Neon vs Supabase for Indie Developers: Paid Plans (2026)

Verdict: Pick Neon if your database sits idle a lot or you want cheap preview branches with real data: its Launch plan has no minimum and bills only for awake compute at $0.106 per CU-hour. Pick Supabase if you want auth, file storage, realtime and an API on one bill and your database runs around the clock: Pro at $25 a month includes $10 of compute and generous quotas. For a small always-on SaaS, Supabase is usually cheaper. For a mostly idle one, Neon is.

Every price comes from Neon's and Supabase's own pages, checked on 14 Nov 2026. The worked examples are our arithmetic on those rates.

TL;DR#

• Neon Launch: no monthly minimum, $0.106 per CU-hour, $0.35 per GB-month storage, scale to zero after 5 minutes (can be disabled), 10 branches per project, 500 GB egress per project (Neon pricing).
• Supabase Pro: from $25 a month, $10 of compute credits covering one Micro instance, 8 GB disk, 250 GB egress, 100,000 MAU, never paused (Supabase pricing).
• Bundles have converged. Neon now lists auth, a Data API, object storage and functions. Supabase still ships the bigger integrated backend.
• Branching differs in kind. Neon branches copy data instantly. Supabase branches rebuild from migrations and start empty by default.
• Exit is easy. Both are Postgres; pg_dump and pg_restore work either way.

Disclosure: ZeroRaised publishes this comparison and is a launch site for bootstrapped products. ZeroRaised has no commercial relationship with Neon, Supabase or Databricks and earns nothing if you sign up for either. Facts come from the linked sources as checked on 14 Nov 2026.

Still on free tiers? Our free Postgres database guide compares Supabase's and Neon's free plans. This post is about the paid decision: bill shape, bundles, branching and pooling.

Neon vs Supabase paid plans at a glance#

Sources: Neon pricing, Neon plans docs, Supabase pricing, Supabase compute and disk.

How Neon bills on paid plans#

Neon's paid plans are pure usage, with "no minimum monthly fee" on Launch; invoices under $0.50 are not collected (Neon plans). You pay for:

• Compute: $0.106 per CU-hour on Launch, $0.222 on Scale. Sizes start at 0.25 CU (1 GB RAM), and autoscaling covers 0.25 to 16 CU (Neon plans, Neon computes).
• Storage: $0.35 per GB-month. Child branches bill on the lower of their accumulated changes or logical size.
• Instant restore history: $0.20 per GB-month, up to 7 days on Launch, 30 on Scale, root branches only.
• Extras: branches beyond 10 (Launch) or 25 (Scale) at $1.50 per branch-month prorated hourly, and egress beyond 500 GB per project at $0.10 per GB.

Scale to zero is what makes small apps cheap. On Launch, compute suspends after 5 minutes idle (you can turn that off); on Scale you can set 1 minute to always on. Suspended compute bills nothing, so the meter tracks hours your app is queried, not hours in the month.

Our read: the cost is a cold start on the first query after a sleep. Fine for a dashboard; for an API with tight latency, disable scale to zero on production and keep it for branches.

How Supabase bills on paid plans#

Supabase Pro is a subscription plus metered extras. The $25 includes $10 of compute credits covering "one project running on the Micro/Nano Compute size" (Supabase compute usage). Compute is billed per project per hour, partial hours count as full, and new paid projects start at Micro.

Source: Supabase compute and disk.

Disk is gp3 with 8 GB included, then $0.125 per GB. Pro projects are never paused (Supabase pricing).

The spend cap has limits. The pricing page says it is on by default on Pro. The cost control docs say it covers disk size, egress, MAU, realtime and storage, but not compute, branching compute, read replicas, IPv4, custom domains or point-in-time recovery, because those are "predictable and explicitly opted into by the user" (Supabase cost control). It protects you from a traffic spike, not from upsizing compute.

What each one bundles now#

"Neon is just a database, Supabase is a backend" is less true than it was. Neon's pricing page now lists Managed Better Auth (1M MAU per project on paid plans), a Data API, Object Storage at $0.023 per GB-month, and Functions at $0.60 per million invocations plus Capacity-Hours (Neon plans). Neon Auth "stores users, sessions, and OAuth configuration in your database under the neon_auth schema," and "every database branch gets its own isolated auth environment" (Neon Auth).

