Neon vs Turso
A detailed comparison to help you choose between Neon and Turso.
Quick Verdict
4.1/5
Neon
0 reviews
4.1/5
Turso
0 reviews
Both Neon and Turso are equally rated at 4.1/5. Neon is serverless PostgreSQL with database branching, scale-to-zero, and connection pooling. Scales to zero when not in use — no idle charges. Turso offers SQLite-based databases at the edge for multi-tenant SaaS. Create thousands of database instances, each at a different edge location. Per-tenant isolation at SQLite pricing.
Neon Serverless Postgres with branching and scale-to-zero | Turso Edge SQLite — create thousands of DB instances | |
|---|---|---|
| Overview | ||
| Rating | 4.1 (0 reviews) | 4.1 (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 | Multi-tenant SaaS and AI agent workloads needing per-tenant SQLite databases replicated close to users |
| Specifications (entry plan) | ||
| CPU cores | — | — |
| RAM | — | — |
| Storage | 1 GB | 5 GB✓ |
| Bandwidth | 0 TB/mo | — |
| SLA uptime | — | — |
| Data-center count | 8 | 30✓ |
| 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 tierapi accessopen source |
| Visit Neon → | Visit Turso → | |
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
Turso
Pros
- + True per-tenant database isolation at SQLite pricing — 100 databases free, unlimited from $5.99/mo
- + Published pricing, overage rates, and even per-tier commit latency — rare transparency
- + Edge replication across 30+ locations with placement you control per database
- + Eleven-nines durability via S3-backed commits; MIT-licensed engine you can self-host
- + SQLite file-format and SQL compatibility keeps local dev and production aligned
Cons
- - No public uptime SLA on self-serve plans — the guarantee is durability, not availability
- - Rows-read metering punishes unindexed queries; costs can surprise the careless
- - EU databases still back up to S3 us-east-2 unless you bring your own buckets (Pro+)
- - SQLite dialect limits rule out query-heavy relational workloads
- - Big price jump from Scaler ($29/mo) to Pro ($499/mo) for priority support and compliance
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