If you’ve ever scrapped a project because the database bill exploded, Neon is worth a fresh look. Their new pricing update keeps the spirit of the old free tier while adding clearer meter limits that still stretch far for builders shipping early ideas.
What Neon includes for free
Neon’s free plan is designed for people who tinker, test, and launch side projects. Out of the box you get:
- 20 projects. Enough to spin up a separate database for every experiment, client, or hackathon weekend.
- 100 compute hours per project. Each project receives its own pool, so you’re effectively holding 2,000 compute hours across the account.
- Scale-to-zero after 5 minutes of inactivity. Neon suspends idle databases automatically, meaning those compute hours last much longer than you’d expect.
- 0.5 GB storage per project. Plenty for prototypes, dashboards, and MVPs.
- 10 branches per project. Treat infrastructure like Git: create preview branches for staging, QA, or feature work without manual snapshots.
- 5 GB monthly egress. Covers dashboards, preview links, and light analytics without surprise charges.
- Auto-scaling up to 2 compute units (CUs). Handle unexpected bursts demos, product launches, investor walk-throughs, without touching the console.
- Instant restores. Roll back within six hours or 1 GB of changes. Perfect safety net if a migration script goes sideways.
- 1-day UI metrics + logs. Just enough observability built in to catch slow queries or noisy endpoints early.
New per-project metering: more predictable
Older Neon plans lumped all compute usage into one shared pool. With the 2025 update, compute is tracked per project. Practically, that means a noisy preview database can’t accidentally burn minutes from your production app. Every project owns its own 100 CU-hour allowance, so you decide where to spend the bandwidth.
Translating 100 CU-hours into real usage
The number “100 CU-hours” sounds abstract, so here’s the reality:
- A 0.25 vCPU instance can run about 200 hours each month, enough to stay online for standard business hours (9 to 5, Monday through Friday).
- Development branches typically scale to zero frequently, so their actual consumption is far lower, think dozens of hours instead of hundreds.
- If your app is quiet overnight or on weekends, scale-to-zero means you only pay in compute when traffic arrives.
In short: Neon's free tier lasts much longer than the headline number suggests, especially when paired with automatic suspension.
Why Neon still stands out
- Branching workflow built in. Ten branches per project means you can run feature environments or previews without provisioning extra infrastructure.
- Serverless Postgres approach. Scale to zero, burst to handle load, and only consume compute when requests arrive.
- Predictable free runway. Hundreds of hours of compute per project, split across 20 projects, ensures you can support clients, personal bets, or hackathon prototypes simultaneously.
- Migration friendly. Instant restores plus branching make it easy to rehearse migrations before touching production.
Final thoughts
Legacy users may remember a slightly more open-ended free tier, but the new model is still one of the friendliest in the Postgres world. You get real production grade features branching, autoscaling, instant rollbacks, without a credit card. For independent builders and early-stage teams, Neon removes one more reason to delay shipping.
If you're curious, spin up a project on the Neon Free plan, connect it to your app, and watch your database bill drop to zero while you iterate.