# Neo4j vs Neon

Canonical: https://inetgeek.com/compare/neo4j-vs-neon/

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

## At a glance

| Criterion | Neo4j | Neon |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes |
| Entry paid 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. | 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 | Usage-based, metered per GB-hour of memory on the Professional tier. A paused database cuts cost by roughly 80%. | 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 |
| Startup credit program | 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. | Via the Databricks Startup Program: up to $1,000 in Neon credits for self-funded startups (<$1M raised), or up to $200K in Neon and Databricks credits for VC-backed startups (≥$1M raised) or accelerator participants. Credits valid 12 months from acceptance. |
| Regions | AWS, Azure and Google Cloud, across more than 60 global cloud regions; also available through the AWS, Azure and Google Cloud marketplaces. | 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 | Neo4j, a native property graph database. | PostgreSQL |
| Point-in-time recovery | Not included on the entry-paid (Professional) tier — point-in-time restore is a Business Critical feature, with hourly granularity and 30-day retention. | 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 | 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. | 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

- 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/))
- 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. ([source](https://neon.com/pricing))

### Pricing model

- 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/))
- 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 ([source](https://neon.com/docs/introduction/plans))

### 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. ([source](https://neo4j.com/startups/))
- Neon: Via the Databricks Startup Program: up to $1,000 in Neon credits for self-funded startups (<$1M raised), or up to $200K in Neon and Databricks credits for VC-backed startups (≥$1M raised) or accelerator participants. Credits valid 12 months from acceptance. ([source](https://neon.com/startups))

### Regions

- 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/))
- 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. ([source](https://neon.com/docs/introduction/regions))

### Engine

- Neo4j: Neo4j, a native property graph database. ([source](https://neo4j.com/docs/aura/auradb/platform/backup-restore/))
- Neon: PostgreSQL ([source](https://neon.com/docs/connect/connection-pooling))

### Point-in-time recovery

- 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/))
- 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 ([source](https://neon.com/docs/introduction/plans))

### Backup retention

- 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/))
- 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. ([source](https://neon.com/docs/introduction/point-in-time-restore))

## Which should you choose?

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.

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.

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.

Consider something else: 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

- Egress over allowance: Neon: 5 GB per project included on Free; 500 GB per project included on Launch and Scale, then $0.10/GB
- Storage (entry plan): 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.
- Managed connection pooling: Neon: Supported
- Scales to zero: Neon: Supported
- Connection limit: 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
- When idle: 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.
- Database branching: Neon: Supported
- SOC 2: Neon: Annual SOC 2 Type II audits by an accredited independent third party.
- ISO 27001: Neon: Annual ISO/IEC 27001:2022 and ISO/IEC 27701:2019 audits.
- HIPAA: Neon: HIPAA compliance achieved, to support customers handling protected health information (PHI).
- GDPR / data residency: Neon: Follows the GDPR framework; Data Processing Agreements (DPA) offered.
- PCI DSS: Neon: Underlying infrastructure described as certified for PCI-DSS among other standards; scope (Neon's own service vs. cloud infrastructure) not distinguished on this page.
- Encryption at rest: Neon: AES-256, with key rotation policies.
- Role-based access control: Neon: Access to production systems is role-based, requiring SSO and continuous monitoring.

## Questions this comparison answers

**Entry paid plan: Neo4j or Neon?**

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.
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 Neo4j or Neon?**

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.
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.