# Neon vs Turso

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

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

## At a glance

| Criterion | Neon | Turso |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes |
| 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. | $4.99/month for Developer, the cheapest paid plan. Scaler is $24.92 and Pro $416.58. |
| 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 | Per database, metered on rows rather than compute time: 500 million rows read and 10 million written a month on the free plan, 2.5 billion and 25 million on Developer, with overage at $1 per billion rows read and $1 per million written. |
| 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. | 9 GB on Developer, then $0.75 per GB. The free plan includes 5 GB; Scaler is 24 GB at $0.50 and Pro 50 GB at $0.45. |
| Engine | PostgreSQL | SQLite, via libSQL — Turso's own fork. Not Postgres or MySQL, so the query surface and the client libraries differ from every other database on this site. |
| Database branching | Supported | Supported |
| 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 | 10 days on Developer. 1 day on the free plan, 30 days on Scaler and 90 days on Pro. |

## 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))
- Turso: $4.99/month for Developer, the cheapest paid plan. Scaler is $24.92 and Pro $416.58. ([source](https://turso.tech/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))
- Turso: Per database, metered on rows rather than compute time: 500 million rows read and 10 million written a month on the free plan, 2.5 billion and 25 million on Developer, with overage at $1 per billion rows read and $1 per million written. ([source](https://turso.tech/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))
- Turso: 9 GB on Developer, then $0.75 per GB. The free plan includes 5 GB; Scaler is 24 GB at $0.50 and Pro 50 GB at $0.45. ([source](https://turso.tech/pricing))

### Engine

- Neon: PostgreSQL ([source](https://neon.com/docs/connect/connection-pooling))
- Turso: SQLite, via libSQL — Turso's own fork. Not Postgres or MySQL, so the query surface and the client libraries differ from every other database on this site. ([source](https://turso.tech/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))
- Turso: 10 days on Developer. 1 day on the free plan, 30 days on Scaler and 90 days on Pro. ([source](https://turso.tech/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 Turso if Applications that want a database per tenant or per user — 100 databases on the free plan and unlimited above it make that a shape you can actually build.

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: Turso — It is SQLite, not Postgres: the metered units are rows read and written rather than compute, and the extension ecosystem you may be relying on is not there.

## 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
- 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.
- 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 Turso?**

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.
Turso: $4.99/month for Developer, the cheapest paid plan. Scaler is $24.92 and Pro $416.58.

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

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.
Turso: 9 GB on Developer, then $0.75 per GB. The free plan includes 5 GB; Scaler is 24 GB at $0.50 and Pro 50 GB at $0.45.

**Should I choose Neon or Turso?**

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 Turso if Applications that want a database per tenant or per user — 100 databases on the free plan and unlimited above it make that a shape you can actually build.