Neon vs SingleStore
A detailed comparison to help you choose between Neon and SingleStore.
Quick Verdict
4.1/5
Neon
0 reviews
3.8/5
SingleStore
0 reviews
Neon is rated higher (4.1 vs 3.8). Neon is serverless PostgreSQL with database branching, scale-to-zero, and connection pooling. Scales to zero when not in use — no idle charges. SingleStore (formerly MemSQL) is a cloud-native database combining OLTP and OLAP in a single system. Handles real-time analytics and transactions without ETL. Used by financial services and gaming companies.
Neon Serverless Postgres with branching and scale-to-zero | SingleStore Real-time analytics and transactions in one database | |
|---|---|---|
| Overview | ||
| Rating | 4.1 (0 reviews)✓ | 3.8 (0 reviews) |
| Pricing model | freemium | usage-based |
| 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 | Teams with genuinely mixed transactional and analytical workloads — fraud, risk, adtech, IoT, live gaming — that need sub-second freshness and want to retire a separate warehouse and sync pipeline. |
| 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 tiermanaged optioneu datacenterus datacenterapi access |
| Visit Neon → | Visit SingleStore → | |
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
SingleStore
Pros
- + Transactions and analytics in one engine — no ETL pipeline between an operational database and a warehouse
- + Published, itemised rate card: workspace sizes, credit burn, storage tiers and every multiplier are public
- + Genuine free evaluation tier plus $500 of credits on Standard
- + MySQL-compatible wire protocol shortens migration from MySQL-based stacks
- + Documented compliance posture (ISO 27001, SOC 2 Type 2, HIPAA, CCPA, GDPR) and a BYOC option for data residency
Cons
- - Stacking multipliers (Enterprise 1.5x, Multi-AZ 1.3x, region tier, scaling) make real bills hard to predict from headline prices
- - Distributed-engine concepts (shard keys, distribution, reference tables) are overkill for simple CRUD applications
- - Free Shared tier is explicitly non-production and self-support only
- - Self-managed licensing and BYOC/Dedicated pricing require a sales conversation
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