Facts read November 6, 2026
Firebase vs Neon
Neon is Cuely's default database pick when your description doesn't favor either one: plain Postgres that scales to zero, with a branch per preview environment. Pick Firebase if you care most about native mobile apps.
Side by side
| Fact | Firebase | Neon |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Google's app backend: Firestore document database, auth, storage and push messaging. | Serverless Postgres with scale-to-zero and database branching. |
| Free plan | Spark (free): Firestore 1 GiB stored, 50,000 reads and 20,000 writes per day; Authentication up to 50,000 MAU. | Free, no card: 100 CU-hours per project, autoscaling up to 2 CU, 1 GB storage per project, 10 branches and 5 GB egress per project. |
| Paid from | Blaze: pay as you go, with the Spark allowance included; eligible new accounts get $300 credit. | Launch: pay as you go, no monthly minimum: $0.106 per CU-hour and $0.35 per GB-month. |
| At 1,000 users | $0/month | $0/month |
| Open source | No | Yes |
| Self-hostable | No | No |
| Best for | Mobile apps that need offline sync; Push notifications; Teams that want no SQL | Postgres on serverless hosts; A database branch per pull request; Low idle cost |
| Watch out | Firestore isn't SQL; reporting and joins are harder than in Postgres. The free Spark plan caps Firestore at 50,000 reads and 20,000 writes a day. | Compute scales to zero after 5 minutes idle on Free, so the first query after a pause is slower. |
Where they differ
The published scores, from −3 to +3, that decide which one Cuely picks for each need.
| Need | Firebase | Neon |
|---|---|---|
| native iOS or Android app | +2 Native iOS and Android SDKs with offline sync. | −2 No phone-app client library, so a phone app needs a server of your own in between. |
| realtime features | +2 Live listeners on documents. | 0 No particular strength here. |
| prefers open source or self-hosting | −2 Proprietary and not self-hostable. | 0 No particular strength here. |
| keep costs as low as possible | 0 No particular strength here. | +2 Scale-to-zero and a no-minimum paid plan keep idle cost near zero. |
| fewer vendors | +2 Database, auth, storage and push from one console. | +1 Neon Auth adds managed auth in the same database. |
| sells to businesses (organizations, roles, SSO) | −1 Multi-tenant reporting is harder without SQL. | 0 No particular strength here. |
| Next.js or React | 0 No particular strength here. | +1 Serverless driver works well from Vercel functions. |
| regulated or compliance-sensitive | 0 No particular strength here. | +1 SOC 2 and HIPAA (with a BAA) are listed on the Scale plan. |
| a database per customer | 0 No particular strength here. | +1 Up to 100 free projects; branches and projects are cheap to create by API. |
Sources: Firebase pricing (read November 7, 2026), Neon pricing (read November 6, 2026). No vendor pays for placement.