Neon vs SurrealDB
A detailed comparison to help you choose between Neon and SurrealDB.
Quick Verdict
4.1/5
Neon
0 reviews
3.6/5
SurrealDB
0 reviews
Neon is rated higher (4.1 vs 3.6). Neon is serverless PostgreSQL with database branching, scale-to-zero, and connection pooling. Scales to zero when not in use — no idle charges. SurrealDB is a multi-model database that handles relational, document, graph, and full-text queries in a single database. Schema-optional, built-in auth, and real-time subscriptions.
Neon Serverless Postgres with branching and scale-to-zero | SurrealDB Multi-model database with built-in real-time sync and WebSocket support | |
|---|---|---|
| Overview | ||
| Rating | 4.1 (0 reviews)✓ | 3.6 (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 | Teams building real-time, multi-model applications that would otherwise combine a document database, a search engine and a graph store |
| Specifications (entry plan) | ||
| CPU cores | — | 0 vCPU |
| RAM | — | 1 GB |
| Storage | 1 GB | 1 GB |
| Bandwidth | 0 TB/mo | — |
| SLA uptime | — | — |
| Data-center count | 8✓ | 3 |
| €/GB RAM/mo | — | €0.00 |
| 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 | AWS Ireland (aws-euw1), AWS US East N. Virginia (aws-use1), AWS US West Oregon (aws-usw2) |
| Tags | ||
| Tags | free tiermanaged optionbackups includedeu datacenterus datacenterapi accessopen source | free tieropen sourceself hostableapi access |
| Visit Neon → | Visit SurrealDB → | |
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
SurrealDB
Pros
- + One engine for relational, document, graph, time-series and geospatial data, plus full-text and vector search
- + Transparent published rate table with a real free instance (0.25 vCPU, 1 GB memory, 1 GB storage)
- + Hourly billing keeps development and prototype instances cheap
- + Granular permissions at table, document and field level defined in the schema
- + Self-hostable under BSL 1.1 with open-source (Apache 2.0 / MIT) SDKs as an exit path
Cons
- - Young database: 1.0 in 2023 and the storage engine is still being replaced
- - Only three AWS regions (Ireland, N. Virginia, Oregon) — nothing in APAC
- - Smaller ecosystem, tooling and hiring pool than PostgreSQL or MongoDB
- - Scale plan requires a three-node minimum; several advertised features are still marked coming soon
- - Custom SLAs only at Enterprise tier; backup retention policy for free instances is ambiguous in the docs
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