Checked September 26, 2026. USD, excluding tax. Based on published pricing pages, not a hands-on benchmark. Jet Admin publishes this comparison and competes with neither product.
These two are often compared as rivals, and they overlap on exactly one thing: both give you Postgres. Beyond that they're solving different problems. Neon is a Postgres database with serverless compute and Git-style branching. Supabase is a backend platform — Postgres plus auth, file storage, realtime and edge functions.
So the first question isn't which is better. It's whether you need the rest of the platform.
At a glance
| Neon | Supabase | |
|---|---|---|
| Free plan | $0 — 0.5 GB storage and 100 CU-hours per project | $0 — 500 MB database, 50,000 MAU |
| Paid entry | Launch — pay-as-you-go, "no monthly minimum" | Pro — $25/month |
| Higher tier | Scale — pay-as-you-go, higher compute rate | Team — $599/month |
| Compute pricing | Launch $0.106/CU-hour; Scale $0.222/CU-hour | $10/month credits on Pro, covers one Micro instance |
| Storage pricing | $0.35/GB-month | 8 GB included on Pro, then $0.125/GB |
| Idle cost | "Suspended (scaled-to-zero) compute = $0" | Instance runs continuously |
| Branching | 10 included (Launch), 25 (Scale), then $1.50/branch-month | Available on paid plans |
| Beyond the database | Postgres only | Auth, storage, realtime, edge functions |
Sources: Neon pricing and Supabase pricing, checked September 26, 2026.
The scale-to-zero difference
Neon's most consequential pricing behaviour is that suspended compute costs nothing. A database that isn't being queried scales to zero and stops billing compute entirely — you keep paying for storage at $0.35 per GB-month, but the compute line goes to $0.
Supabase runs an instance. Pro includes $10 a month in compute credits covering one Micro instance, and that instance is up whether or not anyone is using it.
For a production app with steady traffic, this is close to a wash — the instance is busy anyway. For everything else it isn't. Consider what teams actually accumulate: staging environments, per-branch preview databases, an internal tool used twice a week, a side project, the database behind a seasonal service. On Neon most of those cost storage only. On Supabase each one is a running instance.
That is the single strongest argument for Neon, and it has nothing to do with the database itself.
Branching, and why it's priced
Neon makes branching a first-class primitive: copy-on-write branches of your database, 10 included on Launch and 25 on Scale, then $1.50 per branch-month. Combined with scale-to-zero, a branch that isn't being queried is cheap to leave lying around.
The workflow this enables is genuinely different — a database branch per pull request, seeded with production-shaped data, torn down on merge. If your team has ever fought over a shared staging database, that's the pitch.
Supabase offers branching on paid plans too. The difference is less the feature than the cost structure around it: branches on Neon are priced as a line item you can model, and idle ones don't burn compute.
Where the money actually differs
Neon's paid plans have no fixed fee. Usage is metered hourly and billed at the end of the month, with no monthly minimum. Launch bills compute at $0.106 per CU-hour, Scale at $0.222. Both include 500 GB of egress per project, then $0.10 per GB.
Supabase Pro is $25 a month and includes 8 GB of database disk, 100 GB file storage, 250 GB egress, 100,000 MAU and 2 million Edge Function invocations — with spend caps on by default.
Modelling a single always-on production database: a small Neon compute running continuously at $0.106 per CU-hour is roughly $76 a month at 1 CU, before storage. Supabase Pro's $25 includes a Micro instance. For one steadily-loaded database, Supabase is usually cheaper, and by a meaningful margin.
Invert it for five mostly-idle environments and the answer flips hard. Five Supabase projects on Pro is $125 a month. Five Neon projects that scale to zero cost storage plus whatever compute they actually consume — potentially single-digit dollars.
Confirm the CU sizing for your workload before relying on that arithmetic. Compute units scale with the size you provision, and a 1 CU assumption may be wrong for your app in either direction.
What Supabase includes that Neon doesn't
Auth, file storage, realtime subscriptions and edge functions. If you need those, Neon means assembling them from other vendors — a perfectly normal choice, but one with its own integration cost and its own bills.
This is the question that usually decides it. A team building a consumer app from scratch and wanting auth on day one has a clear answer. A team that already has auth, or is adding Postgres to an existing stack, is buying capability it won't use.
Which should you choose?
Choose Neon if you want Postgres specifically, if you run many databases or environments, if branching per pull request appeals, or if your workload is intermittent enough that scale-to-zero changes your bill.
Choose Supabase if you want a backend rather than a database — auth, storage and realtime included — or if you're running one steadily-loaded production database where Pro's $25 beats metered compute.
They also compose. Nothing stops you using Neon for the database and separate services for auth. Whether that's simpler or more complex depends on how much of Supabase's platform you'd otherwise use.
Where Jet Admin fits
Neither is an alternative to Jet Admin; both are what sits underneath it. Jet Admin connects to a Postgres database — Neon's or Supabase's — and gives you the interface layer without building it.
If what you need on top of the database is an admin panel, a support queue or an operations dashboard, that's the overlap, and it removes the application layer rather than the database. For a customer-facing product you still want one of these underneath.
Frequently asked questions
Are both real Postgres?
Yes. Both give you Postgres with standard tooling and drivers, which also means migrating between them is more tractable than migrating off a proprietary database.
Which is cheaper?
For one always-on production database, usually Supabase — Pro's $25 includes a Micro instance, while metered Neon compute running continuously costs more. For many intermittent databases, Neon, because idle compute is free.
What is a CU-hour?
Compute size multiplied by hours running. A 1 CU compute running for an hour is 1 CU-hour. Suspended compute accrues none.
Does Supabase have branching?
Yes, on paid plans. Neon's differentiator is the surrounding cost structure — a per-branch price you can model, and idle branches that don't burn compute.
Do I need Supabase's auth?
Only you can answer that, and it's the question that usually decides this comparison. If you already have auth, a large part of what you'd pay Supabase for is capability you won't use.
Can I move between them later?
Both are Postgres, so the data moves. What doesn't move is anything built on Supabase's auth, storage or realtime layers — that's the lock-in worth thinking about upfront.
Count your databases first
The deciding number is how many database environments you'll actually run and how busy each one is. One busy database favours Supabase on price. Several quiet ones favour Neon, often dramatically.
Then ask whether you need auth and storage bundled. Those two answers settle it faster than any feature comparison.
If what you're building on top is an internal tool, point Jet Admin at the Postgres instance directly and skip the application layer.
