- BFSIBanking, Financial Services & Insurance
- IT & ITESIT services, BPM, GCCs & SaaS
- Retail & e-commerceStore chains, D2C brands & marketplaces
- HealthcareComing soon
- ManufacturingComing soon
Neon (from Databricks)
Every pull request needs a database with real data. Staging is shared, stale and always busy — Neon is serverless Postgres you sign up for on neon.com — now from Databricks — with computes that shut down when idle and a branch for every change, from $0.106 per CU-hour and a free plan, but with no Indian region: the nearest is AWS Singapore.
Buy through TechBag
Same software. Better outcome — at a lower cost.
How it’s rated
Full scoreboard ↓Quick answer
The Databricks platform family
This page covers Neon (from Databricks) — the self-serve Postgres sold on neon.com, separate from Lakebase. The rest:
Quick facts
30-second orientation- Product
- Serverless Postgres with autoscaling, scale to zero and copy-on-write branches, bought self-serve on neon.com
- Maker
- Neon, now presented as “from Databricks”; Databricks announced its agreement to acquire Neon on 14 May 2025
- People
- Co-founder Nikita Shamgunov, Neon’s CEO at the time of the deal, is now a VP of Engineering at Databricks
- Plans
- Free (100 CU-hours a project), Launch at $0.106 and Scale at $0.222 per CU-hour; no monthly minimum
- Storage
- $0.35 per GB-month on paid plans; Free gives 1 GB per project and 20 GB across the whole account
- Compute
- One CU is about 4 GB of RAM; autoscaling to 16 CU on paid plans, fixed sizes up to 56 CU on Scale
- Postgres
- Postgres 14, 15, 16, 17 and 18, picked per project when the project is created
- Compliance
- SOC 2, HIPAA (with a BAA) and an uptime SLA come only with the Scale plan, per neon.com in October 2026
- India
- No Indian region: eight AWS regions, the nearest Singapore; Azure regions take no new projects
- In India via
- TechBag — the residency check first, then Neon weighed against Lakebase and Mumbai-hosted Postgres
Understand serverless Postgres before you buy it
Most product pages skip this. We start here — so you buy a capability, not a buzzword.
What is Neon?
It is serverless Postgres you sign up for on neon.com, now from Databricks, with no workspace needed.
A fixed-size Postgres server vs Neon — the honest table
What consolidation actually replaces, dimension by dimension.
| Dimension | A fixed-size Postgres server | Neon (from Databricks) |
|---|---|---|
| Getting a database | A ticket and a server to size | A self-serve project on neon.com |
| Test data | One shared staging database | A copy-on-write branch per change |
| Idle hours | Servers billed all night | Computes that shut down when idle |
| Restores | Ask the DBA for last night’s dump | Point-in-time restore, up to 30 days |
| The bill | Fixed instance sizes and commitments | CU-hours and GB-months, no minimum |
| What it is NOT | — | Hosted in India, or governed by Unity Catalog |
The cheapest test is the Free plan with one branch per pull request for a sprint: read the CU-hours before picking Launch or Scale.
The four pieces of the platform
Vendors love diagrams; buyers need to know what they’re actually operating. Here’s the whole platform, demystified.
Compute
Each branch gets its own Postgres compute that sizes itself between limits in CUs of about 4 GB RAM, and shuts down when no connection needs it.
Storage
Data sits in Neon’s own storage service rather than on the compute’s local disk, which is what makes branches cheap and restores quick to run.
Branches
A branch is a copy-on-write fork of its parent at a chosen moment in time, so a preview, test or migration gets real data without copying it.
Control
Projects, branches and computes are created from the neon.com console or programmatically, which is how CI pipelines and AI agents drive it.
Stateless Postgres computes over Neon’s separated storage, with a copy-on-write branch tree per project — all run from neon.com, in eight AWS regions outside India.
Nine capabilities. Serve, fork, control.
Neon gives developers Postgres that scales itself, sleeps when idle and branches like code, with no platform to sign up for first.
