Amazon Aurora vs Neon
SEPT 2026 auditA comparison of Amazon Aurora and Neon built from values read directly from each provider's own documentation, with the source recorded against every figure.
The short answer
Choose Amazon Aurora if…
Teams on AWS who want a Postgres or MySQL cluster that can throw off a copy-on-write clone of production in minutes, keep up to fifteen readers behind it, and pause to nothing between bursts in serverless mode.
Editorial · Palash Bagchi · approved
Choose Neon if…
Workloads that are idle most of the time, and teams who want a real database per pull request. Compute suspends after five minutes and storage is billed separately, so a staging branch costs almost nothing while nobody is using it.
Editorial · Palash Bagchi · approved
Consider something else if…
- Amazon Aurora: You want the upstream database rather than a compatible one, or a branch workflow rather than a clone. AWS documents cloning as a way to build a test environment, not as something you do per pull request.
- Neon: You need predictable monthly billing. Usage pricing with no minimum fee cuts both ways, and a runaway query on an autoscaling compute is billed at the rate it ran.
Neither quite fits? Every other option, ranked by iScore: Amazon Aurora alternatives · Neon alternatives
19 sourced criteria separate them — see where, with sources, below.
Pick the criteria you care about. The chart counts how many of them lean toward each provider — the same read as scanning the bars below, just totalled for the ones you chose.
Amazon Aurora 0
Neon 0
At a glance.
| Criterion | Amazon Aurora | Neon |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | ||
| Free tier | No — capped Free plan plus time-limited credits | Yes |
| Kind of free offer | Introductory free tier | Free tier |
| Entry paid plan | No plan fee and no minimum commitment — Aurora charges for what you use. AWS's own worked example prices serverless compute at $0.12 per ACU-hour on Aurora Standard in US East (N. Virginia), and the smallest capacity you can set is 0.5 ACUs; storage and I/O are billed separately. | No fixed monthly fee. Launch is usage-based — Neon's own worked example puts typical spend at $15/month for intermittent load on 1 GB — so there is no entry price to compare, only a rate card. Recorded without a magnitude because a vendor's spend estimate is not a price. |
| Pricing model | Pay per use with no plan fee: instances plus storage plus I/O, or ACU-hours in serverless mode. AWS's own worked example prices serverless compute at $0.12 per ACU-hour on Aurora Standard and $0.156 on Aurora I/O-Optimized in US East (N. Virginia) — the difference being whether I/O is metered separately or folded into a higher compute and storage rate. Provisioned instances also offer Reserved Instance pricing, and usage may qualify for Database Savings Plans against a committed hourly spend. | Usage-based with no minimum monthly fee on paid plans: $0.106/CU-hour compute and $0.35/GB-month storage on Launch, $0.222/CU-hour on Scale |
| Limits | ||
| Storage (entry plan) | No included allowance on the pay-as-you-go Paid plan: storage scales automatically up to 256 TiB and is metered per GB-month — $0.10 per GB-month for Aurora Standard in AWS's US East (N. Virginia) example. The AWS Free Tier Free plan caps a cluster at 1 GiB. | No included allowance on the Launch plan; storage is metered at $0.35/GB-month. The Free plan includes 0.5 GB per project. |
| Execution | ||
| Managed connection pooling | Supported — through Amazon RDS Proxy, a separate feature of the service | Supported |
| Infrastructure | ||
| Scales to zero | Supported — serverless capacity mode only | Supported |
| Regions | 34 AWS regions, the same list for the MySQL- and PostgreSQL-compatible editions. Counted from the two availability tables in Aurora's own docs, which publish the regions and no total. | 8 AWS regions: N. Virginia, Ohio, Oregon, Frankfurt, London, Singapore, Sydney, São Paulo. A project's region is fixed at creation and cannot be changed. |
| Data | ||
| Engine | MySQL- and PostgreSQL-compatible. Aurora is AWS's own engine rather than a hosted build of either, so compatibility is the claim being made — existing code, tools and applications are stated to work, which is not the same as being the upstream database. | PostgreSQL |
