pricing launch post and page (#4078)

stacked on #4053

Includes both a slightly fleshed out blog post and an updated pricing
page with a calculator.

---------

Co-authored-by: James Arthur <thruflo@gmail.com>
Co-authored-by: Valter Balegas <balegas@electric-sql.com>
Co-authored-by: Claude Opus 4.6 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>

Author: 4 people

website/blog/posts/2026-03-24-electric-cloud-pricing.md

@@ -0,0 +1,90 @@
+---
+title: 'Electric Cloud pricing is live'
+description: >-
+  Electric Cloud has self-serve pricing. Usage-based — pay for writes and retention. Reads, fan-out, and data delivery are free and unlimited.
+excerpt: >-
+  Electric Cloud now has self-serve pricing. Pay for writes and retention — reads and data delivery are free. Most simple apps will run for free on PAYG.
+authors: [balegas]
+image: /img/blog/electric-cloud-pricing/header.jpg
+tags: [cloud, pricing]
+outline: [2, 3]
+post: true
+published: true
+---
+
+Electric Cloud now has self-serve pricing. Sign up, pick a plan, start building — no sales call needed.
+
+Pricing is usage-based: you pay for writes and retention. Data delivery — reads, fan-out, concurrent users — is free, unlimited, and always will be. Pay as you go (PAYG) waives bills under $5/month, giving you 5 million writes per month at zero cost. Most hobby and simple production apps will run for free forever.
+
+:::info Key links
+- [Sign up for Electric Cloud](https://dashboard.electric-sql.cloud)
+- [Pricing details and calculator](/cloud/pricing)
+- [Electric Cloud docs](/docs/intro)
+:::
+
+Electric Cloud has been running production workloads since the [public beta](/blog/2025/04/07/electric-cloud-public-beta-release) — long enough to be confident in the platform's reliability and cost structure. We know many teams need published pricing before they commit. Now it's here.
+
+## How pricing works
+
+### The model
+
+Two billing dimensions: writes and retention.
+
+- **$1 per million writes** to any stream. Each write covers up to 10KB; larger messages auto-chunk and each chunk counts as a write.
+- **$0.10 per GB-month** retention.
+- **No charge** for reads, fan-out, concurrent users, connections, or data delivery.
+
+Some services that run additional infrastructure carry a service cost on top of the base write rate. [Postgres Sync](/products/postgres-sync) runs a dedicated replication engine to filter changes and match them to shapes, adding $2 per million writes emitted to the shape log from the replication stream. You're charged for the filtered output, not the raw replication input — one Postgres change landing on 100 shapes = 100 writes.
+
+See the [pricing page](/cloud/pricing) for the full breakdown and worked examples.
+
+### The tiers
+
+- **Pay as you go** — $0/month. No commitment, no credit card required. Bills under $5/month waived.
+- **Pro** — $249/month. No commitment. 10% usage discount. The monthly fee acts as prepaid usage credit — you're not paying twice. Unlocks advanced features including hosted sub-queries for Postgres Sync and premium support.
+- **Scale** — $1,999/month (6-month commitment). 20% usage discount. Same prepaid credit model. Direct access to founders and hands-on support to accelerate your time to market.
+
+### Why reads are free
+
+Electric delivers data through CDN infrastructure. Caching and request-collapsing handle concurrency at the edge, so reads never hit origin.
+
+Your costs scale with writes, not users or traffic. A stream with 10 readers costs the same as one with 10,000.
+
+## What it costs in practice
+
+### AI chat app with token streams
+
+Assumptions: 1,000 MAU, ~30 conversations per user per month, AI responses streamed as ~50 writes each (~500 tokens chunked at ~10 tokens per write).
+
+- Writes: 1,000 × 30 × 50 = **1.5M writes/month**
+- Retention: ~1GB of stream history → $0.10
+- **Total: ~$1.60/month → waived on PAYG**
+
+At 10,000 MAU that's ~15M writes, $15/month. At 100,000 MAU, ~150M writes. On Pro with the 10% discount, $135/month — covered by the $249 prepaid credit.
+
+All the users *reading* those streams cost nothing. 100 users or 100,000 on the same stream, same price.
+
+### Real-time SaaS dashboard with Postgres Sync
+
+Assumptions: 500 active users on a project management-style dashboard, syncing a handful of shapes each.
+
+- Initial shape loads are served from CDN cache after the first request — reads are free.
+- Database changes: 50,000 row changes/month, average change matches 10 shapes = 500,000 emitted writes.
+- Replication cost: 500K writes × $3/M ($1 base + $2 Postgres Sync) = $1.50
+- Writes from initial sync and subset queries (~2K rows per shape across 500 users): ~1M rows → $1.00
+- Retention: ~2GB → $0.20
+- **Total: ~$2.70/month → waived on PAYG**
+
+You're only charged for what gets emitted after filtering — a change that matches zero shapes costs nothing.
+
+## Get started
+
+Sign up at [Electric Cloud](https://dashboard.electric-sql.cloud). Start on PAYG, free below $5, no credit card required. See the full details on the [pricing page](/cloud/pricing), including a calculator to model your workload.
+
+Already on Electric Cloud? You'll receive an email when billing is enabled for your workspace.
+
+***
+
+- [Sign up for Electric Cloud](https://dashboard.electric-sql.cloud)
+- [Pricing calculator](/cloud/pricing#calculator)
+- [Electric Cloud docs](/docs/intro)