Free Postgres Database Tiers Compared for Side Projects

For a free Postgres database that does not expire, the two main choices are Neon, whose free plan lists 1 GB of storage per project (Neon pricing), and Supabase, which lists 500 MB database size and pauses Free projects after a week of inactivity (Supabase pricing). Render's free Postgres expires after 30 days (Render docs), and PlanetScale has no free tier (PlanetScale pricing). All figures are from the ZeroRaised free tiers dataset, checked 22 Oct 2026. Neon added Realtime in public beta on 15 October 2026, free during the beta.

Disclosure: ZeroRaised publishes this guide and the free tiers dataset it draws on, and appears in the final section. Every limit, price and terms statement about a vendor below comes from that dataset or from the dated vendor announcement it links. The dataset was built only from each vendor's own pricing, docs and terms pages, checked 22 Oct 2026. Each vendor fact links to the vendor page it came from, and those pages were fetched again on 22 Oct 2026. Where the dataset says a value is not published, so does this guide. ZeroRaised has no affiliate deal with any company named here.

TL;DR#

Free database plans for side projects, from each vendor's own pages, checked 22 Oct 2026:

If the project will sit quiet for days at a time, weigh Neon's scale to zero after 5 minutes against Supabase's pause after 1 week of inactivity (Neon pricing, Supabase pricing). If you want file storage and edge functions in the same free plan, Supabase lists both. If you need the data next month, do not start on Render's free database.

What happened: Neon Realtime in public beta, 15 October 2026#

On 15 October 2026 (the post shows "Oct 15, 2026"), Neon published Neon now has realtime. It says "Neon Realtime is live in public beta", and "It's free during the beta, there's no waitlist". Neon's changelog entry of Oct 16, 2026 lists it as "Neon Realtime in public beta" and says it is "built by the team behind Electric".

Why it matters for a free Postgres database: realtime updates are one of the features people pick Supabase for, and the "supabase vs neon free tier" question usually comes down to what you get on top of the database. Neon's announcement does not say which plans can use Realtime after the beta, or what it will cost then. The post says only that it is free during the beta, so treat it as a preview rather than a free-plan feature you can count on.

Free database plans move fast, and two other changes show it. Turso's pricing page now carries a "Turso is joining Supabase" banner, and the free tiers dataset notes the plan may change (Turso pricing). And on 9 October 2026, Deno announced that "Deno Deploy will continue operating for six months before shutting down". Deno KV's free allowance is listed as part of the Deno Deploy Free plan (Deno Deploy pricing). The figures below are the free plans as they stood on 22 Oct 2026.

Free Postgres database plans compared#

Four vendors in the dataset include a Postgres database in a free plan: Supabase, Neon, Render and Netlify. PlanetScale sells Postgres but has no free tier (see below). Every figure is from the vendor's own page, checked 22 Oct 2026, and "not published" means the vendor's pages did not state it.

Three things the table does not show on its own:

• Units differ. Supabase lists "database size", Neon lists storage "per project", Render lists a "fixed storage capacity". The dataset keeps each vendor's wording rather than converting, and so does this guide.
• Netlify's figure really is missing. Netlify's pricing page says you can "Automatically provision and connect a Postgres database to your project with Netlify Database" (Netlify pricing), but the pages checked did not publish a storage size for the Free plan.
• Render's database is on a timer. It is the only one of the four with a fixed end date.

Netlify Database on the free plan#

Netlify's Free plan is credit-based: Netlify's credit table lists "300 credits/month with credit hard limit". Credits are used by production deploys, compute, form submissions, bandwidth and web requests (Netlify pricing). Netlify does not publish a single GB or hour figure for the plan, and the dataset does not convert credits into one.

The rule to remember is the pause: "When a site reaches its monthly usage limits, it enters a paused state until the start of the next billing cycle", and "if one project exceeds its limits, all projects on your account will be paused" (Netlify pricing). If your side project's database lives in the same account as your other sites, they share that limit.

Supabase vs Neon free tier#

Most people searching for a free Postgres database end up making this comparison, as the search suggestions show: "supabase vs neon free tier", "supabase vs neon pricing", "free postgres database neon", "free postgres database supabase". The two free plans are built around different ideas. Figures from Supabase pricing and Neon pricing, checked 22 Oct 2026.

Not in the dataset means the free tiers dataset recorded no Neon figure for that row, not that Neon lacks the feature.

