Pick Neon if
builders who will stay on Free $0 (100 CU-hours/project, 1 GB, 10 branches), then move to Launch (pay-as-you-go, $0.106/CU-hour, $0.35/GB-month) when writes or idle-always-on matter.
Read the Neon pageNeon vs Railway
Our take
Pick Neon if builders who will stay on Free $0 (100 CU-hours/project, 1 GB, 10 branches), then move to Launch (pay-as-you-go, $0.106/CU-hour, $0.35/GB-month) when writes or idle-always-on matter. Pick Railway if app teams who will stay on Free $0 during the 30-day $5-credit trial (then $1/month, 1 project, 3 services) while they ship a first GitHub service, then land on Hobby at $5 minimum / month when they need 50
Railway
usage-metered deploy desk
Best for
Neon Postgres metered in CU-hours and GB
Railway A service you start at $0 / $1
Free plan
Neon $0 · 100 projects. 10 branches/project. 100 CU-hours/project. Autoscaling up to 2 CU. Scale-to-zero after 5 min (cannot disable). 1 GB/project Postgres, 20 GB account. 5 GB egress/project. 6-hour history. 1 snapshot. Auth 60k MAU. 5 GB object storage. Functions: 10 active / 400 waiting Capacity-Hours, 1M invocations. Hitting CU or egress suspends compute until next cycle; storage cap blocks writes
Railway No free plan
Lowest paid
Neon Launch $0.106
Railway Usage (services) $0.00000386
Next step up
Neon Scale $0.222
Railway Sandboxes $0.00001929
Coding agent
Neon Branching
Railway Sandboxes
Runs where
Neon
Railway Local; you host it
Watch out
Neon Free suspends when CU-hours or 5 GB egress are gone
Railway Free becomes $1/month after the 30-day $5-credit trial
Last checked
Neon 2026-10-22 · neon.com/pricing
Railway 2026-10-22 · railway.com/pricing
Which one, then?
Pick Railway if
app teams who will stay on Free $0 during the 30-day $5-credit trial (then $1/month, 1 project, 3 services) while they ship a first GitHub service, then land on Hobby at $5 minimum / month when they need 50 projects and 48 vCPU — or Pro at $20 minimum when they need 100 projects and 30-day logs.
Read the Railway page