Create a TiDB Cluster

This tutorial guides you through signing up and creating a TiDB cluster.

Step 1. Create a TiDB Cloud account

If you do not have a TiDB Cloud account, click here to sign up for an account.
- You can either sign up with email and password so that you can manage your password using TiDB Cloud, or sign up with your Google, GitHub, or Microsoft account.
- For AWS Marketplace users, you can also sign up through AWS Marketplace. To do that, search for TiDB Cloud in AWS Marketplace, subscribe to TiDB Cloud, and then follow the onscreen instructions to set up your TiDB Cloud account.
- For Google Cloud Marketplace users, you can also sign up through Google Cloud Marketplace. To do that, search for TiDB Cloud in Google Cloud Marketplace, subscribe to TiDB Cloud, and then follow the onscreen instructions to set up your TiDB Cloud account.
Log in to your TiDB Cloud account.

Step 2. Select a cluster tier

TiDB Cloud provides the following two cluster tier options. Before creating a TiDB cluster, consider which option suits your need better:

Serverless Tier (Beta)
The TiDB Cloud Serverless Tier is a fully managed service of TiDB. It is still in the beta phase and cannot be used in production. However, you can use Serverless Tier clusters for non-production workloads such as prototype applications, hackathons, academic courses, or to provide a temporary data service for your datasets.
Dedicated Tier
The TiDB Cloud Dedicated Tier is dedicated for production use with the benefits of cross-zone high availability, horizontal scaling, and HTAP.

For more information about the two options, see Select Your Cluster Tier.

Step 3. Use your default project or create a new project

If you are an organization owner, once you log in to TiDB Cloud, you have a default project. For more information about projects, see Organizations and projects.

For free trial users, you can rename the default project if needed.
For Dedicated Tier users, you can either rename the default project or create a new project if needed.

Click Organization in the upper-right corner of the TiDB Cloud console.
Click Organization Settings.
The Projects tab is displayed by default.
Do one of the following:
- To rename the default project, click Rename in the Actions column.
- To create a project, click Create New Project, enter a name for your project, and then click Confirm.
To return to the cluster page, click the TiDB Cloud logo in the upper-left corner of the window.

If you are a project member, you can access only the specific projects to which your organization owner invited you, and you cannot create new projects. To check which project you belong to, take the following steps:

Click Organization in the upper-right corner of the TiDB Cloud console.
Click Organization Settings.
The Projects tab is displayed by default.
To return to the cluster page, click the TiDB Cloud logo in the upper-left corner of the window.

Step 4. Create a TiDB cluster

Serverless Tier
Dedicated Tier

To create a Serverless Tier cluster, take the following steps:

Navigate to the Clusters page.
Click Create Cluster.
On the Create Cluster page, select Serverless Tier, and update the default cluster name if necessary.
Note that the cloud provider of Serverless Tier is AWS, and then select the region where you want to create your cluster.
Click Create.
The cluster creation process starts and your TiDB Cloud cluster will be created in approximately 30 seconds.
After the cluster is created, follow the instructions in Connect via Standard Connection to create a password for your cluster.
Note
If you do not set a password, you cannot connect to the cluster.

To create a Dedicated Tier cluster, take the following steps:

Navigate to the Clusters page of your project.
Tip
If you have multiple projects, you can switch to the target project in the left navigation pane of the Clusters page.
Click Create Cluster.
On the Create Cluster page, select Dedicated Tier, update the default cluster name and port number if necessary, choose a cloud provider and a region, and then click Next.
Note
- If you signed up TiDB Cloud through AWS Marketplace, the cloud provider is AWS, and you cannot change it in TiDB Cloud.
- If you signed up TiDB Cloud through Google Cloud Marketplace, the cloud provider is GCP, and you cannot change it in TiDB Cloud.
If this is the first cluster of your current project and CIDR has not been configured for this project, you need to set the project CIDR, and then click Next. If you do not see the Project CIDR field, it means that CIDR has already been configured for this project.
Note
When setting the project CIDR, avoid any conflicts with the CIDR of the VPC where your application is located. You cannot modify your project CIDR once it is set.
Configure the cluster size for TiDB, TiKV, and TiFlash (optional) respectively, and then click Next.
Confirm the cluster information on the page and the billing information in the lower-left corner.
If you have not added a payment method, click Add Credit Card in the lower-right corner.
Note
If you signed up TiDB Cloud through AWS Marketplace or Google Cloud Marketplace, you can pay through your AWS account or Google Cloud account directly but cannot add payment methods or download invoices in the TiDB Cloud console.
Click Create.
Your TiDB Cloud cluster will be created in approximately 20 to 30 minutes.
In the row of your target cluster, click ... and select Security Settings.
Set the root password and allowed IP addresses to connect to your cluster, and then click Apply.