Supabase vs Neon vs PlanetScale 2026
The Serverless Database Market Fractured in 2024
These three platforms started in roughly the same place — serverless, scale-to-zero cloud databases targeted at developers — and have diverged significantly. By March 2026, they are solving different problems for different customers.
Supabase expanded beyond its database roots. It added authentication, object storage, edge functions, realtime subscriptions, and vector search. Today it's a full backend-as-a-service platform. The database is the foundation, not the product. It raised $300M in 2025 alone ($200M Series D at $2B, then $100M Series E at $5B valuation) and hired the Vitess co-creator to lead a horizontal sharding project. It's the open-source Firebase alternative that actually has feature parity.
Neon stayed focused — and got acquired. Databricks bought Neon for approximately $1 billion in May 2025, explicitly to serve AI agent workloads: over 80% of databases on Neon were being provisioned automatically by AI agents at the time of acquisition. Neon continues operating as a standalone product while also powering Lakebase (Databricks' managed Postgres product, GA on AWS February 2026). Its architecture separates storage from compute, enabling instant branching, millisecond cold starts, and true scale-to-zero billing.
PlanetScale had the rockiest journey. It launched as serverless MySQL with Vitess (the technology behind YouTube's database), pioneered schema change workflows with deploy requests, and became beloved by the Rails and Laravel communities. Then in April 2024, it eliminated its free Hobby plan — alienating the developer community that built its reputation. It pivoted toward PlanetScale Metal (dedicated NVMe hardware), added PostgreSQL support (GA late 2025), and repositioned for high-throughput enterprise workloads. In 2026, it's a fundamentally different company than it was in 2023.
TL;DR
Supabase is the default choice for teams who want a full backend stack: Postgres, auth, storage, and realtime in one platform. The free tier is the most generous. Neon is the right database when your workflow demands branching — preview environments with real data, CI/CD database tests, or AI agent systems that spin up ephemeral databases on demand. PlanetScale is now for teams that need enterprise MySQL or Postgres at scale on dedicated NVMe hardware. Its free tier is gone; minimum spend starts at $5/month but production Metal starts at $50/month.
Key Takeaways
- Supabase: Postgres + auth + storage + realtime + edge functions; free tier 500MB/50K MAU; $5B valuation; open source and self-hostable
- Neon: Acquired by Databricks ($1B, May 2025); Postgres-only with git-like branching; true scale-to-zero; free tier 100 CU-hours/month; powers Vercel Postgres and Lakebase
- PlanetScale: MySQL (Vitess) + PostgreSQL (added 2025); dropped free tier April 2024; Metal from $50/month; targets enterprise MySQL and high-throughput Postgres
- Database engines: Supabase and Neon = PostgreSQL; PlanetScale = MySQL (Vitess) + PostgreSQL
- Vector search: Supabase (first-class + Vector Buckets), Neon (pgvector via extension), PlanetScale (Postgres only, not marketed)
- Best free tier: Supabase (most features) or Neon (most flexibility with 100 CU-hours)
Pricing Comparison
| Plan | Supabase | Neon | PlanetScale |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free tier | ✅ 500MB storage, 50K MAU | ✅ 0.5GB storage, 100 CU-hours/mo | ❌ Removed April 2024 |
| Entry paid | $25/mo (Pro) | $5/mo minimum (Launch) | $5/mo (dev), $50/mo (Metal M-10) |
| Mid tier | $599/mo (Team) | $5/mo min, higher rate (Scale) | Metal M-class (varies by hardware) |
| Enterprise | Custom | Custom | Custom / dedicated Metal |
| Compute pricing | Hourly add-on tiers | $0.106/CU-hr (Launch), $0.222/CU-hr (Scale) | Included in Metal plan |
| Storage pricing | $0.125/GB (DB), $0.021/GB (files) | $0.35/GB-month | Dedicated NVMe (plan-included) |
| Autoscale | Manual tier selection | ✅ per-second, CU-based | ❌ dedicated hardware |
| Scale to zero | ✅ (free tier pauses after 1 week) | ✅ autosuspend (configurable) | ❌ |
Supabase Pricing Detail
Supabase prices compute separately from storage and other services:
- Free: Pauses after 1 week of inactivity; 500MB storage; 50,000 auth users; 1GB file storage; 5GB egress; 500K edge function invocations; 2 active projects max
- Pro ($25/month): No pausing; includes $10 compute credit; 8GB storage; 100K MAUs; 250GB bandwidth; 7-day PITR backup
- Team ($599/month): SOC 2; SSO; 28-day log retention; longer backup retention
- Enterprise: Dedicated infrastructure; SAML; custom SLAs
Compute add-ons are billed hourly on top of the base plan: Small (~2GB RAM) adds ~$50/month; 2-core/8GB adds ~$110/month. Supabase migrated from PgBouncer to Supavisor — its own cloud-native connection pooler — supporting both session (port 5432) and transaction (port 6543) pooling modes.
