match report

Neon pricing (2026): is Neon free, and what does a real Postgres database cost?

updated 2026-11-01 · prices checked on vendor pages

quick answer: Neon pricing, as of nov 1, 2026: the Free plan is $0 for good (no card, 100 projects, 100 CU-hours of compute and 1 GB of storage per project). the paid plans have no monthly fee, you pay for what you use: Launch is $0.106 per CU-hour, Scale is $0.222 per CU-hour, and storage is $0.35 per GB-month on both. Neon's own typical bill is about $15 a month on Launch for a small database that scales to zero.

Neon is #4 of 5 on our backend, database & deploy board (8.0/10), and it earns that for one reason: serverless Postgres that scales to zero and branches like git. your coding agent gets its own database branch per PR, idle databases cost nothing in compute, and spinning up a database per tenant or per agent doesn't come with a per-project fee. price is the second question. here's the answer anyway.

the plans

as of nov 1, 2026, from Neon's pricing page:

a CU (compute unit) is about 4 GB of RAM plus CPU. a CU-hour is compute size times hours running, so 0.25 CU for 4 hours is 1 CU-hour. suspended compute costs $0. there's no monthly minimum and no per-project fee, usage is metered hourly and billed at the end of the month, and invoices under $0.50 aren't collected.

Scale adds what the grown-ups ask for: IP allow rules, private networking, metrics and log export, an uptime SLA, SOC 2 and self-serve HIPAA (BAA needed, no extra cost for now).

is Neon free?

yes, and it's not a trial. the Free plan is permanent and needs no credit card. the limits that actually bite a dev:

• 100 CU-hours per project per month. compute scales to zero after 5 minutes idle (you can't turn that off on Free), so a side project rarely burns through it. run out and compute is suspended until next month.
• 5 GB of egress per project. same deal: hit it and compute is suspended until the next billing period.
• 1 GB of Postgres per project, 20 GB in total. go over and writes are blocked. nothing is deleted.
• 10 branches per project and a 6-hour history window.

the nice bit: Neon doesn't pause free projects for inactivity. an idle database just scales to zero and wakes on the next query, typically within a few hundred milliseconds, Neon says. same connection string, no restore step.

what Neon really costs

Neon's own sums (Postgres compute and storage only):

the extras: instant restore storage is $0.20 per GB-month, snapshots $0.09 per GB-month, object storage $0.023 per GB-month (5 GB per project free), and functions are $0.60 per million invocations plus capacity-hours. managed auth and the data API cost nothing extra. realtime is free during its beta.

database per tenant or per agent? Neon's example: 100 tenant databases on Launch, each running at 0.25 CU for about an hour a day and storing 150 MB, comes to roughly $85 a month, about $0.85 per tenant.

how to keep the bill down

• cap autoscaling per compute. it's a hard ceiling on compute spend.
• keep scale-to-zero on for anything that isn't production.
• delete branches you're done with, or give them a TTL. each extra one is $1.50 a month.
• spending notifications (Launch and Scale) email you at 80% and 100% of a monthly amount. they warn, they don't stop anything. for a hard stop, set consumption limits per project with the Neon API.
• free credits: Neon's startup programme offers up to $100K in credits for venture-funded startups, and there's an open source programme for maintainers.

when to pay

• a side project or prototype: Free. 100 projects, no card, no naps.
• an app with real users: pay as you go on Launch. no fee until you use it, 500 GB of egress per project and up to 7 days of history.
• production that needs an SLA, private networking or HIPAA: move up to Scale. it's about twice Launch per CU-hour, so only when someone asks for those.

Neon vs the other backends on our board

• the whole backend in a box: Supabase is #1 (9.0/10). see Supabase pricing and Neon vs Supabase
• a realtime TypeScript backend, not Postgres: Convex is #5 (7.5/10). see Convex vs Supabase
• where to deploy the app itself: Vercel (#2) for Next.js front ends, see Vercel pricing, or Railway (#3) for long-running backends. see Vercel vs Railway

the rest of the field

faq

is Neon free to use?

yes. the Free plan is $0 forever with no credit card: 100 projects, 100 CU-hours of compute and 1 GB of storage per project (20 GB in total), and 5 GB of egress per project.

how much does Neon cost per month?

there's no monthly fee on the paid plans. Launch is $0.106 per CU-hour and Scale $0.222, plus $0.35 per GB-month of storage. Neon puts a small database that scales to zero at about $15 a month on Launch.

does Neon pause free databases?

no. idle compute scales to zero after 5 minutes and wakes on the next query. compute is only suspended if a project uses up its 100 CU-hours or 5 GB of egress for the month.

can i set a spending limit on Neon?

yes. spending notifications warn you at 80% and 100% of a monthly amount, autoscaling limits cap compute size, and consumption limits set through the Neon API suspend compute when a project hits a quota.

how much do Neon branches cost?

10 branches per project are included on Free and Launch, 25 on Scale. extra branches on paid plans are $1.50 per branch-month, billed hourly.

tools in this guide

• Neon
• Supabase
• Convex
• Vercel
• Railway

sources

checked 2026-11-01

• Neon pricing (Free, Launch and Scale plan tables, CU and CU-hour definitions, compute and storage rates, branches, egress, history window, auth MAU, support, Scale-only features, HIPAA, billing timing, $0.50 invoice minimum, free plan limits and what happens when you hit them, no inactivity pause, typical monthly cost table, per-tenant example, instant restore, snapshots, object storage, functions, auth and data API included, realtime beta, spending controls, startup and open source programmes): https://neon.com/pricing
• ranks, scores, verdicts and plans: numptr data/tools.json (backend, database & deploy board)