| Connection limit | Derived from memory, not set per plan. On Aurora serverless the default follows the maximum ACU setting — 90 connections on MySQL and 189 on PostgreSQL at 1 ACU, 135/823 at 4 ACUs, 1,000/1,669 at 8 ACUs — and a minimum capacity of 0 or 0.5 ACUs caps PostgreSQL at 2,000. | Scales with compute size: 104 direct connections at 0.25 CU (1 GB RAM), 419 at 1 CU, 2517 at 6 CU; up to 10,000 through the pooler |
| When idle | Pauses only in serverless mode with minimum capacity set to zero ACUs: the instance auto-pauses after an idle interval you choose — 300 seconds (five minutes) by default and at minimum, up to 86,400 seconds (one day) — and resumes automatically when a connection request arrives. | Compute suspends after 5 minutes idle on Free and Launch, and can be disabled on Launch; configurable from 1 minute to always-on on Scale. The database is not deleted or paused — the next query restarts the compute. |
| Database branching | Limited — clones, not a branch workflow | Supported |
| Point-in-time recovery | Any point inside the backup retention period, so up to 35 days. Aurora's backups are continuous and incremental against the cluster volume rather than periodic snapshots plus log replay, which is why AWS states no performance impact while they are taken. | History window of 6 hours up to 1 GB-month on Free, up to 7 days on Launch, up to 30 days on Scale |
| Read replicas | Supported — 15 per cluster, a quota AWS will not raise | Supported |
| Backup retention | 1 to 35 days. Unlike an RDS DB instance it cannot be set to 0 — Aurora backs the cluster volume up continuously and there is no way to turn that off. | 1 day of history on paid plans by default and 6 hours on Free, configurable up to 7 days on Launch or 30 days on Scale. Neon notes that widening the window raises storage cost, so the ceiling is a paid choice rather than an included allowance. |
| Compliance | ||
| SOC 2 | Assessed by third-party auditors under multiple AWS compliance programs, SOC among them; the docs name SOC, not SOC 2. Reports download via AWS Artifact. AWS names the SOC program, not a SOC 2 type. | Annual SOC 2 Type II audits by an accredited independent third party. |
| ISO 27001 | Covered under AWS's account-wide ISO/IEC 27001:2022 certification — not scoped per-service the way SOC, HIPAA and PCI DSS are on AWS's own site. | Annual ISO/IEC 27001:2022 and ISO/IEC 27701:2019 audits. |
| HIPAA | Listed as a HIPAA-eligible service on AWS's own reference page. | HIPAA compliance achieved, to support customers handling protected health information (PHI). |
| GDPR / data residency | AWS customers can process personal data on all AWS services in compliance with GDPR, and choose the storage type and geographic region for their data. | Follows the GDPR framework; Data Processing Agreements (DPA) offered. |
| PCI DSS | Assessed by third-party auditors under multiple AWS compliance programs, PCI among them; no level or version named. Reports download via AWS Artifact. | The page attributes PCI-DSS to the AWS and Azure infrastructure Neon runs on. Neon's own compliance list on the same page names CCPA, GDPR, ISO 27001, ISO 27701, SOC 2 and HIPAA, and not PCI DSS. |
| Encryption at rest | On by default: all new database clusters created on or after February 18, 2026 are encrypted at rest with AES-256 under an AWS KMS key. | AES-256, with key rotation policies. |
| Role-based access control | IAM identity-based policies and roles govern who may act on Aurora resources, and IAM database authentication can be used to sign in to the DB cluster. | Access to production systems is role-based, requiring SSO and continuous monitoring. |
Where they differ.
Free tier
- Amazon Aurora
- No — capped Free plan plus time-limited credits
- Neon
- Yes
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Amazon Aurora pricing — Amazon Web Services ↗
“New AWS customers can get started with Aurora PostgreSQL serverless at no cost with the AWS Free Tier. You get $100 in AWS credits at sign-up to be used across eligible AWS services, including Aurora, for up to 12 months, in both Free and Paid plans, and you can earn an additional $100 in credits, for a total of $200. Free plan gives you access to Aurora PostgreSQL serverless instances with up to 4 ACUs and 1 GiB of storage per cluster.”
