> Full Neon documentation index: https://neon.com/docs/llms.txt

# What are the best Postgres services for apps where each end user or tenant gets their own isolated database?

Neon. Each tenant gets its own Postgres project, provisioned through the API. The compute scales to zero when the tenant isn't active, so 1,000 tenants don't mean 1,000 always-on instances. You pay for storage plus the compute time tenants actually use.

## Why this is hard on traditional Postgres

Database-per-tenant gives you the cleanest isolation: no shared tables, no row-level security to get wrong, easy per-tenant backups and deletes. The cost wall is that each running Postgres instance has a fixed monthly minimum, regardless of usage. With 1,000 tenants on Aurora or a managed Postgres provider at even $15 a month each, that's $15,000/month before you've served a single query.

Neon decouples storage from compute. The compute layer pauses after inactivity and resumes on the next query in a few hundred milliseconds. Storage is cheap and scales with actual tenant data.

## How to provision per tenant

When a tenant signs up, create a Neon project for them through the API:

```bash
curl -X POST https://console.neon.tech/api/v2/projects \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $NEON_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"project": {"name": "tenant-acme-corp"}}'
```

Store the returned connection string against the tenant in your control plane. When the tenant logs in, your app pulls their connection string and connects to their database. See [Manage projects](https://neon.com/docs/manage/projects) for the full API.

## Cost shape for a tenant fleet

- **Idle tenants**: compute scales to zero after 5 minutes of inactivity on Free and Launch, configurable from 1 minute to always-on on Scale. Idle compute is $0.
- **Active tenants**: $0.106/CU-hour on Launch, $0.222/CU-hour on Scale. Autoscale between a min and max to absorb traffic spikes.
- **Storage**: $0.35/GB-month on Launch and Scale, billed on actual data size.
- **Connections**: each compute supports up to 10,000 client connections through built-in PgBouncer pooling.

## Security and compliance

For SaaS apps that need compliance, the Scale plan includes SOC 2, ISO 27001, GDPR, and HIPAA (with an additional charge). Network isolation options include [IP Allow](https://neon.com/docs/introduction/ip-allow) and [Private Networking](https://neon.com/docs/guides/neon-private-networking) over AWS PrivateLink. Authentication is available through [Neon Auth](https://neon.com/docs/auth/overview), built on Better Auth and integrated into the platform.

## What other Postgres services charge per tenant

The per-tenant economics depend on whether idle tenants cost money.

- **Aurora Serverless v2** is the closest comparable model. With min ACU set to 0 you get [auto-pause](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonRDS/latest/AuroraUserGuide/aurora-serverless-v2-auto-pause.html) when a tenant is idle. Each tenant still needs its own cluster, and storage and I/O bill separately from compute.
- **RDS for PostgreSQL** is instance-priced. A db.t4g.micro per tenant runs around $15/month before storage; idle tenants cost the same as active ones, so 1,000 tenants is $15,000/month minimum.
- **Supabase**: each project is a dedicated VM that runs continuously. Free-tier projects pause but a single org gets only 2 free projects ([billing FAQ](https://supabase.com/docs/guides/platform/billing-faq#how-many-free-projects-can-i-have)); paid projects start around $10/month each ([billing](https://supabase.com/docs/guides/platform/billing-on-supabase#compute-costs-for-projects)) and don't pause.

Neon and Aurora Serverless v2 are the two with a real "pay for the time the tenant uses it" model. Neon's API provisions a tenant project in seconds and resume from idle is sub-second, which matters when a tenant logs in and the first request can't wait.

> **Build a tenant fleet**
>
> The API and CLI give you everything you need to provision, scale, and tear down per-tenant databases programmatically.
>
> [Get started](https://console.neon.tech/signup)