Neon Pricing Detail
Neon is usage-based, priced per CU-hour (1 CU ≈ 1 vCPU + 4 GB RAM) and GB-month of storage:
- Free: 0.5 GiB storage; 10 projects; unlimited branches; 100 CU-hours/month (doubled from 50 in October 2025); autosuspend after 5 minutes idle; 6-hour PITR
- Launch ($5/month minimum): Compute at $0.106/CU-hour; Storage $0.35/GiB-month; branch billing at $1.50/branch-month; higher autoscaling limits
- Scale ($5/month minimum, higher rate): Compute at $0.222/CU-hour; includes Private Link, 99.95% SLA, SOC2 Type 2, HIPAA, SSO, dedicated support
- Enterprise: Custom
In August 2025, Neon cut storage costs 80% (from $1.75 → $0.35/GiB-month) and compute costs 15–25%, enabled by Databricks' AWS volume discounts. The free tier's 100 CU-hours is enough to run a small application with autosuspend enabled throughout the month.
PlanetScale Pricing Detail (Post-2024 Pivot)
PlanetScale eliminated its free Hobby plan in April 2024 (not a gradual phase-out — it was abrupt, with a 30-day notice). Current pricing reflects the Metal-first strategy:
- Dev plans: Starting at $5/month for development and low-traffic workloads
- PlanetScale Metal M-10 ($50/month): 1 GB RAM, 10 GB NVMe storage — entry-level Metal, reduced from ~$600/month in December 2025
- Metal M-class tiers: Scale up to 16 GB RAM, 1.2 TB NVMe storage; dedicated hardware, "unlimited IOPS" (CPU is typically the bottleneck)
- Available for: Both MySQL (Vitess) and PostgreSQL (GA late 2025)
- Enterprise: Custom pricing
Unlike the old row-read/write pricing model, Metal plans are flat-rate based on hardware tier.
Architecture and Core Features
Supabase: The Backend Platform
Supabase wraps PostgreSQL with a full application backend:
// Supabase client — single import covers database, auth, storage, realtime
import { createClient } from '@supabase/supabase-js'
const supabase = createClient(SUPABASE_URL, SUPABASE_ANON_KEY)
// Query with auth context (RLS enforced automatically)
const { data: todos, error } = await supabase
.from('todos')
.select('*')
.order('created_at', { ascending: false })
// Realtime subscription
const subscription = supabase
.channel('todos')
.on('postgres_changes',
{ event: 'INSERT', schema: 'public', table: 'todos' },
(payload) => setTodos(prev => [payload.new, ...prev])
)
.subscribe()
// File storage
const { data } = await supabase.storage
.from('avatars')
.upload(`${userId}.jpg`, file)
Supabase's differentiators:
- PostgreSQL with full extension support (pgvector, PostGIS, pg_cron, etc.)
