# Neon

Canonical: https://inetgeek.com/databases/neon/

Serverless Postgres that separates storage from compute, with copy-on-write branching and compute that suspends when idle.

## Who it suits

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 if 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.

## iScore

69 / 100 (80% interval 63–75), rank 2 of 14 in databases — interval overlaps the next rank, so this is an ordering, not a finding.

inetGeek's own reading, computed from sourced facts against category peers by disclosed rules. Not a provider claim. Intervals are 80%; a provider with few documented facts is pulled toward the category middle rather than scored on what little is known.
Method: https://inetgeek.com/iscore/. Full output with every criterion's basis: https://inetgeek.com/scores.json. Every databases peer ranked: https://inetgeek.com/databases/neon/alternatives/

- Price: 71 (59–82), weight 25%, 4 of 6 criteria scored; scored for peers, not here — undocumented or stated without a number or a yes/limited/no: free_expires, minimum_paid_price
- Capacity and limits: 47 (41–53), weight 20%, 3 of 7 criteria scored; scored for peers, not here — undocumented or stated without a number or a yes/limited/no: backup_retention, entry_plan_memory, entry_plan_storage, read_replicas
- Capabilities: 76 (70–82), weight 20%, 4 of 5 criteria scored; scored for peers, not here — undocumented or stated without a number or a yes/limited/no: backtrack
- Trust and compliance: 78 (72–84), weight 15%, 9 of 13 criteria scored; scored for peers, not here — undocumented or stated without a number or a yes/limited/no: audit_logs, customer_managed_keys, dedicated_infrastructure, uptime_sla
- Evidence: 96 (96–96), weight 10%, 4 of 4 criteria scored
- Adoption: 53 (8–99), weight 10%, 0 of 1 criteria scored

## What the documentation says

### Pricing

- Free tier: Yes ([source](https://neon.com/docs/introduction/plans), read 2026-09-05)
- Kind of free offer: Free tier ([source](https://neon.com/docs/introduction/plans), read 2026-09-05)
- What the free plan includes: 100 projects with 10 branches each, plus allowances for compute and storage, at no monthly cost. ([source](https://neon.com/docs/introduction/plans), read 2026-09-13)
- Credit card to start: No ([source](https://neon.com/pricing), read 2026-09-21)
- 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. ([source](https://neon.com/pricing), read 2026-09-07)
- 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 ([source](https://neon.com/docs/introduction/plans), read 2026-09-05)
- Egress over allowance: 5 GB per project included on Free; 500 GB per project included on Launch and Scale, then $0.10/GB ([source](https://neon.com/docs/introduction/plans), read 2026-09-05)
- Startup credit program: 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), read 2026-09-11)

### Limits

- 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. ([source](https://neon.com/docs/introduction/plans), read 2026-09-05)

### Execution

- Managed connection pooling: Supported ([source](https://neon.com/docs/connect/connection-pooling), read 2026-09-05)

### Infrastructure

- Scales to zero: Supported ([source](https://neon.com/docs/introduction/plans), read 2026-09-05)
- Regions: 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), read 2026-09-05)

### Data

- Engine: PostgreSQL ([source](https://neon.com/docs/connect/connection-pooling), read 2026-09-05)
- 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 ([source](https://neon.com/docs/connect/connection-pooling), read 2026-09-05)
- 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. ([source](https://neon.com/docs/introduction/plans), read 2026-09-05)
- Database branching: Supported ([source](https://neon.com/docs/introduction/plans), read 2026-09-05)
- 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 ([source](https://neon.com/docs/introduction/plans), read 2026-09-05)
- Read replicas: Supported ([source](https://neon.com/docs/introduction/read-replicas), read 2026-09-05)
- Backup 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. ([source](https://neon.com/docs/introduction/point-in-time-restore), read 2026-09-07)

### Support

- Support on entry paid plan: Support plans are mapped to pricing plans: community support on Free, billing support on Launch, standard support on Scale. ([source](https://neon.com/docs/introduction/support), read 2026-09-14)

### Compliance

- SOC 2: Annual SOC 2 Type II audits by an accredited independent third party. ([source](https://neon.com/security), read 2026-09-12)
- ISO 27001: Annual ISO/IEC 27001:2022 and ISO/IEC 27701:2019 audits. ([source](https://neon.com/security), read 2026-09-12)
- HIPAA: HIPAA compliance achieved, to support customers handling protected health information (PHI). ([source](https://neon.com/security), read 2026-09-12)
- GDPR / data residency: Follows the GDPR framework; Data Processing Agreements (DPA) offered. ([source](https://neon.com/security), read 2026-09-14)
- PCI DSS: The page attributes PCI-DSS to the AWS and Azure infrastructure Neon runs on. Neon's own compliance list on the same page names CCPA, GDPR, ISO 27001, ISO 27701, SOC 2 and HIPAA, and not PCI DSS. ([source](https://neon.com/security), read 2026-09-14)
- Encryption at rest: AES-256, with key rotation policies. ([source](https://neon.com/security), read 2026-09-12)
- Role-based access control: Access to production systems is role-based, requiring SSO and continuous monitoring. ([source](https://neon.com/security), read 2026-09-12)

## Compared with

- [Neon vs Supabase](https://inetgeek.com/compare/neon-vs-supabase/)
- [Neon vs PlanetScale](https://inetgeek.com/compare/neon-vs-planetscale/)
- [Neon vs Prisma Postgres](https://inetgeek.com/compare/neon-vs-prisma-postgres/)
- [Neon vs Turso](https://inetgeek.com/compare/neon-vs-turso/)
- [Neon vs Nile](https://inetgeek.com/compare/neon-vs-nile/)
- [Neon vs TigerData](https://inetgeek.com/compare/neon-vs-tigerdata/)
- [Neon vs Amazon Aurora](https://inetgeek.com/compare/amazon-aurora-vs-neon/)
- [Neon vs Crunchy Bridge](https://inetgeek.com/compare/crunchy-bridge-vs-neon/)
- [Neon vs Aiven](https://inetgeek.com/compare/aiven-vs-neon/)
- [Neon vs Amazon RDS](https://inetgeek.com/compare/amazon-rds-vs-neon/)
- [Neon vs Neo4j](https://inetgeek.com/compare/neo4j-vs-neon/)
- [Neon vs ScaleGrid](https://inetgeek.com/compare/neon-vs-scalegrid/)