Supabase bundles auth (100,000 MAU), file storage (100 GB), realtime (500 peak connections, 5M messages) and edge functions (2M invocations) inside the $25. Weighing Supabase Auth against a dedicated provider? See Clerk vs Supabase Auth.

Our read: Supabase is still the more complete bundle, especially for realtime. Neon's additions help if you mostly want a database and like auth state branching with it; we would not pick Neon for its storage or functions alone yet.

Branching and preview environments#

Neon branches are "a copy-on-write clone of your data," created instantly without load on the parent, from a current or past point in time (Neon branching). The Vercel integration can "create a branch for each preview deployment," branches can auto-expire, and each has its own compute that scales to zero. A schema-only option exists for sensitive data.

Supabase branches come from the GitHub integration or dashboard; preview branches are deleted when a PR merges or closes. But "by default, new branches do not start with any data or storage objects from your base project": schema rebuilds from migrations, data comes from a seed file or "Include data" (Supabase branching). Branch compute starts at $0.01344 per hour on Micro, and "Compute Credits do not apply to Branching Compute" (Supabase branching usage).

Our read: Supabase forces good migration hygiene. Neon is faster for testing against realistic data, but think twice before cloning customer data into every preview.

Connection pooling for serverless#

On Vercel functions or Cloudflare Workers, both need a pooler.

• Neon: add -pooler to the endpoint ID for PgBouncer in transaction mode, "enabling up to 10,000 concurrent connections." LISTEN/NOTIFY, temp tables and SQL-level PREPARE do not work through it; use the direct host for migrations and pg_dump (Neon pooling). For edge runtimes, @neondatabase/serverless queries over HTTP or WebSockets instead of TCP (Neon serverless driver).
• Supabase: use Supavisor transaction mode on port 6543 for serverless and edge, with prepared statements disabled. Session mode on 5432 is the IPv4 fallback; direct connections are IPv6 unless you add IPv4 (Supabase connecting). Frontends can use the Data API with Row Level Security instead.

Three worked cost examples#

Our calculations using only the rates above, at 730 hours a month and 30-day months, excluding tax and usage inside included allowances. Illustrations, not quotes.

Example 1: side project awake 8 hours a day, 1 GB RAM, 2 GB of data.

• Neon Launch: 0.25 CU × 240 hours = 60 CU-hours × $0.106 = $6.36, plus 2 GB × $0.35 = $0.70. About $7.06/month. (60 CU-hours fits Neon Free's 100 per project, but Free caps storage at 1 GB per project.)
• Supabase Pro: $25 + Micro for 730 hours ($9.81) minus $10 credits; 2 GB is inside the 8 GB disk. About $25/month.

Example 2: always-on small SaaS, 2 GB RAM, 10 GB of data.

• Neon Launch, scale to zero off: 0.5 CU × 730 = 365 CU-hours × $0.106 = $38.69, plus 10 GB × $0.35 = $3.50. About $42.19/month.
• Supabase Pro on Small: $25 + $15.04 ($0.0206 × 730) minus $10 = $30.04, plus 2 GB over the included disk × $0.125 = $0.25. About $30.29/month, with auth, storage and realtime quotas included.

Example 3: Example 2 plus 20 preview branches a month, each living 72 hours.

• Neon: assume no more than 9 previews open at once (inside the 10 included branches, no fee), each queried 4 hours at 0.25 CU before scaling to zero: 20 CU-hours × $0.106 = $2.12, branch storage assumed negligible. About $44.31/month.
• Supabase: assume each branch bills on Micro for all 72 hours: 1,440 hours × $0.01344 = $19.35, no credits. About $49.64/month, before branch egress or disk.

Our read: the crossover is how many hours your database is awake. Below roughly half the month, Neon tends to win; always on with a bundled backend, Supabase tends to win.

