Neon vs Supabase: Which Postgres Fits an App Built in India?
Sagar Tayde · · 6 min read
Neon vs Supabase is a common question once you have decided on PostgreSQL. Both run real Postgres, both have generous free plans, and both are popular with startups. They are built for different jobs: Neon is a serverless database, Supabase is a backend platform with a database inside. This guide compares them on pricing models with worked numbers, branching, backups, connections, idle behaviour, and the question that matters most from India: where the database physically runs.
Figures are from Neon’s official pricing page and regions documentation, and from Supabase’s pricing and documentation, checked on 7 October 2026.
Two different products
Neon is PostgreSQL rebuilt so that storage and compute are separate. Compute can scale to zero when nobody uses the database and start again on the next query, and it can grow and shrink with load. You can branch a database the way you branch code. You bring your own backend.
Supabase gives you one always-on PostgreSQL database per project, plus an auto-generated API, auth, file storage and realtime. It replaces a backend for many apps. We explain those layers in the Supabase database explained.
Side by side
| Neon | Supabase | |
|---|---|---|
| What you get | Serverless PostgreSQL | PostgreSQL plus API, auth, storage, realtime |
| Free plan storage | 1 GB per project, 20 GB per account | 500 MB database (free plan limits) |
| Free plan compute | 100 compute-unit hours per project, up to 2 CU | Shared CPU, 500 MB RAM, always on |
| Free plan when idle | Sleeps after 5 minutes, wakes on the next query | Paused after 1 week, resumed by hand |
| Free projects | 100 | 2 active |
| Paid pricing model | Per compute-unit hour plus storage, no monthly minimum | $25 per month plan plus compute per project (details) |
| Branching | Built in, with data, 10 branches per project | Paid, billed per branch hour, starts without data |
| Restore to a past moment | 6 hours free, up to 7 days on Launch, 30 on Scale | Point-in-time recovery add-on, $100 per month per 7 days |
| Connection pooling | PgBouncer, up to 10,000 clients | Supavisor, by compute size |
| Nearest region to India | Singapore | Mumbai |
| Billing currency | USD | USD |
How Neon bills, with numbers
Neon measures compute in compute units (CU); one CU is about 4 GB of RAM with matching CPU. On the Launch plan you pay $0.106 per CU-hour, only while compute is running, plus $0.35 per GB-month of storage. There is no monthly minimum.
That model rewards idle time. Two examples with a small 0.25 CU compute and 5 GB of data:
| Workload | Compute hours in a month | Compute | Storage | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Busy only 4 hours a day | 0.25 x 4 x 30 = 30 CU-hours | $3.18 | $1.75 | about $4.90 |
| Always on, all month | 0.25 x 730 = 182.5 CU-hours | $19.35 | $1.75 | about $21.10 |
On Supabase Pro the same small always-on database costs $25 a month, with one Micro compute instance covered by the included credit and 8 GB of disk included, plus auth and storage that Neon does not provide. For a database that is idle most of the day, Neon is clearly cheaper. For one that is busy all day, the two land close together.
Branching: Neon’s strongest feature
A Neon branch is an instant copy of the database, data included, made by copy-on-write so it costs almost nothing until it changes. Teams create one per pull request, run migrations and tests against real data, and delete it afterwards. Ten branches per project are included; on paid plans, extra ones are $1.50 per branch-month.
A Supabase branch runs your migrations and seed file on a fresh database; by default it does not copy production data. It is billed per branch per hour on paid plans.
If preview databases with realistic data matter to your team, Neon is ahead.
Cold starts and pauses are not the same thing
Both free plans stop running when idle, but the effect on your app is very different.
On Neon, compute sleeps after five minutes without queries. The next query wakes it, typically in a few hundred milliseconds, sometimes a few seconds. Your app keeps working; the first request is just slower. Paid Neon plans can switch scale-to-zero off.
On Supabase, a free project that sees too little activity for a week is paused. It does not wake on the next request; someone has to open the dashboard and resume it. Paid projects are never paused.
The region question for Indian users
Neon has no India region; its nearest is Singapore. Supabase offers Mumbai.
This matters most for the link between your app server and the database. A web page often runs several queries per request, and each one crosses the distance between the two, so the delay is paid many times per page. It adds up further on Neon, where a woken compute may also add a cold start. If your users and your server are in India, a database in India is the simpler choice, and it is also the answer some customers want when they ask where their data is stored.
Which to choose
- Choose Neon if your workload is spiky or idle much of the day, you want a branch with real data for every pull request, and a Singapore region is acceptable.
- Choose Supabase if you want auth, storage and an API without writing a backend, with your data in Mumbai.
- Choose a plain managed PostgreSQL in India if you have your own backend, want the database always on in the same city as your app, and want a rupee bill.
For the third case, Voroa’s managed PostgreSQL runs in Mumbai next to the service you deploy from GitHub, priced per size in rupees with a GST invoice. It does not scale to zero and does not branch. Moving data in from either provider uses the database import.
FAQ
Is Neon cheaper than Supabase?
For a database that is idle much of the day, yes, often by a wide margin, because Neon bills compute by the hour of use. For a database busy all day, the gap narrows, and Supabase’s price also covers auth and storage.
Can I use Neon from India?
Yes. It works from anywhere, but the nearest region is Singapore, so each query from a server in India travels further than it would to a Mumbai database.
Does Neon have auth like Supabase?
Neon offers Neon Auth, which is newer and narrower than Supabase Auth. Most Neon users pair it with their own backend or a separate auth service.
Which is better for preview environments?
Neon. Its branches include data and are created instantly, which makes a database per pull request cheap and realistic.
Keep the database next to your app
If your server runs in India, start a free PostgreSQL database in Mumbai and connect it with one variable. We compare the wider options in our Supabase alternative guide.