Managed databases

Neon vs Supabase

Neon is serverless Postgres that scales to zero and bills per CU-hour with no monthly minimum; Supabase runs an always-on Postgres per project with auth, storage and functions for $25 a month plus compute.

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The short answer

Both are Postgres, but they sell different things. Neon is a database only: compute suspends after five minutes idle, paid plans have no monthly minimum (Launch lists $0.106 per CU-hour and $0.35 per GB-month of storage), and copy-on-write branches give each pull request its own copy. Supabase is a backend platform: each project has its own Postgres plus auth, storage, edge functions and realtime, on a $25 Pro plan per organization with compute billed hourly per project.

The free tiers point the same way. Neon allows up to 100 projects, each with 100 CU-hours a month and 0.5 GB of storage. Supabase allows two active projects with a 500 MB database that pause after a week idle, plus 1 GB of file storage and 50,000 auth MAU.

Supabase has no scale to zero, so many idle databases cost more there; Neon has a cold start after each suspension. Supabase is open source and self-hostable; Neon’s record gives no supported self-hosting path.

Choose Neon if

You run many small databases that sit idle much of the day
You want a database branch per pull request for preview environments
You want usage billing with no monthly minimum

Choose Supabase if

You want auth, file storage and edge functions alongside the database
Your app cannot tolerate cold starts after idle periods
You may want to self-host the whole stack later

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Side by side

	Neon	Supabase
Stages	HobbyIndieStartupScale-upEnterprise	HobbyIndieStartupScale-upEnterprise
What it is	Serverless Postgres	Managed Postgres backend platform
From	From $0.106 per CU-hour (Launch, no monthly minimum)	From $25/mo (Pro, per organization, includes $10 compute credit)
Free tier	100 projects, 100 CU-hours of compute per project per month, autoscaling up to 2 CU, 0.5 GB storage per project, 5 GB egress, 10 branches per project, 6-hour restore window, up to 60,000 auth MAU; compute suspends when a limit is hit	2 active projects, 500 MB database on shared CPU with 500 MB RAM, 1 GB file storage, 5 GB egress, 50,000 auth MAU, 500,000 edge function calls; projects pause after 1 week of inactivity and have no automatic backups
Engines	PostgreSQL	PostgreSQL
Scale to zero	Yes; scale to zero after 5 min, CU-hour billing	No; per-project compute billed hourly
Branching	Yes, copy-on-write; 10 per project included	Yes, $0.01344 per branch-hour (paid plans)
Backups	Instant restore: 6 h Free, 7 days Launch, 30 days Scale	Daily: 7 days Pro, 14 days Team; PITR add-on
Open source	Yes	Yes
Self-hostable	No	Yes
EU data residency	Available	Available
Compliance	SOC 2, HIPAA	SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA
Checked	28 Sept 2026	28 Sept 2026
Strengths	Idle databases cost nothing for compute on every plan No monthly minimum on paid plans, so small projects pay cents Fast copy-on-write branches for preview deployments SOC 2, HIPAA, SLA and private networking without a fixed-fee enterprise tier	Database, auth, storage, functions and realtime in one project with shared permissions Plain Postgres, so data and SQL skills stay portable Open source and self-hostable Free tier includes 50,000 auth MAU and two projects
Limitations	Free plan compute suspends for the rest of the month once 100 CU-hours, 0.5 GB or 5 GB egress is used A cold start follows each scale-to-zero suspension Region is fixed at project creation; moving means creating a new project and migrating New projects are limited to 8 AWS regions; Azure regions are deprecated	Free projects pause after one week of inactivity and have no automatic backups Compute is billed per project, so several projects on Pro cost more than the $25 headline Point-in-time recovery costs $100/mo per 7 days of retention SOC 2 and ISO 27001 reports and dashboard SSO require the $599/mo Team plan

Sources: Neon pricing, Supabase pricing. Full plans on each tool's page.

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Plans

Neon

Free 100 CU-hours per project per month, 0.5 GB storage per project, 5 GB egress, always scales to zero	$0
Launch Storage $0.35/GB-month, 500 GB egress per project then $0.10/GB, autoscaling to 16 CU, 7-day restore window	$0.106/CU-hour
Scale Adds SOC 2, HIPAA (BAA), private networking, IP allow rules, uptime SLA, 30-day restore window, up to 56 CU fixed	$0.222/CU-hour

Supabase

Free 2 active projects, 500 MB database, 1 GB storage, 5 GB egress, 50,000 MAU; pauses after 1 week idle	$0
Pro 8 GB disk per project, 250 GB egress, 100 GB storage, 100,000 MAU, daily backups 7 days; $10 compute credit covers one Micro instance	$25/mo
Team SOC 2 and ISO 27001, dashboard SSO, 14-day backups, 28-day logs, HIPAA as paid add-on	$599/mo
Enterprise Uptime SLAs, AWS PrivateLink, 24x7 support, designated support manager	Custom

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