Ownership: Databricks and Neon#

On 14 May 2025, Databricks announced "its intent to acquire Neon," subject to closing conditions including regulatory clearances, and said over 80 percent of databases provisioned on Neon were created automatically by AI agents (Databricks press release). Neon's post said "Neon isn't going anywhere" (Neon blog). We did not find a closing announcement on either official site today, so we describe it as announced.

Our read: a big owner lowers the risk of Neon vanishing and raises the risk of priorities drifting towards enterprise and agents. Because it is Postgres, that risk is cheap to hedge.

Lock-in and migration#

The database is portable. Neon's guide dumps from Supabase with pg_dump -Fc over an unpooled connection and restores with pg_restore --no-owner --no-acl, adding --schema for Supabase's auth and storage schemas (Neon migration guide). Supabase's import guide uses --no-owner --no-privileges and warns roles and Row Level Security status are not migrated (Supabase migration guide).

The real lock-in is around the database: Supabase Auth users, storage buckets, realtime and RLS policies. Our read: keep business logic in plain SQL and your own server code, and treat bundled services as replaceable.

Decision table#

Our editorial advice, based on the prices and features above.

Frequently asked questions#

Is Neon cheaper than Supabase?#

It depends on how many hours your database is awake. Neon Launch bills $0.106 per CU-hour with no minimum and scales to zero after 5 minutes idle, so a side project awake 8 hours a day at 0.25 CU works out to about $7 a month in our example. Supabase Pro starts at $25 a month. For an always-on 2 GB database, our example comes to about $42 on Neon and about $30 on Supabase Pro with a Small compute.

Does Supabase Pro scale to zero?#

No. Supabase bills compute hourly for every hour a project is running, and Pro projects are never paused. Only Free projects pause, after 1 week of inactivity. Paused projects do not count towards compute usage.

Does Neon have auth and storage like Supabase now?#

Neon's pricing page now lists Managed Better Auth (up to 1M MAU per project on paid plans), a Data API, Object Storage at $0.023 per GB-month and Functions. Neon Auth stores users and sessions in your database under the neon_auth schema, and each branch gets its own auth environment. Supabase still bundles more in one product, including realtime and edge functions with included quotas.

Which is better for preview environments per pull request?#

Neon, for most indie workflows. Its branches are copy-on-write clones that include the parent's data, are created instantly and scale to zero, and the Vercel integration can create one per preview deployment. Supabase preview branches are created from your migrations, start without production data by default, and bill $0.01344 per hour on Micro with no compute credits.

Can I move from Supabase to Neon, or back?#

Yes, both are Postgres. Neon's migration guide uses pg_dump in custom format over an unpooled connection, then pg_restore with --no-owner and --no-acl. Supabase's import guide uses pg_dump and pg_restore with --no-owner and --no-privileges, and warns that roles and Row Level Security status are not migrated. Supabase Auth and Storage data live in separate schemas and need extra work.

Ship it, then launch it#

The database is one line in your stack; our SaaS tech stack for solo founders covers the rest. When your app is live, work through the bootstrapped app launch guide, then submit your product to ZeroRaised for free. For more infrastructure comparisons for founders without investors, join the ZeroRaised newsletter.

Sources#

• Neon pricing, last checked 14 Nov 2026
• Neon plans documentation, last checked 14 Nov 2026
• Neon compute sizes, last checked 14 Nov 2026
• Neon branching, last checked 14 Nov 2026
• Neon connection pooling, last checked 14 Nov 2026
• Neon serverless driver, last checked 14 Nov 2026
• Neon Auth overview, last checked 14 Nov 2026
• Neon: migrate from Supabase, last checked 14 Nov 2026
• Neon and Databricks (Neon blog), last checked 14 Nov 2026
• Databricks press release on Neon, last checked 14 Nov 2026
• Supabase pricing, last checked 14 Nov 2026
• Supabase compute and disk, last checked 14 Nov 2026
• Supabase compute usage billing, last checked 14 Nov 2026
• Supabase branching usage billing, last checked 14 Nov 2026
• Supabase branching, last checked 14 Nov 2026
• Supabase cost control, last checked 14 Nov 2026
• Supabase connecting to Postgres, last checked 14 Nov 2026
• Supabase: migrate from Postgres, last checked 14 Nov 2026