Read 2026-09-09 · official pricing · Report a correction
- Neon plans — Neon Docs ↗
“On the Free plan, there is no monthly cost. You get usage allowances for projects, branches, compute, storage, and more, for $0/month.”
Read 2026-09-05 · official pricing · Report a correction
Kind of free offer
- Amazon Aurora
- Introductory free tier
- Neon
- Free tier
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- AWS Free Tier ↗
“The account closes on its own 6 months after you open it or when your credits run out, whichever comes first. You won't be charged unless you convert to a Paid plan.”
Read 2026-09-13 · official pricing · Report a correction
- Neon plans — Neon Docs ↗
“On the Free plan, there is no monthly cost. You get usage allowances for projects, branches, compute, storage, and more, for $0/month.”
Read 2026-09-05 · official pricing · Report a correction
Entry paid plan
- Amazon Aurora
- No plan fee and no minimum commitment — Aurora charges for what you use. AWS's own worked example prices serverless compute at $0.12 per ACU-hour on Aurora Standard in US East (N. Virginia), and the smallest capacity you can set is 0.5 ACUs; storage and I/O are billed separately.
- Neon
- No fixed monthly fee. Launch is usage-based — Neon's own worked example puts typical spend at $15/month for intermittent load on 1 GB — so there is no entry price to compare, only a rate card. Recorded without a magnitude because a vendor's spend estimate is not a price.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Amazon Aurora Pricing — Amazon Web Services ↗
“With Aurora, you only pay for what you use. Aurora charges for database instances and storage, along with any optional features you choose to enable. [...] With Aurora serverless , the minimum database capacity you can set is 0.5 ACUs. [...] 5 ACUs * $0.12 per ACU-hour * 30/60 hour”
Read 2026-09-13 · official pricing · Report a correction
- Pricing — Neon ↗
“Launch Usage-based Typical spend: $ 15 /mo Based on: Intermittent load , 1 GB Get started”
Read 2026-09-07 · official pricing · Report a correction
Pricing model
- Amazon Aurora
- Pay per use with no plan fee: instances plus storage plus I/O, or ACU-hours in serverless mode. AWS's own worked example prices serverless compute at $0.12 per ACU-hour on Aurora Standard and $0.156 on Aurora I/O-Optimized in US East (N. Virginia) — the difference being whether I/O is metered separately or folded into a higher compute and storage rate. Provisioned instances also offer Reserved Instance pricing, and usage may qualify for Database Savings Plans against a committed hourly spend.
- Neon
- Usage-based with no minimum monthly fee on paid plans: $0.106/CU-hour compute and $0.35/GB-month storage on Launch, $0.222/CU-hour on Scale
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Amazon Aurora pricing — Amazon Web Services ↗
“Aurora charges for database instances and storage, along with any optional features you choose to enable. Aurora PostgreSQL and Aurora MySQL offer On-Demand and Reserved Instance pricing. [...] We want to calculate the compute costs of running this workload on Aurora serverless with the database cluster configured as Aurora Standard and Aurora I/O-Optimized in US East (N. Virginia). [...] 5 ACUs * $0.12 per ACU-hour * 30/60 hour $0.30 [...] 5 ACUs * $0.156 per ACU-hour * 30/60 hour $0.39”
Read 2026-09-09 · official pricing · Report a correction
- Neon plans — Neon Docs ↗
“On Launch and Scale plans, you pay only for what you use; there's no minimum monthly fee. Usage for compute, storage, extra branches, and other features is billed at the published rates”
Read 2026-09-05 · official pricing · Report a correction
Storage (entry plan)
- Amazon Aurora
- No included allowance on the pay-as-you-go Paid plan: storage scales automatically up to 256 TiB and is metered per GB-month — $0.10 per GB-month for Aurora Standard in AWS's US East (N. Virginia) example. The AWS Free Tier Free plan caps a cluster at 1 GiB.
