Amazon Neptune's free allowance is an intro tier: new accounts get a larger allowance that steps down to a smaller permanent free tier after the intro period. The free plan includes 750 hours of a Neptune db.t3.medium or db.t4g.medium instance for 30 days, 10 million I/O requests, and 1 GB of storage.
About
Amazon Neptune is a fully managed graph database service from AWS designed for connected data workloads. It helps organizations model relationships at scale, supporting use cases such as knowledge graphs, customer 360, fraud detection, cybersecurity, and generative AI applications that benefit from graph context.
The service automatically scales graph workloads and removes the operational burden of capacity management. It also includes capabilities for graph analytics, vector search, and integrations that support GraphRAG and agentic AI workflows.
- Fully managed graph database service for connected data
- Automatic scaling for graph workloads without capacity planning
- Support for graph analytics and vector search
- GraphRAG and AI agent integrations for improved accuracy and explainability
- Enterprise security, backups, replication, and high availability features
Free Tier Value
This free tier is a capped 30-day intro offer, not an always-free plan, and a credit card is typically required to create the AWS account. Using AWS’s own paid reference rates, the included 750 hours of a db.t3.medium/db.t4g.medium instance is worth about $8.50/month, while the included I/O, storage, and backup allowances add a bit more practical value on top.
What's included in the free tier
Verified
- 750 hours of a Neptune db.t3.medium or db.t4g.medium instance for 30 days.
- 10 million I/O requests.
- 1 GB of storage.
- 1 GB of backup storage.
See Amazon Neptune pricing for current limits.
Paid plans
Neptune Database
- instance-hours
- usage-based
- storage
- per GB-month
- I/O requests
- per million requests
- serverless capacity
- per second
- On-demand instances with no long-term commitments
- Serverless capacity billed per second
- Standard or I/O-Optimized database configuration
- Storage billed per GB-month
- I/O billed per million requests
Neptune Analytics
- NCU-hours
- per second
- memory
- 1 NCU ≈ 2 GB
- Graph analytics engine
- Pause and resume workloads
- Billed only while running
- Capacity measured in NCUs
- Supports vector search
Neptune Workbench
- notebook instance-hours
- usage-based
- Managed Jupyter notebook environment
- Runs graph queries and visualizations
- Independent of engine choice
- Notebook billed while in Ready state
Pricing extracted from Amazon Neptune's pricing page. Always verify current pricing before committing.
Common questions
Is Amazon Neptune free forever?
Partly. Amazon Neptune gives new accounts a larger allowance at first, which then steps down to a smaller permanent free tier.
What is Amazon Neptune's free tier worth?
Amazon Neptune's free tier is worth about $8.50 per month. That maps to an FTV score of 40/100. The FTV score is explained at freetier.co/ftv.
