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Neon vs PostgreSQL
Short answer: Pick Neon if you want serverless Postgres with full backend suite; pick PostgreSQL if you want advanced open-source relational database. Neon has a free plan; PostgreSQL is free and open source.
Which to pick
Pick Neon if you want…
- Serverless Postgres with full backend suite
- Serverless Postgres
Pick PostgreSQL if you want…
- Advanced open-source relational database
- A free, open-source tool
Side by side
- What it is
- Neon:Neon provides a serverless Postgres database with built-in auth, object storage, functions and an AI gateway.
- PostgreSQL:PostgreSQL is an open-source object-relational database system known for reliability and performance.
- Best for
- Neon:Serverless Postgres with full backend suite
- PostgreSQL:Advanced open-source relational database
- Who it’s for
- Neon:Developers building apps or agents that need instant, branchable backends.
- PostgreSQL:Developers and organizations needing a robust relational database.
- Pricing
- Neon:Freemium
- PostgreSQL:Open source
- Starting price
- Neon:—
- PostgreSQL:Free
- Free plan or trial
- Neon:Free plan (Free)
- PostgreSQL:Free to use
- Plans
- Neon:Free $0
- PostgreSQL:—
- Open source
- Neon:—
- PostgreSQL:Yes, 22,836 GitHub stars
- Works with
- Neon:Better Auth, Databricks, pgBouncer
- PostgreSQL:—
Neon features
- Serverless Postgres. Lakebase Postgres scales compute and storage independently and auto-scales in real time.
- Managed Auth. Fully-managed Better Auth integration provides free user authentication per database.
- Branchable Storage. S3-compatible object storage and database branches copy-on-write for isolated environments.
- Functions. Serverless functions run close to the database without timeouts.
- AI Gateway. Single API to access frontier and open-source models at cost-based rates.
- Autoscaling & Scale-to-Zero. Compute auto-adjusts to demand and scales to zero when idle, billed per CU-hour.
- High Availability & Read Replicas. Multi-AZ storage and read replicas are included on all plans.
- Extensions Library. Supports Postgres extensions such as pg_vector, PostGIS, TimescaleDB, etc.
PostgreSQL features
- Object-relational engine. Combines relational and object-oriented features for flexible data modeling.
- Reliability. Proven stability with over 35 years of active development.
- Feature robustness. Rich SQL support, extensions, and advanced indexing.
- Performance. Optimized query execution and concurrency handling.
- Extensive documentation. Official docs cover installation, usage, and administration.
- Community support. Mailing lists, events, and user groups help users collaborate.
- Security updates. Regular releases fix vulnerabilities, e.g., 52 CVEs in the latest minor release.
- Versioning policy. Clear support timelines; version 14 ends support on 2026-11-12.
Neon vs PostgreSQL FAQ
What is the difference between Neon and PostgreSQL?+
Neon offers a serverless, fully managed Postgres service, while PostgreSQL is self-hosted.
Should I use Neon or PostgreSQL?+
Pick Neon if you want serverless Postgres with full backend suite or serverless Postgres. Pick PostgreSQL if you want advanced open-source relational database or a free, open-source tool.
Is Neon or PostgreSQL free?+
Neon has a free plan and paid plans. PostgreSQL is free and open source.
Is Neon or PostgreSQL open source?+
PostgreSQL is open source (postgres/postgres on GitHub). DevHunt has no public source repository on record for Neon.
On DevHunt
Based on each tool's website and DevHunt data. Details may change; check the official sites.