# Neon vs TigerData

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

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

## At a glance

| Criterion | Neon | TigerData |
| --- | --- | --- |
| 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. | Compute starts at $30/month on Performance, billed hourly, with storage charged separately. Scale starts at $36/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 | Compute and storage are billed separately and hourly rather than as one plan price — compute from $30 a month, storage at $0.177 per GB-month, with the headline storage figure resting on an assumed 5x compression ratio. |
| Engine | PostgreSQL | PostgreSQL with TimescaleDB, aimed at time-series, real-time analytics and events. A self-managed edition exists for on-prem and private cloud. |
| Point-in-time recovery | History window of 6 hours up to 1 GB-month on Free, up to 7 days on Launch, up to 30 days on Scale | 3 days on Performance, with cross-region backups available for disaster recovery on higher tiers. |
| Read replicas | Supported | Supported |

## 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))
- TigerData: Compute starts at $30/month on Performance, billed hourly, with storage charged separately. Scale starts at $36/month. ([source](https://www.tigerdata.com/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))
- TigerData: Compute and storage are billed separately and hourly rather than as one plan price — compute from $30 a month, storage at $0.177 per GB-month, with the headline storage figure resting on an assumed 5x compression ratio. ([source](https://www.tigerdata.com/pricing))

### Engine

- Neon: PostgreSQL ([source](https://neon.com/docs/connect/connection-pooling))
- TigerData: PostgreSQL with TimescaleDB, aimed at time-series, real-time analytics and events. A self-managed edition exists for on-prem and private cloud. ([source](https://www.tigerdata.com/pricing))

### 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 ([source](https://neon.com/docs/introduction/plans))
- TigerData: 3 days on Performance, with cross-region backups available for disaster recovery on higher tiers. ([source](https://www.tigerdata.com/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 TigerData if Time-series and analytics workloads that want to stay in Postgres — TimescaleDB's compression is the reason the storage line is affordable at volume.

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: TigerData — The advertised storage price assumes 5x compression, so a workload that does not compress that well pays materially more than the figure 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
- 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
- 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.
- 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
- 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.
- Storage price: TigerData: $0.177 per GB-month on Performance and $0.212 on Scale. TigerData notes the effective price assumes 5x compression, which is an average rather than a guarantee.

## Questions this comparison answers

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

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.
TigerData: Compute starts at $30/month on Performance, billed hourly, with storage charged separately. Scale starts at $36/month.

**Should I choose Neon or TigerData?**

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 TigerData if Time-series and analytics workloads that want to stay in Postgres — TimescaleDB's compression is the reason the storage line is affordable at volume.