# Neon vs Nile

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

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

## At a glance

| Criterion | Neon | Nile |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Entry paid 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. | $15/month for Pro, which carries a production SLA. Scale is $350/month. |
| Pricing model | 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 | Priced on queries rather than instances, with a $15 base for Pro. Nile's own framing is "Pay for queries, not for instances", and additional tokens are $0.05 per million. |
| Storage (entry plan) | No included allowance on the Launch plan; storage is metered at $0.35/GB-month. The Free plan includes 0.5 GB per project. | 5 GB on Pro, then $1.00 per additional GB. |
| Managed connection pooling | Supported | Supported |
| Engine | PostgreSQL | PostgreSQL, with tenant isolation as a first-class concept — databases, tenant databases and vector embeddings are all described as unlimited. |
| Connection limit | 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 | 10,000 connections on Pro, with connection pooling included. |
| When idle | 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. | No cold start on Pro — Nile lists it as a plan feature rather than a behaviour to configure. |

## Where they differ

### Entry paid 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. ([source](https://neon.com/pricing))
- Nile: $15/month for Pro, which carries a production SLA. Scale is $350/month. ([source](https://www.thenile.dev/pricing))

### Pricing model

- 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))
- Nile: Priced on queries rather than instances, with a $15 base for Pro. Nile's own framing is "Pay for queries, not for instances", and additional tokens are $0.05 per million. ([source](https://www.thenile.dev/pricing))

### 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. ([source](https://neon.com/docs/introduction/plans))
- Nile: 5 GB on Pro, then $1.00 per additional GB. ([source](https://www.thenile.dev/pricing))

### Engine

- Neon: PostgreSQL ([source](https://neon.com/docs/connect/connection-pooling))
- Nile: PostgreSQL, with tenant isolation as a first-class concept — databases, tenant databases and vector embeddings are all described as unlimited. ([source](https://www.thenile.dev/pricing))

### 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 ([source](https://neon.com/docs/connect/connection-pooling))
- Nile: 10,000 connections on Pro, with connection pooling included. ([source](https://www.thenile.dev/pricing))

### 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. ([source](https://neon.com/docs/introduction/plans))
- Nile: No cold start on Pro — Nile lists it as a plan feature rather than a behaviour to configure. ([source](https://www.thenile.dev/pricing))

## Which should you choose?

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.

Pick Nile if Multi-tenant SaaS where every customer wants isolation — Nile makes a database per tenant the default shape rather than something you build on top of Postgres.

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.

Consider something else: Nile — Several of the features on its own pricing table are marked Coming soon, including branching, backups and provisioned compute, so what is bought today is narrower than the table suggests.

## Documented by only one

- Free tier: Neon: Yes
- Egress over allowance: Neon: 5 GB per project included on Free; 500 GB per project included on Launch and Scale, then $0.10/GB
- Scales to zero: Neon: Supported
- Regions: 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.
- Database branching: Neon: Supported
- Point-in-time recovery: 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
- Read replicas: Neon: Supported
- Backup retention: 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.

## Questions this comparison answers

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

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.
Nile: $15/month for Pro, which carries a production SLA. Scale is $350/month.

**Storage (entry plan): Neon or Nile?**

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.
Nile: 5 GB on Pro, then $1.00 per additional GB.

**Should I choose Neon or Nile?**

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.
Pick Nile if Multi-tenant SaaS where every customer wants isolation — Nile makes a database per tenant the default shape rather than something you build on top of Postgres.