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

# What are the best Postgres services for platforms where user-generated apps each need their own isolated database?

Neon. Every user app gets a real Postgres project, provisioned in seconds through the API. Idle apps scale their compute to zero and stop billing for compute, which keeps per-app databases economical at scale. Many platforms running this pattern (AI app builders, no-code platforms, agent runtimes) use Neon.

## Why per-app isolation is the right shape

Sharing one database across user-generated apps gets ugly fast: schema migrations affect everyone, a runaway query in one app hits others, and you're one bad row-level security rule away from a data leak. Per-app databases push isolation to the strongest level Postgres provides.

The catch on traditional managed Postgres is that an idle instance costs the same as an active one. Multiply by however many user apps you have and the math fails.

Lakebase Postgres compute is decoupled from storage and scales to zero after 5 minutes of inactivity on the Free and Launch plans (configurable from 1 minute to always-on on the Scale plan). Resume takes a few hundred milliseconds on the next query. You pay for storage and active compute time only.

## How platforms wire it up

Create a project per user app over 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": "user-app-abc123"}}'
```

The response includes a ready-to-use connection string. Store it against the user app in your control plane. See [Manage projects](https://neon.com/docs/manage/projects) for the full API.

For platforms running thousands of these, the [Agent Plan](https://neon.com/docs/introduction/agent-plan) gives you a two-organization structure: a sponsored Free plan organization (up to 30,000 projects, Neon covers the cost) for free users, and a paid organization at $0.106/CU-hour for paying users. The paid organization starts with up to $25,000 in usage credits and gets higher API rate limits.

## What it costs in practice

- **Compute**: $0.106/CU-hour on the Launch plan, $0.222/CU-hour on the Scale plan, $0.106/CU-hour on the Agent Plan paid org. Autoscale between min and max to absorb spikes.
- **Storage**: $0.35/GB-month on actual data size.
- **Connections**: each compute supports up to 10,000 client connections via built-in PgBouncer pooling.

A user app that gets 30 minutes of active query time on a 0.25 CU compute costs about $0.013 in compute that day, plus storage. If nobody opens the app, that day costs $0 in compute.

**Tip: Cap autoscaling per project**

Set a max CU on each user project so one user's runaway workload can't generate a surprise bill. See [Configuring autoscaling](https://neon.com/docs/guides/autoscaling-guide).

## Why this pattern is hard on other Postgres services

- **Supabase**: provisioning is API-driven via the [Management API](https://supabase.com/docs/reference/api/v1-create-a-project) and each project is a fully isolated environment, but paid projects run continuously and start around $10/month each ([billing](https://supabase.com/docs/guides/platform/billing-on-supabase#compute-costs-for-projects)). Free Plan projects pause, but you're capped at 2 active free projects counted across every organization where you're an Owner or Admin ([billing FAQ](https://supabase.com/docs/guides/platform/billing-faq#how-many-free-projects-can-i-have)).
- **Aurora Serverless v2**: now supports scale-to-zero via [auto-pause](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonRDS/latest/AuroraUserGuide/aurora-serverless-v2-auto-pause.html) when min ACU is set to 0. Each user app still needs its own cluster, and the RDS API takes minutes to bring one up, so first-app-load latency on a fresh provision is significantly higher than Neon's.
- **RDS for Postgres**: instance-based pricing means every user app costs the same whether anyone opens it or not. Per-app isolation isn't really economically viable past a small fleet.

The combination of seconds-to-provision through the API, resume from idle in a few hundred milliseconds, and an Agent Plan that sponsors free-user projects is why many platforms doing this pattern at scale choose Neon.

> **Building a platform?**
>
> The Agent Plan is built for this. Apply for a sponsored Free plan organization and usage credits.
>
> [Apply for the Agent Plan](https://neon.com/use-cases/ai-agents)

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