CockroachDB Cloud vs Neon Serverless Postgres
Neon Serverless Postgres is cheaper across every workload modelled here.
List prices checked
Rate cards side by side
Only the axes at least one of them bills on. A dash means that provider does not charge for it.
| Billing axis | CockroachDB Cloud | Neon Serverless Postgres | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Entry plan | $25.00/mo | $19.00/mo | 1.3× Neon Serverless Postgres |
| Storage | $0.500/GB-mo | $0.350/GB-mo | 1.4× Neon Serverless Postgres |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes | — |
Source: Cockroach Labs pricing (May 2026) · Neon pricing (May 2026). Published list prices only — committed-use discounts, regional variation, and per-request charges are not included. Not yet independently re-checked against the vendor’s page.
Monthly cost for three real workloads
The rate cards applied to identical usage. This is where the winner changes.
| Workload | CockroachDB Cloud | Neon Serverless Postgres | Cheaper |
|---|---|---|---|
| Side projectA personal site or small app with modest traffic, a few gigabytes of assets, and one small always-on process. | $35 | $26 | Neon Serverless Postgressaves $9.00/mo (26%) |
| Growing SaaSA funded product serving a few thousand daily users, with an image-heavy frontend and two application servers. | $275 | $194 | Neon Serverless Postgressaves $81/mo (29%) |
| Media-heavy siteA publisher or video product where delivery dominates the bill and compute is almost an afterthought. | $1,025 | $719 | Neon Serverless Postgressaves $306/mo (30%) |
Workload definitions are identical on every comparison page, so figures here can be read against any other pair in the same category.
What each one is for
CockroachDB Cloud
by Cockroach Labs
Distributed SQL with Postgres wire compatibility and multi-region strong consistency, billed on request units. Priced for workloads that genuinely need survivability across regions.
Free tier: $0 basic tier with monthly request-unit and storage allowances
Neon Serverless Postgres
by Neon
Postgres with storage and compute separated, so idle databases scale to zero and cost nothing. Branching a database is a copy-on-write operation rather than a dump and restore.
Free tier: 0.5 GB of storage and 190 compute hours per month
Common questions
- Is CockroachDB Cloud or Neon Serverless Postgres cheaper in 2026?
- Neon Serverless Postgres is cheaper in all 3 modelled workloads.
- Which has the better free tier, CockroachDB Cloud or Neon Serverless Postgres?
- Both publish one. CockroachDB Cloud: $0 basic tier with monthly request-unit and storage allowances. Neon Serverless Postgres: 0.5 GB of storage and 190 compute hours per month.
- What do these estimates not include?
- Committed-use and reserved discounts, regional price variation, per-request API charges, support plans, and minimum retention periods. All of those move real invoices, sometimes by a lot. These figures compare published list prices for the same workload, which is the comparison the rate cards alone cannot give you.