Neon Postgres
Hacker ApprovedRanked 2 of 15 managed databases by recommenders
Serverless Postgres with instant branching, autoscaling and a free tier that people use for side projects and production apps.
Serverless Postgres with instant branching, autoscaling and a free tier that people use for side projects and production apps.
58 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 48
- criticize it
- 10
- approval share
- 83%
Recommended in 12 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 48 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 4.8 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 12 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Instant copy-on-write branching and restores
“Neon does support copy on write branching natively and autoscaling compute but you make certain performance tradeoffs.”
Comment from 13 May 2026 in “Launch HN: Ardent (YC P26) – Postgres sandboxes in seconds with zero migration” “If you are interested in having a Neon or git-like branching for PostgreSQL experience”
Comment from 13 May 2026 in “Launch HN: Ardent (YC P26) – Postgres sandboxes in seconds with zero migration” “we're addicted to (and totally dependent on) Neon's branching model”
Comment from 19 Sep 2026 in “Tin: full-text search for Postgres” - Comment from 12 Feb 2026 in “Heroku Is Not Dead”
- Comment from 20 Apr 2026 in “What if database branching was easy?”
Generous free tier
“Neon's free tier is 512MB with connection pooling — more than enough for a side project with real data.”
Comment from 12 Apr 2026 in “I run multiple $10K MRR companies on a $20/month tech stack” “I have a few super tiny apps on Supabase and Neon too that cost me $0”
Comment from 23 Jul 2026 in “The startup's Postgres survival guide” “run well within the free-tier in AWS + Neon DB”
Comment from 26 Oct 2026 in “Active incident at Dreamhost forcing password reset” - Comment from 21 Apr 2026 in “Ask HN: Hit Supabase's free→$25 pricing cliff. Any middle-tier options?”
One-click Postgres setup
“there are services like supabase and neon that make it dead simple”
Comment from 15 Dec 2025 in “AI agents are starting to eat SaaS” “Just click a button and you have a Postgres database, for 3 days.”
Comment from 19 Dec 2025 in “Snowflake Postgres Is Now Available in Public Preview” “You can provision a free Postgres instance with a single click”
Comment from 3 Feb 2026 in “Bunny Database” - Comment from 20 Dec 2025 in “Go ahead, self-host Postgres”
Good enough for production use
“I'd probably go a step further and argue that Neon/CockroachDB Serverless is good enough for most people”
Comment from 20 Dec 2025 in “Go ahead, self-host Postgres” “Supabase/Neon/etc. will get you to thousands of users no problem”
Comment from 18 Oct 2026 in “Ask HN: Why people keep posting AI-generated projects around the Internet?” “GCP Cloud Run + Neon for relatively cheap production hosting.”
Comment from 28 Aug 2026 in “Making My Terraform AI Friendly”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Reliability and uptime concerns
“whose reliability/availability story hasn't been a strong area in general”
Comment from 20 Jun 2026 in “PostgresBench: A Reproducible Benchmark for Postgres Services” “For 90% of the time when they're up.”
Comment from 10 May 2026 in “I returned to AWS, and was reminded why I left” Tight coupling and lock-in
“You gotta lock them in early so their orgs never develop the expertise to move off on the off chance they get big.”
Comment from 10 May 2026 in “5x perf increase on writes with FPW disabled in Postgres” “they ended up becoming a tightly coupled annoying dependency after scale”
Comment from 22 Jul 2026 in “The startup's Postgres survival guide” Pricing unclear or expensive
“there is nothing about pricing on this page”
Comment from 3 Feb 2026 in “Bunny Database” “this is some Heroku-ass pricing”
Comment from 1 Aug 2026 in “Software for One”
Other managed databases people recommend
The four most recommended other managed databases, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Amazon RDS | 50 | 43 | 54% | 11 | — | — |
| Neon PostgresThis page | 48 | 10 | 83% | 12 | — | Approved |
| DynamoDB | 46 | 31 | 60% | 11 | — | — |
| Cloudflare D1 | 36 | 30 | 55% | 10 | — | — |
| PlanetScale | 33 | 28 | 54% | 10 | — | — |
What people said
40 of the 65 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“run well within the free-tier in AWS + Neon DB”
“and Neon so that I don't have to manage a database”
“Supabase/Neon/etc. will get you to thousands of users no problem”
“we're addicted to (and totally dependent on) Neon's branching model”
“GCP Cloud Run + Neon for relatively cheap production hosting.”
“this is some Heroku-ass pricing”
“I have a few super tiny apps on Supabase and Neon too that cost me $0”
“they ended up becoming a tightly coupled annoying dependency after scale”
“has a more sophisticated architecture that builds abstractions at the Postgres layer”
“whose reliability/availability story hasn't been a strong area in general”
“heck even Hyperdrive with Neon or Supabase”
“have heard good things about PlanetScale and NeonDB”
“It seems the same can be done just using Neon directly for half the cost?”
“we think they've implemented those two properties well”
“If you are interested in having a Neon or git-like branching for PostgreSQL experience”
“Neon does support copy on write branching natively and autoscaling compute but you make certain performance tradeoffs.”
“Amazing that the Postgres ecosystem got this software for free”
“You gotta lock them in early so their orgs never develop the expertise to move off on the off chance they get big.”
“For 90% of the time when they're up.”
“their free tier is more generous on egress”
“the branching keeps me going back to neon”
“Neon's free tier is 512MB with connection pooling — more than enough for a side project with real data.”
“Seems like a serverless postgres setup a la Neon/Supabase would be a slam dunk.”
“Neon etc make it easy to do this kind of thing”
“It didn't solve the issues highlighted in this thread”
“we replaced pinecone and rds with neon under the hood”
“https://neon.com/use-cases/database-per-tenant”
“for this reason actually I use Neon tech”
“Neon is awesome, with lightweight branching and instant restores.”
“They integrate with Neon, which makes Postgres serverless possible.”
“there is nothing about pricing on this page”
“You can provision a free Postgres instance with a single click”
“common field methodologies across 81 North American sites”
“If you're happy running a long-lived Postgres service, Neon or Supabase are great choices.”
“I've used Neon to do it for "live" integration environments”
“it works even with active connections which is good for doing these things on live databases”
“I'd probably go a step further and argue that Neon/CockroachDB Serverless is good enough for most people”
“offer those properties without any additional setup”
“Just click a button and you have a Postgres database, for 3 days.”
“there are services like supabase and neon that make it dead simple”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.