Supabase: a backend in one free plan#

Supabase's free plan is "Perfect for passion projects & simple websites." It includes "Shared CPU • 500 MB RAM", "500 MB database size", "1 GB file storage", "50,000 monthly active users" and Edge Functions invocations "500,000 included" (Supabase pricing). For a side project with users, uploads and a few server functions, that is a lot to get without a bill.

The catch is the pause. "Free projects are paused after 1 week of inactivity. Limit of 2 active projects." (Supabase pricing). A side project you show to people once a month will be asleep when they arrive, and the two-project limit means you cannot keep every experiment running.

Neon: storage and projects, with scale to zero#

Neon's free plan is "designed to be genuinely useful for development and prototyping", with "no time limits and no credit card required" (Neon pricing). It lists "100 CU-hrs monthly per project", "Sizes up to 2 CU (8 GB RAM)", "1 GB of storage per project" and "100 projects". Compute scales to zero "After 5 minutes when inactive".

The two vendors handle quiet periods differently on paper: Neon scales compute to zero after 5 minutes, while Supabase pauses the whole project after a week (Neon pricing, Supabase pricing). The pages checked do not set out what it takes to bring each back, so test it on your own project before people depend on it. Neon's limits are per project, so the 1 GB applies to each project rather than to the account.

Which to pick#

• Pick Supabase if the free plan has to do the work of a backend: users, file storage and functions next to Postgres, for one or two projects that get used at least weekly.
• Pick Neon if you mainly need Postgres, want more storage per database, run several small projects, or expect long quiet spells.
• Either way, check the vendor's page on the day you sign up. Neon's new Realtime feature, for example, is "free during the beta" with no word yet on what follows (Neon blog).

If the side project is really a test of an idea, how to validate a SaaS idea before building covers what to learn before the database choice matters at all.

Render's free Postgres: 1 GB that expires after 30 days#

Render is the free Postgres option most likely to catch someone out, because its free database is built to be temporary. From Render's free docs and pricing, checked 22 Oct 2026:

Thirty days suits a hackathon, a demo or a tutorial, and is short enough to lose a side project's data if you forget the date. Put the expiry in your calendar on day one, and export the data before the grace period ends if you will not upgrade.

The free web service that often sits next to it has its own limits. Render says it "spins down a Free web service that goes 15 minutes without receiving any inbound traffic", that spinning up "takes about one minute", and that Free instances have "an ephemeral filesystem" (Render docs). Its advice is blunt: "Do not use them for production applications."

Free databases that are not Postgres#

Plenty of side projects do not need Postgres at all. The dataset has four more free database allowances worth knowing, each from the vendor's own page, checked 22 Oct 2026.

MongoDB Atlas M0#

MongoDB calls M0 "Free forever", and its pricing FAQ says "Atlas’s free tier includes 512 MB of storage, 32MB of sort memory, and up to 100 operations per second" (MongoDB pricing). The limits page adds the parts that bite: "You can deploy at most one Free cluster per Atlas project", "Free clusters can only have a maximum of 500 connections", and "Atlas automatically pauses Free clusters after 30 days of inactivity where there are zero connections to the cluster" (MongoDB limits). Thirty days is far more forgiving than Supabase's week, which suits a side project you open now and then.

Turso#

Turso's free plan has the largest headline numbers in this group: 100 databases and 5GB storage, with "Start free, no credit card required." (Turso pricing). Two cautions. The pricing page shows a "Turso is joining Supabase" banner, and the dataset notes the plan may change. And Turso's Terms of Use say "You will only use the Services for your own internal business, personal, non-commercial use, and not on behalf of or for the benefit of any third party". Those terms say "non-commercial use" but do not name the free plan. If the side project might earn money, read them or ask Turso.

Cloudflare D1 and Workers KV#

D1 comes with the Workers Free plan: "Storage (per GB stored) … 5 GB (total)", "Rows read … 5 million / day" and "Rows written … 100,000 / day" (D1 pricing). Cloudflare says "the Workers Free plan will always include the ability to prototype and experiment with D1 for free." The same plan includes Workers KV with 1 GB of stored data (Workers pricing). If your app already runs on Workers, D1 sits on the same free plan.

Firebase Spark#

Firebase's Spark plan needs "No payment method needed" and includes Cloud Firestore at "1 GiB total" stored, "50K reads/day" and "20K writes/day", plus a Realtime Database with "1 GB" stored and 100 simultaneous connections (Firebase pricing). One limit for side projects with any server logic: Cloud Functions are listed as "Not applicable" on Spark; their no-cost quota applies only on the pay-as-you-go Blaze plan.

