Neon vs Amazon RDS

Serverless Postgres with branching meets managed databases for people who'd rather not manage databases. Here's our take.

Neon

Nice Pick

Serverless Postgres with branching. PlanetScale vibes, Postgres reality.

Pros

• Serverless Postgres
• Branching
• Generous free tier
• Scale to zero

Cons

• Newer
• Cold starts
• Smaller community

Amazon RDS

Managed databases for people who'd rather not manage databases. It's like having a DBA on retainer, but cheaper and less opinionated.

Pros

• Automates backups, patching, and scaling, so you can focus on your app instead of babysitting servers
• Supports multiple engines like PostgreSQL and MySQL, making it easy to switch or standardize
• Built-in high availability with Multi-AZ deployments, because downtime is for amateurs

Cons

• Costs can sneak up on you with instance sizes and storage, especially if you forget to turn things off
• Limited control over the underlying OS and some database settings, which can be frustrating for power users

The Verdict

These tools serve different purposes. Neon is a databases while Amazon RDS is a hosting & deployment. We picked Neon based on overall popularity, but your choice depends on what you're building.

The Bottom Line

Neon wins

Based on overall popularity. Neon is more widely used, but Amazon RDS excels in its own space.