# Crunchy Bridge vs Neo4j

Canonical: https://inetgeek.com/compare/crunchy-bridge-vs-neo4j/

Every value below is read from Crunchy Bridge's and Neo4j's own documentation. See https://inetgeek.com/methodology/ for how.

## At a glance

| Criterion | Crunchy Bridge | Neo4j |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Entry paid plan | $9 a month for Hobby-0 — 2 cores, 512 MB, AWS only. Crunchy says the Hobby tier runs on lower-quality infrastructure, has no PgBouncer and is not intended for production; the first production tier is Standard-4 at $70 a month for 1 core and 4 GB. There is no free plan. | $65/GB/month (minimum 1GB cluster) on AuraDB Professional, or $0.09/hour ($65.70/month for 1GB) metered hourly. 14-day free trial available. |
| Pricing model | Billed for the time a cluster is provisioned, prorated to the second, with the monthly figures on the plans page being what a full month costs. Price varies by instance size, region and storage. Three tiers — Hobby, Standard and Memory-optimized — where the tier decides IOPS, whether PgBouncer is included and what support you get, not just the size. | Usage-based, metered per GB-hour of memory on the Professional tier. A paused database cuts cost by roughly 80%. |
| Regions | 37 regions across three clouds — 16 on AWS, 14 on Google Cloud, 7 on Azure — counted from the region tables on Crunchy's own plans page, which lists them and publishes no total. | AWS, Azure and Google Cloud, across more than 60 global cloud regions; also available through the AWS, Azure and Google Cloud marketplaces. |
| Engine | PostgreSQL only. Crunchy Bridge is a single-engine service — there is no MySQL or analytics product beside it in the same offering — and it runs on all three major clouds so the database can sit next to whatever else you already run. | Neo4j, a native property graph database. |
| Point-in-time recovery | Any minute inside the 10 days of retained backups. The WAL is streamed every 60 seconds or 16 MB, whichever comes first, and a restore produces a fork of the cluster rather than replacing it. | Not included on the entry-paid (Professional) tier — point-in-time restore is a Business Critical feature, with hourly granularity and 30-day retention. |
| Read replicas | Supported | Supported |
| Backup retention | 10 days, included in the cluster price rather than sold as a tier, and extendable by configuring additional daily, weekly, monthly and yearly backups to keep. | Daily backups, 7-day retention on the entry-paid (Professional) tier. Business Critical adds 30-day retention with hourly point-in-time restore; Virtual Dedicated Cloud gets hourly backups with 60-day retention. |

## Where they differ

### Entry paid plan

- Crunchy Bridge: $9 a month for Hobby-0 — 2 cores, 512 MB, AWS only. Crunchy says the Hobby tier runs on lower-quality infrastructure, has no PgBouncer and is not intended for production; the first production tier is Standard-4 at $70 a month for 1 core and 4 GB. There is no free plan. ([source](https://docs.crunchybridge.com/concepts/plans-pricing))
- Neo4j: $65/GB/month (minimum 1GB cluster) on AuraDB Professional, or $0.09/hour ($65.70/month for 1GB) metered hourly. 14-day free trial available. ([source](https://neo4j.com/pricing/))

### Pricing model

- Crunchy Bridge: Billed for the time a cluster is provisioned, prorated to the second, with the monthly figures on the plans page being what a full month costs. Price varies by instance size, region and storage. Three tiers — Hobby, Standard and Memory-optimized — where the tier decides IOPS, whether PgBouncer is included and what support you get, not just the size. ([source](https://docs.crunchybridge.com/concepts/plans-pricing))
- Neo4j: Usage-based, metered per GB-hour of memory on the Professional tier. A paused database cuts cost by roughly 80%. ([source](https://neo4j.com/pricing/))

