Crunchy Bridge vs Neon
A comparison of Crunchy Bridge and Neon built from values read directly from each provider's own documentation, with the source recorded against every figure.
The short answer
- 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 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.
7 sourced criteria separate them:
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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
- 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.
- Neon: 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.
- 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.
- Neon: PostgreSQL
- Database branching
- Crunchy Bridge: Limited — a new cluster restored from backup, to any minute in 10 days
- Neon: Supported
- 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.
- 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
- 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.
- 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.
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
Neon 0
At a glance.
| Criterion | Crunchy Bridge | Neon |
|---|---|---|
| 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. | 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 | 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 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 |
| Execution | ||
| Managed connection pooling | Supported | Supported |
| 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. | 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 | 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. | PostgreSQL |
| Database branching | Limited — a new cluster restored from backup, to any minute in 10 days | Supported |
| 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. | 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 | 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. | 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. |
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.
- 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 ↓
- 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
- Pricing — Neon ↗
“Launch Usage-based Typical spend: $ 15 /mo Based on: Intermittent load , 1 GB Get started”
Read 2026-09-07 · 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.
- 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 ↓
- 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
- 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
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.
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 ↓
- 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
- 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
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.
- Neon
- PostgreSQL
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
- 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
Database branching
- Crunchy Bridge
- Limited — a new cluster restored from backup, to any minute in 10 days
- Neon
- Supported
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Backups — Crunchy Bridge Documentation ↗
“The automated daily backups are stored along with the associated WAL and can be used to create a point-in-time recovery fork of your cluster. [...] Forking from backup You can create a new fork from any of the backups stored for your cluster by clicking the "Fork from Backup" button. This process will create a new cluster according to the options you specify, and the new cluster will be populated with the data from the backup. Info Remember, each fork will have its own unique connection string.”
Read 2026-09-09 · official docs
- 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
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.
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 ↓
- 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
- 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
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.
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 ↓
- 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
- 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
When these numbers change, hear about it. Sources are re-checked monthly; a repricing goes out as a short note.
Which should you choose?
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 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…
- Crunchy Bridge: You need a free plan to start on, or a second database engine later. This is a single-engine paid service.
- 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.
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 Neon?
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.
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.
Should I choose Crunchy Bridge or Neon?
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 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.