MongoDB Atlas (M0) free tier: the verified facts
Last verified: 2026-10-06· official pricing page
FREE TIER EXISTS NO CARD NEEDED
Free-forever shared MongoDB cluster — fine for learning, throttled for anything real.
Current limits
| What | Limit | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Storage | 512 MB | Data + indexes, uncompressed BSON |
| Throughput | 100 operations/second max | Throttled with 1s cooldown above |
| Connections | 500 max | |
| Data transfer | 10 GB in + 10 GB out per rolling 7 days | |
| Clusters | 1 free cluster per project | |
| Idle pause | Auto-paused after 30 days of zero connections | |
| Backups | None | mongodump is your only option |
Gotchas that bite people
Auto-pauses after 30 days idle — and a long-paused cluster on an old MongoDB version may be UNRESTORABLE. Export your data if you'll be away
100 ops/sec cap throttles the whole cluster — a chatty ORM or any real traffic hits this fast
500-connection limit + serverless functions without connection pooling = classic connection exhaustion
MongoDB version is pinned; you can't choose or upgrade it on M0
Notes for developers in India
M0 deploys in a subset of regions only. Mumbai (ap-south-1) availability for free tier unverified — check the cluster-creation UI; Singapore is the usual fallback.
Change history
2026-10-06— Verified M0 limits. Note: Atlas is steering small paid workloads to new Flex clusters ($8-30/month) replacing the M2/M5 shared tiers
Outgrowing the free tier?
When the limits above stop being enough, see our comparison guides for the cheapest reliable upgrade paths — including options with India regions.