Neon
Serverless Postgres that scales to zero and lets you branch the database like code.
- Price
- Free; Launch is pay-as-you-go with no minimum
- Free plan
- Yes
- Setup
- Needs a developer
- Up and running
- A database ready to connect in minutes; wiring it into the app takes an afternoon.
What Neon is for
Neon is a hosted Postgres database, the place your app stores customers, orders and anything else it needs to remember. It switches itself off when nobody is using it and back on at the next request, so you pay for the hours it actually runs. It can also copy the whole database in seconds (a branch) so you test changes without touching real data.
How it plugs into your product
- 1Create a project at neon.com and choose the region closest to your users, such as AWS US East or Frankfurt.
- 2Copy the connection string into your app's server environment variables; never put it in browser code.
- 3Create your tables with your ORM's migrations (Prisma, Drizzle) or plain SQL.
- 4Before launch, move to a paid plan if you need a longer restore window or the database always on.
Does it fit your idea?
It fits if
- A founder with several side projects who wants each one on a free database that costs nothing while idle.
- A SaaS hosted on Vercel or Cloudflare that already handles login elsewhere and just needs Postgres.
- A product that creates one database per customer and wants to pay only while each one is in use.
Look elsewhere if
- You want the database and file storage from one long-established vendor: Neon's object storage is much newer than its Postgres.
- Your app makes steady requests all day and every millisecond of the first request matters.
- You need a fixed monthly bill you can forecast to the cent: paid plans bill by the hour of use.
What people only find out after building
Read this before you build on it. Each item links to the official page that says so.
On the free plan the database always sleeps after 5 minutes idle, and you can't turn that off; the next query wakes it in a few hundred milliseconds.
Official source: neon.comWhen a free project runs out of its 100 compute hours, the database is suspended until the next month or until you upgrade.
Official source: neon.comPast 1 GB on a free project, inserts and updates start failing; your data is kept, but the app stops saving.
Official source: neon.comThe free plan only lets you restore to a point in the last 6 hours; a mistake noticed the next day can't be undone there.
Official source: neon.com
Price
Free; Launch is pay-as-you-go with no minimum
100 projects, 1 GB per project and 100 compute hours per project each month.
- Free tier
- 1 GB and 100 CU-hours per project
- First paid plan
- Launch: $0.106/CU-hour + $0.35/GB
- Database type
- Serverless Postgres
Checked on Oct 28, 2026 · official pricing
What it costs in practice
A SaaS with 2,000 monthly active users and a 3 GB database needs the Launch plan (free is 1 GB). On the smallest size (0.25 CU) running about 12 hours a day: 0.25 × 365 hours × $0.106 ≈ $10, plus 3 GB × $0.35 ≈ $1. About $11/month; kept on 24 hours a day it's about $20 (estimate).
Estimate from the official price. Check it before you decide.
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