing
MongoDB offers a few different ways to run its database, and each one comes with its own pricing model, trade-offs, and gotchas. Whether you’re hosting it yourself or using MongoDB’s managed service, the key costs tend to fall into a few buckets: compute, storage, backups, data transfer, and support. But how those costs show up (and how predictable they are) depends heavily on which path you choose.
MongoDB Atlas (Managed Service in the cloud):
MongoDB Atlas takes care of the infrastructure for you, so there are no servers to manage and no manual provisioning. It’s convenient, especially if you’re already running in the cloud. But that convenience comes at a price, and the pricing model can get complicated fast.
Atlas charges based on several core dimensions:
- Compute: Instance size and type directly affect your bill. Bigger workloads = bigger instances = bigger costs.
- Storage: You’re billed for how much data you’re storing, along with IOPS in some configurations.
- Data transfer: This one often surprises people. Ingress is free, but egress (especially cross-region or internet-bound) can rack up quickly.
- Backups: While automated cloud backups are enabled by default on paid tiers, the storage used by these backups incurs additional costs separate from your instance price. Point-in-time recovery (PITR) is available but can come at an additional cost.
- Add-on features: Things like the BI Connector, Search, Device Syncs, or encryption key management can bump your bill even further.
Atlas also offers different deployment tiers (Serverless, Dedicated, and Shared Clusters) with different pricing and performance profiles. Serverless might seem cheaper upfront, but it doesn’t offer the same level of control or performance as Dedicated, which can scale costs quickly as you grow.
And then there’s the long-term consideration: Atlas locks you into MongoDB’s ecosystem. Features like search, triggers, and mobile sync use Atlas-specific APIs, making it harder to switch later without rewriting parts of your app.
So while Atlas is easy to get started with, it’s worth paying attention to what that convenience could cost you down the line, both financially and in terms of flexibility.
MongoDB Enterprise Advanced (Self-Managed):
If you’re running MongoDB yourself but need more than what the Community Edition offers, MongoDB Enterprise Advanced is the path MongoDB Inc. wants you to take. It’s a subscription-based model, typically priced per server or per core, and it gives you access to the full suite of enterprise features.
The appeal is straightforward: with Enterprise Advanced, you get official support, access to advanced security features like LDAP and Kerberos, and management tooling like Ops Manager. For teams in regulated industries or those with strict compliance requirements, these capabilities can be important.
But the trade-off is cost, and it’s significant. Licensing fees can climb quickly as your deployment scales, especially if you’re running high-availability setups or sharded clusters across multiple nodes. And once you’re on this path, switching back to Community Edition isn’t always simple due to feature dependencies and support expectations.
So while Enterprise Advanced offers peace of mind and tooling you won’t find in the free version, you’re paying a premium for it and committing to a long-term commercial relationship with MongoDB Inc.
MongoDB Community Edition
MongoDB Community Edition is often the starting point for teams looking to avoid licensing costs. And on paper, it’s free to use. But once you start running it in production, the limitations and the hidden costs add up quickly.
Out of the box, Community Edition lacks critical enterprise features. There’s no built-in support for hot backups or point-in-time recovery. Security features like LDAP, Kerberos, TDE, and audit logging are reserved for the Enterprise version. MongoDB doesn’t provide a Kubernetes operator for Community either, so deploying and scaling in Kubernetes requires building and maintaining your own automation.
Then there’s the operational overhead. With Community, your team is responsible for:
- Setting up and maintaining replica sets and sharded clusters
- Managing high availability and failover
- Implementing monitoring from scratch (since there’s no built-in dashboard or performance tooling)
- Writing custom backup scripts or integrating third-party tools
- Manually tuning performance and handling upgrades
And if something goes wrong? You’re on your own. MongoDB Inc. doesn’t offer official support for the Community Edition. You’re relying on forums, community Slack channels, or in-house expertise to troubleshoot production issues.
So while the license might be free, the investment in time, tooling, and internal resources can be anything but. Community Edition gives you flexibility, but it comes with a high operational burden and a long list of missing features that many teams don’t discover until it’s too late.
The Percona alternative: Enterprise MongoDB features without the price tag
If you’re hitting limitations with MongoDB Community or watching your Atlas or Enterprise costs climb, there’s another option: Percona for MongoDB. Our approach delivers the enterprise capabilities you need with the open source freedom you value.
Percona is built around flexibility, control, and transparency. You run our software on your infrastructure, whether that’s cloud, on-premises, or hybrid, without vendor lock-in or mandatory commercial support contracts. Our software is free to use and fully open source or source-available, allowing you to scale predictably on your own terms.
Here’s what Percona brings to the table, without a MongoDB Inc. license fee:
- Percona Server for MongoDB: A source-available drop-in replacement for MongoDB Community Edition with enterprise-grade features like LDAP authentication, audit logging, and encryption options.
- Percona Backup for MongoDB: A fully open source tool providing reliable, cluster-consistent hot backups and Point-In-Time Recovery (PITR), critical for production data safety.
- Percona Operator for MongoDB: Open source, Kubernetes-native automation for deploying and managing MongoDB at scale.
- Percona Monitoring and Management (PMM): While not part of the Percona for MongoDB package itself, PMM is a free, open source monitoring solution built by Percona. It works seamlessly with Percona for MongoDB to give you deep visibility into performance and query behavior.
Together, these tools give you the features and observability you need to run MongoDB in production without vendor lock-in or licensing surprises.
Need support? It’s available when you want it, and it’s not required to use the software. Our engineers know MongoDB inside and out and can help you design, optimize, and operate your environment with confidence.
Check out our MongoDB feature comparison to see how Percona for MongoDB stacks up against Community Edition, Enterprise Advanced, and Atlas.
Rethinking what you’re paying for
If your MongoDB costs are becoming unpredictable, or if you feel pressured into an expensive license upgrade just to get essential features, it might be time to reassess your strategy. You don’t necessarily have to sacrifice enterprise capabilities for cost control, nor give up flexibility for vendor support.
Percona for MongoDB gives you a different path: powerful features, automation, and observability without the license fee or lock-in. Curious what your setup might actually cost? Use our MongoDB Pricing Calculator below to run the numbers based on your real-world environment.