### Regions

- Crunchy Bridge: 37 regions across three clouds — 16 on AWS, 14 on Google Cloud, 7 on Azure — counted from the region tables on Crunchy's own plans page, which lists them and publishes no total. ([source](https://docs.crunchybridge.com/concepts/plans-pricing))
- Neo4j: AWS, Azure and Google Cloud, across more than 60 global cloud regions; also available through the AWS, Azure and Google Cloud marketplaces. ([source](https://neo4j.com/pricing/))

### Engine

- Crunchy Bridge: PostgreSQL only. Crunchy Bridge is a single-engine service — there is no MySQL or analytics product beside it in the same offering — and it runs on all three major clouds so the database can sit next to whatever else you already run. ([source](https://docs.crunchybridge.com/))
- Neo4j: Neo4j, a native property graph database. ([source](https://neo4j.com/docs/aura/auradb/platform/backup-restore/))

### Point-in-time recovery

- Crunchy Bridge: Any minute inside the 10 days of retained backups. The WAL is streamed every 60 seconds or 16 MB, whichever comes first, and a restore produces a fork of the cluster rather than replacing it. ([source](https://docs.crunchybridge.com/concepts/backups))
- Neo4j: Not included on the entry-paid (Professional) tier — point-in-time restore is a Business Critical feature, with hourly granularity and 30-day retention. ([source](https://neo4j.com/pricing/))

### Backup retention

- Crunchy Bridge: 10 days, included in the cluster price rather than sold as a tier, and extendable by configuring additional daily, weekly, monthly and yearly backups to keep. ([source](https://docs.crunchybridge.com/concepts/backups))
- Neo4j: Daily backups, 7-day retention on the entry-paid (Professional) tier. Business Critical adds 30-day retention with hourly point-in-time restore; Virtual Dedicated Cloud gets hourly backups with 60-day retention. ([source](https://neo4j.com/pricing/))

## Which should you choose?

Pick Crunchy Bridge if Anyone who wants Postgres and nothing else, from people who work on Postgres. Ten days of per-minute recovery is included in the price of every cluster rather than sold as a tier, and replicas can sit in another region or another cloud.

Pick Neo4j if Teams whose data is naturally relationships-first — recommendation engines, fraud detection, knowledge graphs — where the query itself is a graph traversal Cypher expresses directly and a relational join chain would not.

Consider something else: Crunchy Bridge — You need a free plan to start on, or a second database engine later. This is a single-engine paid service.

Consider something else: Neo4j — The data model is tabular and the graph shape is incidental — most CRUD apps fit a relational or document database better, and Neo4j's per-GB memory pricing is a worse fit for large flat datasets than a row-store.

## Documented by only one

- Free tier: Neo4j: Yes
- Startup credit program: Neo4j: Neo4j for Startups: up to $16K in Aura credits. Requires Series B or earlier funding, a single product sold to many customers (not custom per-customer work), a functioning website, and a company LinkedIn profile.
- Managed connection pooling: Crunchy Bridge: Supported
- Database branching: Crunchy Bridge: Limited — a new cluster restored from backup, to any minute in 10 days

## Questions this comparison answers

**Entry paid plan: Crunchy Bridge or Neo4j?**

Crunchy Bridge: $9 a month for Hobby-0 — 2 cores, 512 MB, AWS only. Crunchy says the Hobby tier runs on lower-quality infrastructure, has no PgBouncer and is not intended for production; the first production tier is Standard-4 at $70 a month for 1 core and 4 GB. There is no free plan.
Neo4j: $65/GB/month (minimum 1GB cluster) on AuraDB Professional, or $0.09/hour ($65.70/month for 1GB) metered hourly. 14-day free trial available.

**Should I choose Crunchy Bridge or Neo4j?**

Pick Crunchy Bridge if Anyone who wants Postgres and nothing else, from people who work on Postgres. Ten days of per-minute recovery is included in the price of every cluster rather than sold as a tier, and replicas can sit in another region or another cloud.
Pick Neo4j if Teams whose data is naturally relationships-first — recommendation engines, fraud detection, knowledge graphs — where the query itself is a graph traversal Cypher expresses directly and a relational join chain would not.