This guide is for solo SaaS builders and side-project makers choosing a database in 2026 — people who want to ship fast, keep the bill near zero while they're small, and not paint themselves into a corner. Bottom line: most of you should start with Supabase because it hands you a database plus auth, storage, and realtime in one free project; reach for Neon if you only want Postgres done well, and PlanetScale if you specifically need MySQL/Vitess at scale and are ready to pay from day one.
| Supabase | Neon | PlanetScale | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free tier | Yes — 500 MB DB, 1 GB storage, 50K MAU; paused after 1 week idle | Yes (permanent) — 0.5 GB/project, 100 CU-hrs, 100 projects | None (removed Apr 2024) |
| Engine | Postgres | Postgres | Postgres or MySQL/Vitess |
| Standout feature | Auth + storage + realtime included | Branching + true scale-to-zero | Vitess horizontal scaling |
| Dev experience | Dashboard, client libs, edge functions | Plain Postgres, Git-like branches | Branching + deploy requests |
| Cheapest paid | $25/mo Pro | Usage-based, no minimum (~few $/mo) | $5/mo single-node Postgres |
| Best for | Builders wanting batteries included | Pure serverless Postgres + branching | MySQL/Vitess at scale |
How we picked#
We weighed these tools the way a solo builder actually feels them: what the free tier really includes and where it bites, how fast you can go from signup to a working backend, what happens to your wallet as the project grows, and how hard it'd be to leave later. We favored real, dated numbers from each provider's own pricing page over marketing claims, and we gave weight to the unglamorous stuff — cold starts, connection limits, project pausing — because that's what trips people up after launch, not before. No tool here is bad; they're built for different jobs.
Supabase#
Supabase is a managed Postgres database wrapped in a full backend platform. You get the database itself plus a hosted auth system (email, OAuth, magic links), file storage, instant auto-generated REST and GraphQL APIs, realtime subscriptions, and edge functions — all behind one dashboard and a set of client libraries. For a solo builder, that means you can stand up signups, store user uploads, and stream live updates without bolting on a separate auth provider, object store, and websocket service.
Pricing (as of June 2026): The Free plan is $0 and includes a 500 MB database, 1 GB file storage, 50,000 monthly active users, 5 GB egress, and unlimited API requests — but you're capped at 2 active projects and free projects are paused after 1 week of inactivity. Pro is $25/month per project, bumping you to an 8 GB database, 100 GB storage, 100,000 MAU, and daily backups kept for 7 days, with usage-based overages after that. The Team plan is $599/month for SOC 2 / ISO 27001 and SLAs, which is well beyond what a side project needs.
Pros
- True batteries-included: database, auth, storage, and realtime in one place, so you ship features instead of glue code.
- It's real Postgres — your SQL, extensions, and data stay portable.
- Generous free tier for MAUs (50,000) and a clear, flat $25 Pro step.
- Excellent docs and client libraries; fast from signup to first query.
Cons
- The 500 MB free database is small, and free projects pause after a week idle — annoying for a demo you check on monthly.
- Pricing is per project, so multiple production apps each cost $25/month on Pro; this adds up faster than usage-based rivals.
- Leaning hard on Supabase auth, storage, and realtime is where lock-in actually lives — the database is portable, the platform features less so.
- Direct Postgres connections are limited; you'll want to use the pooler for serverless functions.
Who should skip it: If you only want a bare Postgres database and resent paying $25/month per project once you outgrow the free tier, Neon's usage-based pricing fits better. If you need horizontal sharding, look at PlanetScale.
Best for: Solo builders who want a complete backend — auth and storage included — without stitching services together.
Start free on Supabase →Affiliate link · how this worksNeon#
Neon is serverless Postgres with a twist: it separates storage from compute, which makes two things possible that ordinary Postgres hosting can't match. First, branching — you can fork your database (schema and data) the way you branch code in Git, test a migration on the branch, then merge or discard it. Second, genuine scale-to-zero: when nobody's querying, the compute spins all the way down and you stop paying for it, then resumes on the next connection. It doesn't bundle auth or storage; it's a database, and it's a clean one.
Pricing (as of June 2026): The Free plan is permanent (no credit card) and gives you 0.5 GB of storage per project, 100 compute-hours per month, 10 branches per project, and up to 100 projects, with compute scaling to zero after 5 minutes idle. Paid plans are pure usage with no monthly minimum — a change Neon made after its 2025 Databricks acquisition. Launch runs about $0.106 per CU-hour of compute plus $0.35 per GB-month of storage, so a low-traffic app that mostly sits idle can genuinely cost a couple of dollars a month. Scale ($0.222/CU-hour) adds private networking and compliance options.