Sizes itself to load
Paid plans autoscale a compute up to 16 CU, about 64 GB of RAM, and Scale adds fixed sizes as large as 56 CU for steady work.
Little to pay when idle
Idle computes shut down and start again on the next connection, so quiet test and preview databases cost storage, not compute.
Postgres 14 to 18
Five Postgres majors are supported, 14 to 18, so most existing apps and extensions move across with no change of engine.
A branch per preview
Free and Launch include 10 branches per project and Scale 25, with more at $1.50 a branch-month, prorated by the hour.
Instant restore window
Go back to a point in history: 6 hours on Free, up to 7 days on Launch, up to 30 on Scale, with restore storage $0.20 per GB-month.
Many small databases
Up to 100 projects on Free and Launch and 1,000 on Scale, which suits a database per customer, per tenant or per AI agent.
SOC 2 and HIPAA on Scale
Scale adds SOC 2, HIPAA with a signed BAA at no extra cost and an uptime SLA; Free and Launch carry none of the three.
Egress and private links
Paid plans include 500 GB of egress per project, then $0.10 per GB; Scale’s private network transfer costs $0.01 per GB.
No monthly minimum
Usage is billed with no monthly minimum, and Neon does not collect invoices under $0.50, so tiny projects can cost nothing.
Watch Neon explained
Three official videos: a June 2025 talk by Neon co-founder Nikita Shamgunov on Databricks’ channel, and two 2026 videos from Neon’s own channel, an explainer and a getting-started walkthrough.
A New Kind of Database Architecture with Nikita Shamgunov, Co-founder and CEO of Neon
A 5-minute talk from June 2025, a month after the deal, in which Neon’s co-founder explains the separated storage design.
What is Neon?
A 3:29 explainer from Neon’s own channel, March 2026, on what Neon is and who it is built for.
Getting Started with Neon
A 13-minute walkthrough from April 2026 on Neon’s channel: creating a project, connecting and working with branches.
Want a live, India-context walkthrough for your environment?
Book a guided demo →Most teams share one stale staging database. Neon gives every change its own branch.
Here’s what genuinely sets it apart — and exactly where it stops.
Postgres you sign up for, with no Databricks needed
Neon is the self-serve half of Databricks’ Postgres story: a project on neon.com needs no workspace, contract or cloud account, and usage bills with no monthly minimum. Postgres 14 to 18 are supported, so most apps move across unchanged, and the Free plan covers 100 CU-hours per project.
Branches make databases behave like code
Each project keeps a tree of copy-on-write branches, so every pull request, preview deployment or AI agent can get its own database with real data and discard it later. Restores reach back 7 days on Launch and 30 on Scale, and idle computes shut down, so spare branches cost very little.
A meter a finance team can follow
Two numbers drive the bill: CU-hours, at $0.106 on Launch or $0.222 on Scale, and storage at $0.35 per GB-month, where one CU is about 4 GB of RAM. Egress past 500 GB per project is $0.10 per GB. SOC 2, HIPAA with a BAA and an uptime SLA arrive with the Scale plan.
Where it stops
Neon has no Indian region: the nearest is AWS Singapore, and its Azure regions take no new projects, so data sits outside India. Free and Launch carry no SOC 2, HIPAA or SLA. There is no INR price and no Unity Catalog link, and Databricks sells Lakebase to enterprises, so ask Neon about its own roadmap in writing.
The numbers behind the platform
What your Neon rollout looks like
Create a project
Sign up on neon.com and create a project in the region nearest your users; for India, that is Singapore.
Check residency
Confirm with legal that the data may sit outside India under your contracts and the DPDP Act before loading any.
Branch per change
Wire branch creation into CI so each pull request gets a database, and let idle computes shut down on their own.
Pick the plan
Read the CU-hours and storage used, then choose Launch or Scale; SOC 2, HIPAA or an SLA mean Scale only.
Decide long-term
Weigh Neon against Lakebase or a Mumbai-hosted Postgres for production, with TechBag’s comparison in INR.
The review scoreboard
Modelled on Gartner Peer Insights structure. *Counts and breakdowns are illustrative pending verified review collection.
