Quick answer
Neon Serverless Postgres - Neon Serverless Postgres takes it for teams that want real Postgres and built-in auth over pure SQLite-style read volume.
How the free tiers compare
Neon splits its free tier into 100 projects, each with 100 CU-hours of compute a month, 0.5 GB of storage, and a 2 CU compute ceiling, then adds Neon Auth for up to 60,000 monthly active users and a 6-hour restore window. Turso instead gives one flat 5 GB storage pool shared across up to 100 databases, with 500 million rows read and 10 million rows written a month, a day of point-in-time restore, and a small sync budget for edge replicas. Both need no credit card to start. Neon meters by compute time rather than row counts, so the two free tiers are not measuring the same thing.
Neon Serverless Postgres vs Turso free tier, side by side
| Neon Serverless PostgresFTV 60 | TursoFTV 56 | |
|---|---|---|
| StorageNeon's cap is per project; Turso's is a single flat pool. | 0.5 GB per project | 5 GB total |
| ComputeTurso does not meter compute separately from rows. | 100 CU-hours per project per month, up to 2 CU | Not specified |
| Rows read | Not specified | 500 million per month |
| Rows written | Not specified | 10 million per month |
| Projects / databases | 100 projects | 100 databases |
| Built-in auth | Up to 60,000 monthly active users | Not specified |
| Restore window | 6 hours | 1 day |
| Credit card required | No | No |
After you outgrow the free tier
Neon's Launch plan has no flat price and bills compute and storage as you use them. Turso's Developer plan is close to $5 a month and also scales with usage.
When to pick each one
Pick Neon Serverless Postgres when…
- You want standard Postgres with real extensions, not a SQLite dialect.
- You need built-in auth for tens of thousands of users in the same product.
- You are running many small projects and want per-project isolation.
Pick Turso when…
- You want a flat storage pool instead of a per-project cap.
- You need a large monthly read allowance without computing CU-hours.
- You are replicating data to the edge and need the sync budget.
Bottom line
Go with Neon if you want Postgres with built-in auth spread across many small projects. Go with Turso if you want one large read allowance without tracking compute time.
Read the full listings: Neon Serverless Postgres and Turso. Scores use the FTV methodology at /ftv. Browse more head-to-heads on /compare, or see the top-ranked free tiers on /top.