Pros
- Permanent free tier with up to 100 projects — great for spinning up a database per experiment.
- Branching is fast and effectively free, ideal for testing schema changes and preview environments.
- Real scale-to-zero means idle side projects cost almost nothing.
- Pure usage-based pricing with no monthly floor; you pay for what you actually use.
Cons
- Scale-to-zero means cold starts — the first query after idle pays a resume penalty (sub-second to a couple of seconds). Bad behind a latency-sensitive first request.
- It's just the database: no auth, no storage, no realtime, so you'll add those yourself.
- Connection handling for serverless needs care — use the pooled connection string or the serverless driver, or you'll exhaust connections.
- Usage-based billing is harder to predict for a spiky workload than a flat $25, and a busy always-on app can cost more than a predictable plan.
Who should skip it: If you want auth, file storage, and realtime handled for you, Supabase saves you that integration work. If you need MySQL or Vitess-style sharding, Neon doesn't do either.
Best for: Builders who want clean serverless Postgres with cheap branching and don't need a bundled backend.
Try Neon free →Affiliate link · how this worksPlanetScale#
PlanetScale built its name on Vitess — the same MySQL-scaling technology that ran YouTube — offering horizontal sharding and a polished branch-and-deploy-request workflow for schema changes. In 2025 it added managed Postgres (generally available since September 2025) alongside the MySQL/Vitess offering, so it's no longer MySQL-only. The platform's real strength is operating databases at scale with serious reliability, and its non-blocking schema-change workflow is genuinely nice. The catch for small projects is the price of entry.
Pricing (as of June 2026): There is no free tier — PlanetScale stopped new free Hobby databases on March 6, 2024 and retired the plan entirely on April 8, 2024, and never brought it back. The cheapest entry today is a single-node, non-HA Postgres PS-5 at $5/month (1/16 vCPU, 512 MiB RAM). Highly-available 3-node Postgres clusters start at $15/month, and MySQL/Vitess clusters start around $39/month and climb steeply from there. Pricing scales by instance size, so your bill grows in clear steps as you size up.
Pros
- Vitess gives you a proven path to horizontal scale that neither Supabase nor Neon matches.
- Branching plus deploy requests make schema changes safe and reviewable — a real operational strength.
- Now offers both Postgres and MySQL, so you're not locked to one engine.
- Strong reliability and performance engineering; it's built for serious production workloads.
Cons
- No free tier at all — you pay from the first day, which kills it for hobby experiments.
- The cheapest production-grade setup (HA Postgres, or MySQL/Vitess) costs meaningfully more than the rivals' free tiers and starter plans.
- Overkill for a typical side project; you're paying for scale you likely won't use.
- The Vitess/MySQL model has its own constraints (e.g. limited foreign-key support historically) and a learning curve.
Who should skip it: Nearly every hobby and early-stage solo project. Unless you already know you need MySQL or Vitess-style sharding and have budget from day one, start with Supabase or Neon.
Best for: Builders who specifically need MySQL/Vitess horizontal scale and are ready to pay for production-grade infrastructure from day one.
See PlanetScale plans →Affiliate link · how this worksWhich should you choose?#
- You want to ship a full app fast (auth, uploads, the works): Supabase. One project gives you the database and the backend around it, free to start.
- You only need Postgres, and you love branching: Neon. Permanent free tier, near-free branches, and scale-to-zero that keeps idle costs at basically nothing.
- You're running many small experiments: Neon — up to 100 free projects beats Supabase's 2-project free cap.
- You expect heavy realtime or auth-driven features: Supabase, where those are first-class instead of bolt-ons.
- You need MySQL specifically, or you'll genuinely shard across terabytes: PlanetScale, and budget for it from day one.
- You want the lowest possible bill on a low-traffic app: Neon's usage-based pricing usually wins; Supabase Pro's flat $25 is more predictable once you're past the free tier.
Pricing and free-tier limits for all three shifted in 2025-2026 — Neon dropped its monthly minimum after the Databricks acquisition, PlanetScale added Postgres, and Supabase adjusted its tiers. Always confirm the current numbers on each provider's own pricing page before you commit, since plans keep moving.