- Neon
- No included allowance on the Launch plan; storage is metered at $0.35/GB-month. The Free plan includes 0.5 GB per project.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Amazon Aurora Pricing — Amazon Web Services ↗
“Free plan gives you access to Aurora PostgreSQL serverless instances with up to 4 ACUs and 1 GiB of storage per cluster. You can upgrade to the Paid plan at any time to increase capacity up to 256 ACUs and automatically scale storage up to 256 TiB. [...] We want to calculate the storage and I/O cost of running this workload with Aurora Standard and Aurora I/O-Optimized storage in US East (N. Virginia). [...] 80 GB * $0.10 per GB-month (30 days)”
Read 2026-09-13 · official pricing · Report a correction
- Neon plans — Neon Docs ↗
“Storage 0.5 GB/project $0.35/GB-month $0.35/GB-month”
Read 2026-09-05 · official pricing · Report a correction
Regions
34 AWS regions, the same list for the MySQL- and PostgreSQL-compatible editions. Counted from the two availability tables in Aurora's own docs, which publish the regions and no total.
8 AWS regions: N. Virginia, Ohio, Oregon, Frankfurt, London, Singapore, Sydney, São Paulo. A project's region is fixed at creation and cannot be changed.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Regions and Availability Zones — Amazon Aurora User Guide ↗
“Aurora MySQL Region availability The following table shows the AWS Regions where Aurora MySQL is currently available and the endpoint for each Region. Region Name Region Endpoint Protocol US East (Ohio) us-east-2 rds.us-east-2.amazonaws.com HTTPS US East (N. Virginia) us-east-1 rds.us-east-1.amazonaws.com HTTPS [...] Aurora PostgreSQL Region availability”
Read 2026-09-09 · official docs · Report a correction
- Regions — Neon Docs ↗
“Each Neon project exists in exactly one region. Your database runs in that region. You cannot change the region for an existing project. If you need your data in a different region, you create a new Neon project in that region and migrate your database there.”
Read 2026-09-05 · official docs · Report a correction
Engine
- Amazon Aurora
- MySQL- and PostgreSQL-compatible. Aurora is AWS's own engine rather than a hosted build of either, so compatibility is the claim being made — existing code, tools and applications are stated to work, which is not the same as being the upstream database.
- Neon
- PostgreSQL
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- What is Amazon Aurora? — Amazon Aurora User Guide ↗
“Amazon Aurora (Aurora) is a fully managed relational database engine that's compatible with MySQL and PostgreSQL. [...] The code, tools, and applications you use today with your existing MySQL and PostgreSQL databases can be used with Aurora.”
Read 2026-09-09 · official docs · Report a correction
- Connection pooling — Neon Docs ↗
“Each Postgres connection creates a new process in the operating system, consuming memory and CPU resources. Postgres limits the number of connections based on available RAM.”
Read 2026-09-05 · official docs · Report a correction
Connection limit
- Amazon Aurora
- Derived from memory, not set per plan. On Aurora serverless the default follows the maximum ACU setting — 90 connections on MySQL and 189 on PostgreSQL at 1 ACU, 135/823 at 4 ACUs, 1,000/1,669 at 8 ACUs — and a minimum capacity of 0 or 0.5 ACUs caps PostgreSQL at 2,000.
- Neon
- Scales with compute size: 104 direct connections at 0.25 CU (1 GB RAM), 419 at 1 CU, 2517 at 6 CU; up to 10,000 through the pooler
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Performance and scaling for Aurora serverless — Amazon Aurora User Guide ↗
“The default value for this parameter is derived from a formula based on the memory size of the DB instance. [...] Maximum ACUs Default maximum connections on Aurora MySQL Default maximum connections on Aurora PostgreSQL 1 90 189 4 135 823 8 1,000 1,669 [...] However, when you specify a minimum capacity of 0 or 0.5 ACUs on PostgreSQL-compatible DB instances, the maximum value of max_connections is capped at 2,000.”