Quick poll — what’s driving your evaluation?
Talk to an advisor“A database branch per pull request changed our testing; reviewers see each feature against real-shaped data every time.”
“We run a database per tenant, and with scale to zero hundreds of quiet tenants cost us storage and very little else.”
“Sign-up took minutes, and the bill is two numbers, CU-hours and storage, which our finance team could actually follow.”
“Our DPDP review flagged that Neon has no Indian region, so customer data moved to a Mumbai-hosted Postgres instead.”
“Latency from Singapore was fine for internal tools, but the customer-facing database stayed in an Indian region.”
“Launch had no SOC 2 report for our client audits, so we moved to Scale; the higher CU rate was worth the paperwork.”
Where everyone sits — the grids
Analyst firms bury this view behind paywalls, and review-site grids score satisfaction, not fit for your estate. So here’s TechBag’s synthesis of the serverless Postgres market — tap any vendor to see why it sits where it does.
TechBag Serverless Postgres Grid
Execution strength vs product vision — the classic market map, minus the paywall.
Self-serve, now from Databricks; no Indian region.
Developer Workflow × India Readiness
The grid nobody publishes — how developer-first the product is (self-serve sign-up, branching, free plan) vs how ready it is for data that must stay in India.
Branches on every plan and a free tier; no Indian region.
Positions are TechBag’s illustrative synthesis of public review-platform data and vendor documentation — not a reproduction of any analyst graphic. Verify before relying on it.
Neon vs the serverless and managed Postgres field
Against Databricks Lakebase, Supabase, Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL, Azure Database for PostgreSQL and MongoDB Atlas — on buying, scaling, branching, restore, compute units, price, storage and India regions.
| Dimension | Neon (from Databricks) | Databricks Lakebase | Supabase | Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL | Azure Database for PostgreSQL | MongoDB Atlas |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| What it is | Serverless Postgres | Neon tech, in Databricks | Backend on Postgres | Aurora, serverless | Flexible server | Document database |
| How you buy it | Sign up and go | Needs a workspace | Self-serve plans | Your AWS account | Azure subscription | Direct or marketplace |
| Engine | Postgres 14–18 | Postgres 16 to 18 | No version picker | Compatible, not stock | 14–18, plus older | Not Postgres |
| Scaling to zero | Shuts down when idle | Timeout you choose | Pauses after a week | Auto-pause to 0 ACUs | Stop, do not scale | Scales within a tier |
| Branching | Branches on every plan | 500 per project | Paid-plan branches | Clones, not branches | No branching | No branching |
| Restore window | 6 hours to 30 days | Up to 30 days | 7 or 14 days, PITR extra | Backup window you set | 7 to 35 days | Per backup policy |
| Compute unit | ~4 GB RAM per CU | 2 GB RAM per CU | Named instance sizes | ~2 GiB per ACU | 1 to 192 vCores | Tiered clusters |
| Free tier | 100 CU-hours free | Trial, no free plan | Free plan, pauses | Free plan, 4 ACUs | 750 hours, 12 months | Free M0 cluster |
| Pricing model | CU-hours and GB-months | CU-hours and DSUs | Plan fee plus usage | ACU-hours, two configs | vCore-hour and GB | Usage-based clusters |
| Published entry price | $0.106 per CU-hour | $0.092 per CU-hour | Pro from $25/month | $0.18 per ACU-hour | $0.0245 an hour | $0, then Flex from $8 |
| Storage price | $0.35 per GB-month | $0.375 in India | $0.125 per GB | $0.11 per GB-month | $0.131 per GB-month | No flat GB rate |
| India data region | No Indian region | Mumbai and Pune | Mumbai available | Mumbai, Hyderabad | Four Indian regions | Indian cloud regions |
| Lock-in and exit | Plain Postgres | Tied to the workspace | Auth and APIs bind | AWS features stay | Community engine | Driver lock-in |
| Best fit | Developers, no workspace | Databricks customers | Full-stack startups | Apps already on AWS | Azure-centred teams | Flexible-schema apps |
Which approach fits you?
