Neon vs Appwrite Cloud
A detailed comparison to help you choose between Neon and Appwrite Cloud.
Quick Verdict
4.1/5
Neon
0 reviews
3.9/5
Appwrite Cloud
0 reviews
Neon is rated higher (4.1 vs 3.9). Neon is serverless PostgreSQL with database branching, scale-to-zero, and connection pooling. Scales to zero when not in use — no idle charges. Appwrite is an open source BaaS with database, authentication, storage, functions, and messaging. Self-hostable on Docker. Appwrite Cloud provides managed hosting.
Neon Serverless Postgres with branching and scale-to-zero | Appwrite Cloud Open-source backend platform with built-in database, auth, and APIs | |
|---|---|---|
| Overview | ||
| Rating | 4.1 (0 reviews)✓ | 3.9 (0 reviews) |
| Pricing model | freemium | freemium |
| Starting price | Free tier available | Free tier available |
| Best for | Developers on serverless stacks and teams that want a Postgres branch per pull request with zero idle cost | Developers and small teams who want a complete managed backend with a genuine self-hosting exit and refuse Firebase-style lock-in. |
| Specifications (entry plan) | ||
| CPU cores | — | — |
| RAM | — | — |
| Storage | 1 GB | — |
| Bandwidth | 0 TB/mo | — |
| SLA uptime | — | — |
| Data-center count | 8 | — |
| Features | ||
| IPv6 | ||
| DDoS protection | ||
| Automated backups | ||
| Snapshots | ✓ | |
| Managed option | ||
| Bare metal | ||
| GPU available | ||
| S3-compatible | ||
| Hourly billing | ✓ | |
| Free tier | ||
| Data-center locations | ||
| Regions | United States, European Union, United Kingdom, Asia Pacific, South America | — |
| Tags | ||
| Tags | free tiermanaged optionbackups includedeu datacenterus datacenterapi accessopen source | free tieropen sourceself hostableapi access |
| Visit Neon → | Visit Appwrite Cloud → | |
Neon
Pros
- + Scale-to-zero means idle databases cost nothing — Free plan compute suspends after 5 minutes
- + Copy-on-write branching gives real per-PR preview databases at near-zero marginal cost
- + Unit pricing is published openly ($0.106/CU-hour Launch, $0.35/GB-month storage) with no overage cliffs
- + Generous free tier: 100 projects, 100 CU-hours each, 1 GB storage per project
- + Multi-AZ storage, read replicas, connection pooling, and Postgres extensions included on all plans
Cons
- - Cold starts of a few hundred milliseconds after suspend on latency-sensitive traffic
- - Usage-based billing has no fixed monthly cap unless you set one yourself
- - Uptime SLA only on the Scale plan, and the percentage is not published on the pricing page
- - Region is fixed at project creation — relocation requires migration to a new project
- - Newer services (Functions, Object Storage, AI Gateway) roll out region by region
Appwrite Cloud
Pros
- + BSD 3-Clause open source with full self-hosting on any Docker host
- + Generous Pro resources: 2 TB bandwidth, 150 GB storage, 200K MAU at $25/month
- + Complete backend stack: auth, databases, storage, functions, realtime, messaging
- + Clear published overage rates and budget caps
- + Six regions across NA, EU, and APAC
Cons
- - No published uptime SLA on cloud plans
- - Free tier pauses projects after a week of inactivity; two-project limit
- - Per-project pricing multiplies cost for multi-project architectures
- - Smaller integration ecosystem than Firebase or Supabase
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