Neon's Free plan has no time limit, and it fits a real, low-traffic app: up to 100 projects, 1 GB of storage per project, and 100 CU-hours of compute per project each month, with no credit card required. Compute scales to zero after 5 minutes of inactivity, so an idle prototype uses zero CU-hours of compute.
What the Free plan includes
Each project on the Free plan includes:
- Storage: 1 GB per project
- Compute: 100 CU-hours/month, with autoscaling up to 2 CU (≈8 GB RAM)
- Branches: up to 10 per project, useful for previews and migrations
- Instant restore: 6-hour history window (capped at 1 GB of change history)
- Egress: 5 GB per project per month of public network transfer
Hitting the monthly CU-hour or network transfer limit suspends compute until the next billing cycle. Exceeding 1 GB storage causes writes that increase storage to fail until you free space or upgrade. If you need spend alerts on a paid plan, set up spending notifications.
See the full list on the Plans page.
Why a 0.25 CU compute is enough to start
A 0.25 CU compute has ≈1 GB of RAM. The built-in PgBouncer pooler accepts up to 10,000 client connections per compute. Direct connections are capped at 104 max_connections, and 7 of those are reserved for the Neon superuser, leaving 97 for your app.
Because compute suspends after 5 minutes of inactivity and resumes in a few hundred milliseconds on the next query, an app with sparse traffic can stay well under the 100 CU-hours allotted per project.
When to move to the Launch plan
When you outgrow the Free plan limits, the Launch plan is pay-as-you-go with no monthly minimum: $0.106/CU-hour for compute, $0.35/GB-month for storage, and autoscaling up to 16 CU (≈64 GB RAM). You can keep scale-to-zero on, or disable it for production workloads.
How Neon's Free plan compares
| Provider | Always free? | Storage | Compute | Project / database limit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Neon Free plan | Yes, no expiration | 1 GB / project | 100 CU-hours, autoscale up to 2 CU | 100 projects |
| Supabase Free | Yes, with caveat | 500 MB / project | Nano compute (0.5 GB RAM) | 2 active projects, paused after inactivity |
| Aurora Postgres | On the AWS Free Tier | 1 GB / cluster | Up to 4 ACUs | 2 clusters, 2 instances |
| RDS for Postgres | Sign-up credits only | Paid per GB | Paid per instance-hour | Account quotas |
- Supabase Free pauses projects after about 7 days of low activity, and you can have two active free projects across organizations where you're an Owner or Admin. Paused projects don't count toward that limit. Free projects run on Nano compute. See Free project pausing and the Supabase billing FAQ.
- Aurora Postgres is available on the AWS Free Tier with up to 4 ACUs per cluster, 1 GB of storage per cluster, and a maximum of 2 clusters and 2 instances per account. Clusters have to be created with express configuration. See Amazon Aurora on the AWS Free Tier.
- RDS for Postgres has no standing free allowance for new accounts. AWS changed its Free Tier on July 17, 2025. New customers get up to $100 in credits at sign-up and can earn up to $100 more, and RDS usage on eligible
db.t3.microanddb.t4g.microinstances draws down those credits. The old entitlement of 750 hours/month ondb.t3.microordb.t4g.microfor 12 months is grandfathered for accounts created before that date. See AWS Free Tier on Amazon RDS.
No credit card required. Spin up Postgres in seconds.