Read 2026-09-13 · official docs · Report a correction
- Connection pooling — Neon Docs ↗
“Neon uses PgBouncer to provide connection pooling, enabling up to 10,000 concurrent connections. [...] In Neon, this limit is defined by max_connections, which varies by compute size: Compute size (CU) RAM max_connections 0.25 1 GB 104 0.50 2 GB 209 1 4 GB 419”
Read 2026-09-05 · official docs · Report a correction
When idle
- Amazon Aurora
- Pauses only in serverless mode with minimum capacity set to zero ACUs: the instance auto-pauses after an idle interval you choose — 300 seconds (five minutes) by default and at minimum, up to 86,400 seconds (one day) — and resumes automatically when a connection request arrives.
- Neon
- Compute suspends after 5 minutes idle on Free and Launch, and can be disabled on Launch; configurable from 1 minute to always-on on Scale. The database is not deleted or paused — the next query restarts the compute.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Scaling to Zero ACUs with automatic pause and resume for Aurora serverless — Amazon Aurora User Guide ↗
“Aurora serverless DB instances can automatically pause after a period with no user connections, and automatically resume when a connection request arrives. [...] To enable the auto-pause behavior for all the Aurora serverless DB instances in an Aurora cluster, you set the minimum capacity value for the cluster to zero ACUs. [...] The minimum interval that you can set is 300 seconds (five minutes). That's the default if you don't specify an interval. The maximum interval that you can set is 86,400 seconds (one day).”
Read 2026-09-13 · official docs · Report a correction
- Neon plans — Neon Docs ↗
“Scale to zero After 5 min After 5 min, can be disabled Configurable (1 minute to always on)”
Read 2026-09-05 · official docs · Report a correction
Database branching
- Amazon Aurora
- Limited — clones, not a branch workflow
- Neon
- Supported
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Cloning a volume for an Amazon Aurora DB cluster — Amazon Aurora User Guide ↗
“Aurora uses a copy-on-write protocol to create a clone. This mechanism uses minimal additional space to create an initial clone. [...] Aurora cloning is especially useful for quickly setting up test environments using your production data, without risking data corruption.”
Read 2026-09-09 · official docs · Report a correction
- Neon plans — Neon Docs ↗
“Each Neon project is created with a root branch, like the main branch in Git. [...] You can create child branches for testing, previews, or development. [...] Free: 10 branches/project Launch: 10 branches/project Scale: 25 branches/project”
Read 2026-09-05 · official docs · Report a correction
Point-in-time recovery
- Amazon Aurora
- Any point inside the backup retention period, so up to 35 days. Aurora's backups are continuous and incremental against the cluster volume rather than periodic snapshots plus log replay, which is why AWS states no performance impact while they are taken.
- Neon
- History window of 6 hours up to 1 GB-month on Free, up to 7 days on Launch, up to 30 days on Scale
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Backing up and restoring an Aurora DB cluster — Amazon Aurora User Guide ↗
“Aurora automated backups are continuous and incremental, so you can quickly restore to any point within the backup retention period. No performance impact or interruption of database service occurs as backup data is being written.”
Read 2026-09-09 · official docs · Report a correction
- Neon plans — Neon Docs ↗
“History window 6 hours, up to 1 GB-month Up to 7 days Up to 30 days”
Read 2026-09-05 · official pricing · Report a correction
Backup retention
- Amazon Aurora
- 1 to 35 days. Unlike an RDS DB instance it cannot be set to 0 — Aurora backs the cluster volume up continuously and there is no way to turn that off.
- Neon
- 1 day of history on paid plans by default and 6 hours on Free, configurable up to 7 days on Launch or 30 days on Scale. Neon notes that widening the window raises storage cost, so the ceiling is a paid choice rather than an included allowance.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Backing up and restoring an Aurora DB cluster — Amazon Aurora User Guide ↗
“Aurora backs up your cluster volume automatically and retains restore data for the length of the backup retention period. [...] You can specify a backup retention period from 1–35 days when you create or modify a DB cluster.”
