PostgreSQL vs Neon

At a Glance

Attribute	PostgreSQL	Neon
Category	Database	Database
Pricing Model	open-source	freemium
Starting Price	Free	Free / $19/mo
Free Tier	Yes	Yes
Open Source	Yes	Yes
Platforms	linux, macos, windows, containers	web, api

PostgreSQL

Neon

PostgreSQL

Neon

PostgreSQL

No data available.

Neon

Pros

Branching lets you create a full database copy in seconds, which finally makes database previews per pull request practical+168
Scale-to-zero means you pay nothing when your app is idle, making it the cheapest option for multiple staging environments+152

Database

Supabase vs Neon

Database

PlanetScale vs Neon

Database

Supabase vs Neon vs PlanetScale

Get the next comparison in your inbox

Weekly digest — no spam, unsubscribe anytime.

Cons

Scale-to-zero is great for cost but the cold start on a sleeping database adds 500ms-1s of latency to the first request, which can surprise users+145
Some Postgres extensions aren't available yet on Neon because of the storage separation architecture+96
The free tier is limited to a single project and 10 branches, which is tight if you're managing multiple apps+81
The billing dashboard is confusing — compute hour pricing requires math to predict your monthly bill accurately+72