Honest fit signals — because the fastest way to lose your trust is to pretend one product wins every scenario.
Choose Neon (from Databricks) if…
- ✓Developers want serverless Postgres with a branch per change and no Databricks workspace
- ✓You run many small or bursty databases and want idle ones to cost almost nothing
- ✓Your data may lawfully sit outside India, for example in AWS Singapore
Compare alternatives if…
- ✓Data must stay in India — Lakebase, Supabase, Aurora and Azure all offer Indian regions
- ✓You already run Databricks — Lakebase syncs with Unity Catalog in Mumbai and Pune
- ✓You want login and APIs bundled — Supabase sells them with the database
Do not expect…
- ✓An Indian region, or new projects on Azure
- ✓SOC 2, HIPAA or an uptime SLA below the Scale plan
- ✓Unity Catalog governance — that is Lakebase’s job
Neon (from Databricks) is one of 28 databases & data tools products TechBag carries. The Databases & Data Tools guide narrows them to a shortlist and shows the reasoning. →
What does a shared staging database cost your developers?
Drag the sliders (test and preview databases your team keeps; developer-hour cost). Estimates model the developer time spent refreshing shared staging data, waiting for clones and cleaning up test databases, at an assumed 1.5 hours per database a month, with 70% of it removed by copy-on-write branches. Both figures are assumptions. Illustrative.
Loaded cost = salary + overheads per productive hour. Illustrative only — your TechBag quote models your actual environment and modules.
Three ways to consume it
Published self-serve prices, USD, from neon.com in October 2026. Free gives 100 CU-hours and 1 GB of storage per project (20 GB per account). Launch is $0.106 per CU-hour and Scale $0.222, both with storage at $0.35 per GB-month, instant-restore history at $0.20 per GB-month and egress past 500 GB per project at $0.10 per GB; extra branches are $1.50 a branch-month. There is no monthly minimum. Neon has no INR price; TechBag sets the cost out in INR with GST beside Indian-region options.
Launch
Best for small teams and side projects
- $0.106 per CU-hour, storage $0.35/GB-month
- Up to 16 CU autoscaling, 7-day restore
- No SOC 2, HIPAA or SLA
+ Platform add-ons
Best for a broader rollout
- Scoped to your estate
- Add-on modules as needed
- Phased, right-sized deployment
Scale
Best for production that needs compliance
- $0.222 per CU-hour, storage $0.35/GB-month
- SOC 2, HIPAA with BAA, uptime SLA
- 30-day restore, fixed sizes to 56 CU
Buy it for less — TechBag pricing beats list
Whatever the list prices above, TechBag negotiates a significantly better deal — with GST-compliant INR invoicing and local support. Ask us for your discounted quote.
Get an India-ready quote
Tell us your requirements and current tools — we’ll model it against what you spend today.
The 8 questions to ask every vendor
Take this into your next vendor call — including ours.
May this data lawfully sit in AWS Singapore or further away? Neon has no Indian region to fall back on.
Does your DPDP and customer-contract review allow storage abroad, and is the region in your records?
Do you need SOC 2, HIPAA or an uptime SLA? Only Scale, at $0.222 per CU-hour, includes them.
How many CU-hours will production use at about 4 GB per CU, and should it autoscale or stay fixed?
How many branches per project will CI create? Past 10 on Launch or 25 on Scale, each is $1.50 a month.
Will any project send over 500 GB a month out of Neon? Beyond that, transfer costs $0.10 per GB.
Databricks sells Lakebase to enterprises; ask Neon in writing how standalone Neon will be supported.
Neon prices in USD only; ask TechBag to set its cost in INR with GST beside a Mumbai-hosted option.
Questions buyers ask
Ready to evaluate Neon?
Tell us what data the database will hold, or let a TechBag advisor check the residency question first, then weigh Neon against Lakebase and Mumbai-hosted Postgres in INR.
Stats, ratings, review counts and pricing are illustrative and sourced from public materials; verify before purchase.