Neon vs Supabase
Two managed Postgres platforms priced side by side — scale-to-zero compute against a bundled backend.
| Service | Plan at 10,000 users | 1,000 users | 10,000 users | 100,000 users |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| NeonServerless Postgres that scales compute to zero and branches like git. | Launch4 Aug 2026 | $77 | $77 | $241 |
| SupabasePostgres with auth, storage and realtime bolted on. | Pro4 Aug 2026 | $25 | $25 | $188 |
| PlanetScaleVitess-backed MySQL and Postgres with online schema changes. | PlanetScale Postgres4 Aug 2026 | $15 | $21 | not published |
| TursoSQLite on the edge, one database per tenant without the bill exploding. | Free4 Aug 2026 | $0 | $0 | $25 |
Change any of those assumptions in the calculator.
Where this actually starts
Both are managed Postgres, both are excellent, and both will do everything a normal application needs. They are solving slightly different problems.
Neon sells Postgres as a primitive. Supabase sells a backend that happens to be Postgres.
What actually separates them
Scale to zero
Neon suspends compute when nothing is querying and bills storage plus the compute-hours you actually used. For an app with quiet nights, or for the twenty preview environments a team accumulates, that is a materially different bill than paying for an instance that idles.
Bundled against unbundled
Supabase includes auth, object storage, realtime and edge functions on the same bill. If you would otherwise be paying Clerk and an S3 bucket, compare the whole stack rather than the database line — this is exactly what the recommender does.
Branching
Neon branches a database the way git branches a repository, cheaply and instantly, and charges $0.002 per branch-hour. For a team running a database per pull request this is the feature, not a nice extra.
The other two in the table
PlanetScale brings Vitess-scale online schema changes and now offers Postgres. Turso is SQLite at the edge and is priced for one database per tenant, which is a genuinely different architecture rather than a cheaper version of the same one.
Which to pick
| If | Then |
|---|---|
| You want a backend, not just a database | Supabase — auth and storage on the same bill is the point. |
| You have a backend and need Postgres under it | Neon — scale-to-zero and branching are worth more than bundling you will not use. |
| One database per customer | Turso — priced for exactly that shape. |
Questions
Can I use Neon with Better Auth?
Yes, and it is a common pairing: Better Auth writes its tables into whichever Postgres you point it at, so you get your own user table with no auth bill on top. The recommender suggests exactly this combination when you ask to keep users in your own database.