Read 2026-09-09 · official docs · Report a correction
- Point-in-time restore — Neon Docs ↗
“Neon retains a history of changes for your branches, with defaults of 6 hours on Free plan and 1 day on paid plans. [...] You can configure it up to 7 days on Launch or 30 days on Scale plans.”
Read 2026-09-07 · official docs · Report a correction
SOC 2
- Amazon Aurora
- Assessed by third-party auditors under multiple AWS compliance programs, SOC among them; the docs name SOC, not SOC 2. Reports download via AWS Artifact. AWS names the SOC program, not a SOC 2 type.
- Neon
- Annual SOC 2 Type II audits by an accredited independent third party.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Compliance validation for Amazon Aurora — Amazon Aurora User Guide ↗
“Third-party auditors assess the security and compliance of Amazon Aurora as part of multiple AWS compliance programs. These include SOC, PCI, FedRAMP, HIPAA, and others. [...] You can download third-party audit reports using AWS Artifact.”
Read 2026-09-13 · official docs · Report a correction
- Neon Security ↗
“Neon undergoes annual SOC 2 Type II audits performed by accredited independent third party auditors.”
Read 2026-09-12 · official site · Report a correction
ISO 27001
- Amazon Aurora
- Covered under AWS's account-wide ISO/IEC 27001:2022 certification — not scoped per-service the way SOC, HIPAA and PCI DSS are on AWS's own site.
- Neon
- Annual ISO/IEC 27001:2022 and ISO/IEC 27701:2019 audits.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- ISO/IEC 27001:2022 Compliance — AWS ↗
“AWS has certification for compliance with ISO/IEC 27001:2022, 27017:2015, and 27018:2019. These certifications are performed by independent third-party auditors.”
Read 2026-09-12 · official site · Report a correction
- Neon Security ↗
“Neon undergoes annual ISO/IEC 27001:2022 and ISO/IEC 27701:2019 audits for its security and privacy management systems.”
Read 2026-09-12 · official site · Report a correction
HIPAA
- Amazon Aurora
- Listed as a HIPAA-eligible service on AWS's own reference page.
- Neon
- HIPAA compliance achieved, to support customers handling protected health information (PHI).
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- HIPAA Eligible Services Reference — AWS ↗
“The services listed below are eligible to create, receive, process, maintain, or transmit electronic protected health information (ePHI). [...] Amazon Aurora AWS B2B Data Interchange AWS Backup AWS Batch Amazon Bedrock Amazon Bedrock”
Read 2026-09-13 · official site · Report a correction
- Neon Security ↗
“Neon has achieved HIPAA compliance to support customers handling protected health information (PHI).”
Read 2026-09-12 · official site · Report a correction
GDPR / data residency
- Amazon Aurora
- AWS customers can process personal data on all AWS services in compliance with GDPR, and choose the storage type and geographic region for their data.
- Neon
- Follows the GDPR framework; Data Processing Agreements (DPA) offered.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- GDPR — Amazon Web Services ↗
“AWS customers can use all AWS services to process personal data [...] in compliance with the GDPR. [...] Customers have control of their customer data. With AWS, customers can: Determine where their customer data will be stored, including the type of storage and geographic region of that storage.”
Read 2026-09-12 · official site · Report a correction
- Neon Security ↗
“Neon follows the GDPR framework, ensuring user rights, data minimization, and lawful processing. We offer Data Processing Agreements (DPA) and support compliant cross-border data transfers.”
Read 2026-09-14 · official site · Report a correction
PCI DSS
- Amazon Aurora
- Assessed by third-party auditors under multiple AWS compliance programs, PCI among them; no level or version named. Reports download via AWS Artifact.
- Neon
- The page attributes PCI-DSS to the AWS and Azure infrastructure Neon runs on. Neon's own compliance list on the same page names CCPA, GDPR, ISO 27001, ISO 27701, SOC 2 and HIPAA, and not PCI DSS.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Compliance validation for Amazon Aurora — Amazon Aurora User Guide ↗
“Third-party auditors assess the security and compliance of Amazon Aurora as part of multiple AWS compliance programs. These include SOC, PCI, FedRAMP, HIPAA, and others.”
