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 Timescale
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 Timescale if teams who will burn the 30-day Performance trial (no card), then land on Performance at $30/month compute + $0.177/GB-month when the job is time-series on Postgres — not a serverless branch database.
Timescale
Tiger Cloud Postgres. Performance compute
Best for
Neon Postgres metered in CU-hours and GB
Timescale Time-series Postgres you start on a printed $ tile
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
Timescale No free plan
Lowest paid
Neon Launch $0.106
Timescale Scale $36/mo
Next step up
Neon Scale $0.222
Timescale
Coding agent
Neon Branching
Timescale
Runs where
Neon
Timescale Hosted
Watch out
Neon Free suspends when CU-hours or 5 GB egress are gone
Timescale No forever-free Cloud card
Last checked
Neon 2026-10-22 · neon.com/pricing
Timescale 2026-10-23 · timescale.com/pricing
Which one, then?
Pick Timescale if
teams who will burn the 30-day Performance trial (no card), then land on Performance at $30/month compute + $0.177/GB-month when the job is time-series on Postgres — not a serverless branch database.
Read the Timescale page