Facts read November 6, 2026
Neon vs Supabase
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 Supabase if you care most about native mobile apps.
Side by side
| Fact | Neon | Supabase |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Serverless Postgres with scale-to-zero and database branching. | Postgres with bundled auth, storage, realtime and an auto-generated API. |
| Free plan | 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. | Free: 2 active projects, 500 MB database per project, 50,000 monthly active users, 5 GB egress, 1 GB file storage; pauses after 1 week inactive. |
| Paid from | Launch: pay as you go, no monthly minimum: $0.106 per CU-hour and $0.35 per GB-month. | Pro: from $25/month, including $10/month of compute credits. |
| At 1,000 users | $0/month | $0/month |
| Open source | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hostable | No | Yes |
| Best for | Postgres on serverless hosts; A database branch per pull request; Low idle cost | Fewer vendors to wire up; Realtime features; Row-level security from the client |
| Watch out | Compute scales to zero after 5 minutes idle on Free, so the first query after a pause is slower. | Free projects pause after 1 week of inactivity. Bundling ties auth and storage to the same vendor; moving later is more work. |
Where they differ
The published scores, from −3 to +3, that decide which one Cuely picks for each need.
| Need | Neon | Supabase |
|---|---|---|
| native iOS or Android app | −2 No phone-app client library, so a phone app needs a server of your own in between. | +2 One client library for database, auth and storage in React Native apps. |
| realtime features | 0 No particular strength here. | +3 Built-in realtime subscriptions on Postgres changes. |
| keep costs as low as possible | +2 Scale-to-zero and a no-minimum paid plan keep idle cost near zero. | 0 No particular strength here. |
| fewer vendors | +1 Neon Auth adds managed auth in the same database. | +3 Database, auth, storage and realtime come from one dashboard. |
| prefers open source or self-hosting | 0 No particular strength here. | +2 Open source and self-hostable with Docker. |
| Next.js or React | +1 Serverless driver works well from Vercel functions. | 0 No particular strength here. |
| a database per customer | +1 Up to 100 free projects; branches and projects are cheap to create by API. | 0 No particular strength here. |
Sources: Neon pricing (read November 6, 2026), Supabase pricing (read November 6, 2026). No vendor pays for placement.