- Row-level security enforced at the database layer
- Realtime subscriptions via logical replication — handles 10K+ concurrent connections
- Built-in vector search for AI workloads (pgvector + Vector Buckets, Public Alpha)
- Auth, Storage, Edge Functions — the full Firebase competitor
- Supavisor connection pooler (replaced PgBouncer in 2024–2025)
- Open source: the entire stack runs self-hosted
-- Supabase vector search example
CREATE EXTENSION IF NOT EXISTS vector;
CREATE TABLE documents (
id BIGSERIAL PRIMARY KEY,
content TEXT,
embedding VECTOR(1536)
);
-- Semantic search using cosine distance
SELECT content, 1 - (embedding <=> $1::vector) as similarity
FROM documents
ORDER BY embedding <=> $1::vector
LIMIT 5;
Neon: Branching-First Postgres (Now Databricks-Backed)
Neon's architecture separates storage from compute, enabling features impossible with traditional PostgreSQL:
# Neon CLI — manage branches like Git branches
neon branches create --name feature/new-schema
# Create a branch from a specific point-in-time
neon branches create --name debug/prod-snapshot --parent main --timestamp 2026-03-15T12:00:00Z
# List branches
neon branches list
# BRANCH ID NAME STATE CREATED AT
# br-dawn-cloud-123 main active Mar 15, 2026
# br-cold-sun-456 feature/new-schema active Mar 16, 2026
# br-blue-moon-789 debug/prod-snapshot active Mar 16, 2026
// Different connection strings per branch — perfect for CI/CD
const prodDb = neon(process.env.DATABASE_URL) // main branch
const previewDb = neon(process.env.PREVIEW_DATABASE_URL) // preview branch
// Each branch is a full, independent Postgres database
// Branches share storage pages; only diverge on writes (copy-on-write)
// Cold starts measured in milliseconds as of 2025
Neon's differentiators:
- Branching: Instant copy-on-write clones — every PR can have its own database with real data. Unlimited branches on free tier.
- Databricks acquisition: $1B deal in May 2025; 80%+ of databases provisioned by AI agents at time of acquisition
- Lakebase: Neon powers Databricks' managed Postgres offering, integrated with Unity Catalog
- True scale-to-zero: Compute suspends; per-second billing; millisecond cold starts
- Vercel integration: Vercel Postgres is Neon; first-class integration with Vercel preview deployments
- AI agent story: Purpose-built for agent systems that spin up ephemeral databases on demand
# GitHub Actions: create a fresh database per PR
- name: Create Neon branch for PR
uses: neondatabase/create-branch-action@v5
with:
project_id: ${{ env.NEON_PROJECT_ID }}
branch_name: preview/pr-${{ github.event.number }}
api_key: ${{ secrets.NEON_API_KEY }}
id: create_branch
- name: Run migrations on PR branch
run: npx prisma migrate deploy
env:
DATABASE_URL: ${{ steps.create_branch.outputs.db_url_with_pooler }}
PlanetScale: MySQL + Postgres on Dedicated NVMe
PlanetScale runs Vitess (MySQL) and added PostgreSQL support in 2025. Both run on dedicated NVMe Metal hardware:
// PlanetScale uses standard MySQL/Postgres drivers
import { connect } from '@planetscale/database'
const conn = connect({
host: process.env.DATABASE_HOST,
username: process.env.DATABASE_USERNAME,
password: process.env.DATABASE_PASSWORD
})
const results = await conn.execute('SELECT * FROM users WHERE id = ?', [userId])
PlanetScale's differentiators:
- Deploy requests: Schema changes go through a review/approval workflow before applying to production (eliminates dangerous direct DDL)
- Non-blocking schema changes: Alter tables without locking via
gh-ost— critical for MySQL at scale - Vitess sharding: Horizontal MySQL scaling — the same tech powering YouTube, GitHub, Slack
- Metal hardware: Dedicated NVMe SSDs with effectively unlimited IOPS (CPU is the bottleneck)
- PostgreSQL support (GA late 2025): Postgres on Metal with PgBouncer, built-in failover, and Neki (sharded Postgres, in development)
# PlanetScale schema workflow
pscale deploy-request create my-database add-user-roles --branch main
# Creates a deploy request that can be reviewed before applying
# Non-blocking: the migration applies without locking the table
Connection Pooling
All three platforms handle connection pooling differently, and this matters for serverless and edge deployments:
| Platform | Pooler | Method | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Supabase | Supavisor (built-in) | Session + Transaction modes | Replaced PgBouncer 2024–2025 |
| Neon | PgBouncer (built-in) | HTTP WebSocket driver | Up to 10K concurrent connections |
| PlanetScale | Vitess (MySQL) / PgBouncer (Postgres) | HTTP proxy | Built into Metal infrastructure |
// Neon serverless driver — works in Cloudflare Workers / Vercel Edge
import { neon } from '@neondatabase/serverless'
// HTTP-based queries, no persistent TCP connection needed
const sql = neon(process.env.DATABASE_URL)
const posts = await sql`SELECT * FROM posts WHERE published = true`
// Supabase — works via its JS client everywhere (Supavisor handles pooling)
// PlanetScale — database/js driver uses HTTP proxy under the hood
Vector Search / AI Workloads
| Platform | Vector Support | Implementation | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Supabase | ✅ First-class | pgvector + Vector Buckets (Alpha) | Hybrid search, LangChain integration |
| Neon | ✅ | pgvector via extension | Lakebase also supports PostGIS |
| PlanetScale | ⚠️ Limited | Postgres only | Not marketed; MySQL has no pgvector |
The AI workload story diverges sharply. Supabase is building dedicated vector infrastructure (Vector Buckets). Neon's AI story is about agentic provisioning — AI agents spinning up and tearing down databases on demand is the primary use case Databricks acquired them for. PlanetScale is not competing in this space.
-- Neon pgvector — same syntax as Supabase
CREATE EXTENSION vector;
CREATE TABLE embeddings (
id SERIAL PRIMARY KEY,
content TEXT,
embedding VECTOR(1536)
);
-- cosine similarity search
SELECT content, 1 - (embedding <=> $1) as similarity
FROM embeddings
ORDER BY embedding <=> $1
LIMIT 10;
Development Workflow Comparison
| Feature | Supabase | Neon | PlanetScale |
|---|---|---|---|
| Local development | Supabase CLI + Docker | Local proxy / Neon CLI | pscale CLI / local MySQL or Postgres |
| Schema migrations | Supabase migrations | Any Postgres migration tool | Deploy requests |
| Preview environments | Via migrations (no native branching) | Native copy-on-write branching ✅ | Via dev branches (per-cluster) |
| Point-in-time restore | ✅ (Pro+) | ✅ (6hr free, PITR on paid) | ✅ |
| CLI tooling | supabase CLI | neon CLI | pscale CLI |
Neon's copy-on-write branching is fundamentally different from PlanetScale's deploy-request branching. Neon branches are instant data + schema clones that cost nothing until they diverge. PlanetScale's branches run on separate dedicated clusters and are schema-change workflow tools, not data snapshots. Supabase has no native branching equivalent.
When to Choose Each
Choose Supabase if:
- Building a full-stack app and want auth, storage, and database in one platform
- Need realtime subscriptions (multiplayer features, live dashboards)
- Building AI features that require vector search (pgvector + Vector Buckets)
- Want the most features on the free tier
- Prioritize open source and the option to self-host
- Replacing Firebase — Supabase is the best Firebase alternative in 2026
Choose Neon if:
- Database branching per PR is a requirement for your CI/CD workflow
- Deploying on Vercel (Vercel Postgres = Neon; first-class integration)
- Building AI agent systems that provision databases dynamically
- Need true scale-to-zero cost optimization (pay for actual seconds of compute)
- Want the pure Postgres database primitive — no BaaS overhead
- Databricks ecosystem alignment matters (Lakebase integration)
Choose PlanetScale if:
- Existing MySQL codebase (Rails, Laravel, legacy PHP) at high scale
- Need Vitess horizontal sharding — the tech behind YouTube's database
- Non-blocking schema changes on production tables with billions of rows
- Can absorb the $50/month Metal minimum (no free tier)
- Want enterprise Postgres on dedicated NVMe hardware (added 2025)
- The deploy request schema review workflow fits your team's process
Track Supabase, Neon, and PlanetScale API health and usage trends on APIScout.
Related: Supabase vs Firebase · LLM API Pricing 2026 · Vercel AI SDK vs LangChain