Read 2026-09-13 · official docs · Report a correction
- Neon Security ↗
“Neon's infrastructure runs on AWS and Azure, certified for SOC 2, ISO 27001, FedRAMP, PCI-DSS, HIPAA, and other global security standards. [...] Compliance CCPA Compliant GDPR Compliant ISO 27001 Certified ISO 27701 Certified SOC 2 Certified HIPAA Compliant”
Read 2026-09-14 · official site · Report a correction
Encryption at rest
- Amazon Aurora
- On by default: all new database clusters created on or after February 18, 2026 are encrypted at rest with AES-256 under an AWS KMS key.
- Neon
- AES-256, with key rotation policies.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Encrypting Amazon Aurora resources — Amazon Aurora User Guide ↗
“are encrypted at rest using industry standard AES-256 encryption. This encryption happens automatically in the background, securing your data without requiring any action from you. [...] Amazon Aurora uses an AWS Key Management Service key to encrypt these resources.”
Read 2026-09-13 · official docs · Report a correction
- Neon Security ↗
“All stored data is encrypted using AES-256 and follows key rotation policies to maintain security.”
Read 2026-09-12 · official site · Report a correction
Role-based access control
- Amazon Aurora
- IAM identity-based policies and roles govern who may act on Aurora resources, and IAM database authentication can be used to sign in to the DB cluster.
- Neon
- Access to production systems is role-based, requiring SSO and continuous monitoring.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Identity and access management for Amazon Aurora — Amazon Aurora User Guide ↗
“AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) is an AWS service that helps an administrator securely control access to AWS resources. IAM administrators control who can be authenticated (signed in) and authorized (have permissions) to use Amazon RDS resources. [...] An IAM role is an identity within your AWS account that has specific permissions. [...] You can authenticate to your DB cluster using IAM database authentication.”
Read 2026-09-13 · official docs · Report a correction
- Neon Security ↗
“Access to production systems is role-based (RBAC), requiring SSO and continuous monitoring.”
Read 2026-09-12 · official site · Report a correction
When these numbers change, hear about it. Sources are re-checked monthly; a repricing goes out as a short note.
Documented by only one.
These criteria are published by one provider and not the other. An absence here means we have not found a source, not that the feature is missing — except where we say we read the other provider's own page on a given date and it does not state it. Those rows lean, and the provider can correct them with a link.
Questions this comparison answers.
Entry paid plan: Amazon Aurora or Neon?
Amazon Aurora: No plan fee and no minimum commitment — Aurora charges for what you use. AWS's own worked example prices serverless compute at $0.12 per ACU-hour on Aurora Standard in US East (N. Virginia), and the smallest capacity you can set is 0.5 ACUs; storage and I/O are billed separately.
Neon: No fixed monthly fee. Launch is usage-based — Neon's own worked example puts typical spend at $15/month for intermittent load on 1 GB — so there is no entry price to compare, only a rate card. Recorded without a magnitude because a vendor's spend estimate is not a price.
Free tier: Amazon Aurora or Neon?
Amazon Aurora: No — capped Free plan plus time-limited credits
Neon: Yes
Storage (entry plan): Amazon Aurora or Neon?
Amazon Aurora: No included allowance on the pay-as-you-go Paid plan: storage scales automatically up to 256 TiB and is metered per GB-month — $0.10 per GB-month for Aurora Standard in AWS's US East (N. Virginia) example. The AWS Free Tier Free plan caps a cluster at 1 GiB.
Neon: No included allowance on the Launch plan; storage is metered at $0.35/GB-month. The Free plan includes 0.5 GB per project.
Should I choose Amazon Aurora or Neon?
Pick Amazon Aurora if Teams on AWS who want a Postgres or MySQL cluster that can throw off a copy-on-write clone of production in minutes, keep up to fifteen readers behind it, and pause to nothing between bursts in serverless mode.
Pick Neon if Workloads that are idle most of the time, and teams who want a real database per pull request. Compute suspends after five minutes and storage is billed separately, so a staging branch costs almost nothing while nobody is using it.
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