Upstash Has a Free Serverless Redis and Kafka — Pay Only Per Request

Traditional Redis costs $15/month minimum even when idle. Upstash Redis is serverless — you pay per command. 10K commands/day free. What is Upstash? Upstash provides serverless Redis, Kafka, QStash (message queue), and Vector — all with per-request pricing. Perfect for serverless apps where you can't maintain persistent connections. Why Upstash for Serverless 1. HTTP-Based Redis (No TCP Connections) import { Redis } from '@upstash/redis'; const redis = new Redis({ url: process.env.UPSTASH_REDIS_REST_URL, token: process.env.UPSTASH_REDIS_REST_TOKEN, }); // Works in Vercel Edge, Cloudflare Workers, Deno Deploy await redis.set('user:1', { name: 'Alice', role: 'admin' }); const user = await redis.get('user:1'); HTTP-based — no connection pooling needed. Works in every serverless runtime. 2. Rate Limiting (One Line) import { Ratelimit } from '@upstash/ratelimit'; import { Redis } from '@upstash/redis'; const ratelimit = new Ratelimit({ redis: Redis.fromEnv(), limiter: Ratelimit.slidingWindo