Deno KV#

Deno Deploy's Free plan lists Deno KV with 1 GiB storage, 1,000,000 read units/mo and 500,000 write units/mo (Deno Deploy pricing). Given Deno's 9 October 2026 announcement that Deno Deploy will shut down after six months, it is not a place to start a new project.

PlanetScale and Fly.io: no free tier#

Two well-known names do not have a free database plan for new accounts. Both stay in the dataset so that the answer is on record. Checked 22 Oct 2026.

PlanetScale's FAQ is plain about it: "PlanetScale has made the decision to stop offering our Hobby tier", and "it will no longer be possible to create new Hobby tier databases" (PlanetScale Hobby FAQ). Older guides that list a PlanetScale free tier are out of date. Its current entry price for a single node Postgres database is "Starting at $5/month", which the pricing page describes as being for development and low-traffic workloads (PlanetScale pricing).

Fly.io says "New organizations don’t have a free tier or a monthly free usage allowance" (Fly.io pricing), so running your own Postgres there for free is not an option for a new account.

How to choose a free database for a side project#

The right free plan depends less on the biggest number than on how the project will be used. Every limit here is from the vendor's own page, checked 22 Oct 2026.

Check the limits that stop a project, not only the storage#

Storage gets the headlines, but the limits that end a side project are usually pauses, expiry and caps:

• Inactivity rules. Supabase pauses after 1 week of inactivity, MongoDB after 30 days with zero connections (Supabase pricing, MongoDB limits).
• Expiry. Render's free Postgres expires 30 days after creation, with a grace period of 14 days to upgrade (Render docs).
• Transfer. Supabase lists 5 GB egress, Neon 5 GB per project, MongoDB 10 GB in and 10 GB out per rolling seven-day period (Supabase pricing, Neon pricing, MongoDB limits).
• Connections. MongoDB M0 allows a maximum of 500; Firebase's Realtime Database 100 simultaneous connections (MongoDB limits, Firebase pricing).
• Backups. Turso lists Point-In-Time Restore of 1 day on its free plan (Turso pricing). For the other free plans here, the dataset does not record a backup figure, so treat backups as your job and export your data on a schedule you choose.

Check the terms before the project earns money#

A side project can turn into a product. Before it does, check whether the free plan's terms say anything about commercial use. For the database vendors here, the free tiers dataset records the commercial-use rule for the free plan as not published: Supabase, Neon, Render, Netlify, MongoDB Atlas, Firebase and Cloudflare. That is not permission; it means the terms, acceptable use and fair use pages checked on 22 Oct 2026 did not state a rule. Turso is different: its terms say "non-commercial use" but do not name the free plan (Turso terms). Read the vendor's terms or ask the vendor before you rely on a free plan for revenue.

Plan descriptions are signals too: Neon describes its free plan as for "development and prototyping" (Neon pricing). That is not a commercial-use rule, but it tells you what the plan was built for.

Plan the move to paid before you need it#

If the side project takes off, the free plan stops being the right home. That is easier to handle on a quiet afternoon than during a launch. Two habits help:

1. Know what you would have to replace. List the vendor-specific features you use alongside the database, so a move is a known job rather than a surprise.
2. Know what the next plan costs. This guide covers free plans only, so it does not quote paid prices except PlanetScale's entry price. Check each vendor's pricing page before you commit, and if a launch is coming, read how to handle traffic spikes for what to check on paid dependencies first.

If you built the project quickly with AI tools, the vibe coded app security checklist covers database access rules and exposed keys before strangers start using it.

Where ZeroRaised fits#

A free database is often the first piece of infrastructure a side project gets, and free plans change without much notice. That is why ZeroRaised keeps the free tiers dataset: the free plans of 14 hosting, serverless and database platforms, with every figure linked to the vendor's own page and a visible check date. Read the full free tiers dataset, or browse the ZeroRaised data hub for the other datasets. If a vendor's page has changed since the check date, the vendor's page wins.

If the side project is close to something you could show people, how to launch a vibe coded app covers the move from prototype to launch.

ZeroRaised is a free launch site for bootstrapped makers whose products have no institutional VC or accelerator equity. When your project is ready for its first users, you can submit it for review. The maker perks page lists separate offers for eligible makers, some of which cover infrastructure.

So, the free Postgres database answer in one line: Neon for storage and quiet projects, Supabase for a bundled backend you use every week, Render only for a 30-day demo, and no free tier at PlanetScale.