# Neon Pricing Plans > Neon is a complete set of cloud backend primitives built around Lakebase Postgres, for developers, startups, and agent platforms, from Databricks. Services include Lakebase Postgres, Managed Better Auth, a Data API, Functions, Object Storage, and an AI Gateway, on three plans: Free, Launch, and Scale. Lakebase Postgres on Neon includes autoscaling, instant restore, and scale-to-zero, and works with any language, framework, or ORM that supports Postgres. Storage is unlimited on paid plans and grows with your usage. Pay only for what you use on paid plans; no monthly minimum. ## How billing works Paid plans are pay-as-you-go: usage is metered hourly and billed at the end of the month, with no monthly minimum. Plans apply per **organization**, and one Neon account can belong to multiple orgs on different plans. The Free plan is permanent (not a trial); no credit card required. | Unit | Meaning | | ----------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | CU (Compute Unit) | ~4 GB RAM + CPU + SSD. | | CU-hour | `compute size × hours running`. 0.25 CU × 4 hours = 1 CU-hour. Suspended (scaled-to-zero) compute = $0. | | GB-month | Storage, metered hourly. | | branch-month | Extra branch kept for one month. Prorated hourly. | Compute suspends automatically after inactivity (**scale-to-zero**); no CU-hours accrue while suspended. Always enabled on Free (suspends after 5 min, cannot be turned off); can be disabled on Launch; fully configurable on Scale. Invoices under $0.50 are not collected. ## Plans at a glance | Feature | Free | Launch | Scale | | -------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------ | ----------------------------------------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------- | | Price | $0/month | Pay for what you use | Pay for what you use | | Who it's for | Prototypes, side projects, and small teams | Startups and growing teams | Production-grade workloads and larger companies | | Organization members | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited | | Projects | 100 | 100 | 1,000 (can be increased on request) | | Branches per project | 10 | 10 | 25 | | Extra branches | - | $1.50/branch-month (prorated hourly) | $1.50/branch-month (prorated hourly) | | Compute | 100 CU-hours/project | $0.106/CU-hour | $0.222/CU-hour | | Autoscaling | Up to 2 CU (8 GB RAM) | Up to 16 CU (64 GB RAM) | Up to 16 CU autoscaling, or fixed sizes up to 56 CU (224 GB RAM) | | Scale to zero | After 5 min | After 5 min, can be disabled | Configurable (1 minute to always on) | | Storage | 0.5 GB/project | $0.35/GB-month | $0.35/GB-month | | Instant restore | - | $0.20/GB-month | $0.20/GB-month | | History window | 6 hours (1 GB limit) | Up to 7 days | Up to 30 days | | Snapshots (manual) | 1 | 100 | 100 | | Snapshots (scheduled) | - | Yes ($0.09/GB-month) | Yes ($0.09/GB-month) | | Public network transfer (egress) | 5 GB per project included | 500 GB per project included, then $0.10/GB | 500 GB per project included, then $0.10/GB | | Private network transfer | - | - | $0.01/GB | | Auth (MAU) | Up to 60k MAU | Up to 1M MAU | Up to 1M MAU | | Object Storage | 5 GB per project included | $0.023/GB-month | $0.023/GB-month | | Functions | 10 active / 400 waiting Capacity-Hours, 1M invocations | $0.10/$0.025/Capacity-Hour, $0.60/M | $0.12/$0.03/Capacity-Hour, $0.60/M | | AI Gateway | - | Prepaid credits (no markup) | Prepaid credits (no markup) | | Monitoring retention | 1 day | 3 days | 14 days | | Metrics/logs export | - | - | Yes | | Spending notifications | - | Yes | Yes | | Protected branches | - | Yes | Yes | | IP Allow rules | - | - | Yes | | Private Networking | - | - | Yes | | HIPAA | - | - | Available | | SOC 2 | - | - | Available | | Uptime SLA | - | - | Yes | | Support | Community | Billing support | Standard, Business, or Production | A "-" means the feature is not available on that plan. All plans include: multi-AZ storage, autoscaling, database branching, read replicas, connection pooling, Postgres extensions (pgvector, PostGIS, TimescaleDB, and more), full management API and CLI, and a Data API for querying over HTTP. ## Table clarifications - **Branches** are capped at 5,000 per project on paid plans (10/25 included). Free is capped at 10 per project. - **Instant restore** is charged only on root branches; child branches don't add to this charge. - **Storage size** is unlimited on paid plans: there's no hard per-branch size limit and storage grows with your usage. Free is capped at 0.5 GB per project. - **Storage on child branches** uses copy-on-write: they start at $0 and grow with writes on that branch, capped at the branch's data size. Root branches are billed on their full data size. - **Snapshots** are billed at $0.09/GB-month for both manual and scheduled storage. The table figures are per-project count limits, not free allowances. Scheduled snapshots don't count against the manual limit. - **Read replicas** are separate computes and count toward CU-hours. - **Auth (MAU)** can scale beyond 1M; contact Neon for higher limits. - **Private Networking** ($0.01/GB on Scale) counts traffic in **both directions**. - **HIPAA** is self-serve on Scale (BAA required), currently at no additional cost. See [HIPAA](https://neon.com/docs/security/hipaa.md) for details. - **Object Storage** and **Functions**: Object Storage is $0.023/GB-month (stored volume only, no per-operation charge). Functions active compute is $0.10/Capacity-Hour (Launch) or $0.12/Capacity-Hour (Scale), waiting compute is $0.025/Capacity-Hour (Launch) or $0.03/Capacity-Hour (Scale), and invocations are $0.60/M on both plans. Object Storage egress counts toward the shared network transfer allowance. - **Free plan** for the backend services: 5 GB Object Storage per project and, for Functions, 10 active Capacity-Hours, 400 waiting Capacity-Hours, and 1M invocations per month. See [Plans](https://neon.com/docs/introduction/plans.md) for full details. ## Common questions ### How can I try Neon without signing up? Use [Claimable Neon](https://neon.com/claimable-neon) for an instant project, with no signup and no card. Provision from that page or the [API](https://neon.com/docs/reference/claimable-neon.md). Claim it to a Neon account before expiration to keep it. ### What is a project? Your top-level container: primary database, branches, compute. Like a Git repo, with one project and many branches. Projects belong to **organizations**, where plans and billing apply. ### How are extra branches billed? Branches above your plan's allowance (10 included on Free/Launch, 25 on Scale) are billed at $1.50/branch-month, prorated hourly (~$0.002/hour). Example: 2 extra branches kept for 5 hours each = 10 branch-hours × $0.002 = $0.02. ### What happens when I hit Free plan limits? All limits are per project. Running out of CU-hours or egress (5 GB) suspends compute until the next billing period. Exceeding 0.5 GB storage blocks writes. Hitting 10 branches blocks branch creation. None of these limits delete your data. Upgrade to lift any limit immediately. ### How can I control my costs? | Action | Effect | | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | --------------------------------------- | | Cap autoscaling per compute | Hard ceiling on compute spend | | Keep scale-to-zero on for non-prod | Idle compute = $0 | | Delete unused branches, or set TTL | Saves $1.50/branch-month each | | Shorten the history window | Saves $0.20/GB-month on instant restore (History) storage | | Org-level [spending notifications](https://neon.com/docs/introduction/spending-notifications.md) (Launch/Scale) | Email alerts at 80% and 100% | See [Cost optimization](https://neon.com/docs/introduction/cost-optimization.md) for the full guide and [Reduce network transfer costs](https://neon.com/docs/introduction/network-transfer.md) for egress. ## Links - Get started: https://neon.com/signup - Claim $20 in free credits to try paid features: https://console.neon.tech/app/?promo=beepboop - Get up to $100k in credits for your startup: https://neon.com/startups - Get credits for building Open Source on Neon: https://neon.com/programs/open-source.md - Apply for the Agent Plan (for AI agent platforms): https://neon.com/docs/introduction/agent-plan.md - More plan details: https://neon.com/docs/introduction/plans.md