Crunchy Bridge vs Neo4j
SEPT 2026 auditA comparison of Crunchy Bridge and Neo4j built from values read directly from each provider's own documentation, with the source recorded against every figure.
The short answer
Choose 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.
Editorial · Palash Bagchi · approved
Choose 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.
Editorial · Palash Bagchi · approved
Consider something else if…
- Crunchy Bridge: You need a free plan to start on, or a second database engine later. This is a single-engine paid service.
- 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.
6 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.
Crunchy Bridge 0
Neo4j 0
At a glance.
| Criterion | Crunchy Bridge | Neo4j |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | ||
| 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%. |
| Infrastructure | ||
| 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. |
| Data | ||
| 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.
- 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.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Plans and pricing — Crunchy Bridge Documentation ↗
“In general, Hobby tier runs on lower quality underlying infrastructure, does not include PgBouncer, and is not intended for production usage. [...] Hobby-0* 2 512MB 5% 11,800 PG15-18 only ❌ ⚠️ Best effort $9.00 [...] Standard-4* 1 4GB 20,000 PG14-18 ✅ ✅ $70.00 [...] *Available on AWS only.”
Read 2026-09-09 · official docs
- Neo4j Pricing ↗
“$65/GB/month, minimum 1GB cluster. 14-day free trial available. 1GB costs $0.09/hour or $65.70/month.”
Read 2026-09-11 · official 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.
- Neo4j
- Usage-based, metered per GB-hour of memory on the Professional tier. A paused database cuts cost by roughly 80%.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Plans and pricing — Crunchy Bridge Documentation ↗
“Clusters are billed according to the amount of time they're provisioned in a given month, prorated to the second. While prices on this page are quoted for the cost of an entire month, you will only be billed that amount if your cluster is provisioned for the entire month. Pricing varies based on: Instance size Region Storage [...] Crunchy Bridge offers three tiers of databases -- Hobby, Standard, and Memory -- to cover a variety of use cases.”
Read 2026-09-09 · official docs
- Neo4j Pricing ↗
“Pause database, save 80% costs.”
Read 2026-09-11 · official 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.
- Neo4j
- AWS, Azure and Google Cloud, across more than 60 global cloud regions; also available through the AWS, Azure and Google Cloud marketplaces.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Plans and pricing — Crunchy Bridge Documentation ↗
“Regions Amazon Web Services (AWS) Name Provider ID Asia Pacific (Tokyo) ap-northeast-1 Asia Pacific (Mumbai) ap-south-1 [...] US West (Oregon) us-west-2 Azure Name Provider ID Australia East (NSW) australiaeast [...] Google Cloud Platform (GCP) Name Provider ID Asia Northeast 1 (Tokyo) asia-northeast1”
Read 2026-09-09 · official docs
- Neo4j Pricing ↗
“Available on Azure, AWS, and Google Cloud. You can deploy AuraDB in over 60 global cloud regions.”
Read 2026-09-11 · official 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.
- Neo4j
- Neo4j, a native property graph database.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Crunchy Bridge — Crunchy Bridge Documentation ↗
“Crunchy Bridge is a fully managed Postgres service from Crunchy Data. It takes care of running and managing Postgres so that you can stay focused on building your applications, not on keeping your database up and running. Bridge provides highly available Postgres across every major cloud provider — Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform, and Microsoft Azure — so regardless of where you're running, you can closely colocate your database.”
Read 2026-09-09 · official docs
- Neo4j Aura documentation ↗
“Neo4j Aura is a fully automated graph platform offered as a cloud service.”
Read 2026-09-11 · official docs
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.
- 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.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Backups — Crunchy Bridge Documentation ↗
“kept current by streaming the WAL every 60 seconds or 16MB (whichever comes first). 10 days of these backups will be retained by the platform automatically. These backups can be used to restore a fork of your cluster to any minute in its history.”
Read 2026-09-09 · official docs
- Neo4j Pricing ↗
“Business Critical: Daily backups with 30-day retention and hourly point-in-time restore.”
Read 2026-09-11 · official 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.
- 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.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Backups — Crunchy Bridge Documentation ↗
“10 days of these backups will be retained by the platform automatically. [...] By default, Crunchy Bridge automatically captures and retains the most recent 10 days' worth of backups for each cluster. That is included in the price of each cluster.”
Read 2026-09-09 · official docs
- Neo4j Pricing ↗
“Professional: Daily backups, 7-day retention. Business Critical: Daily backups with 30-day retention and hourly point-in-time restore. Virtual Dedicated Cloud: Hourly backups with 60-day retention.”
Read 2026-09-11 · official pricing
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.
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.