Is Google Cloud SQL or Neon Serverless Postgres cheaper in 2026?

Google Cloud SQL is cheaper in all 3 modelled workloads.

Which has the better free tier, Google Cloud SQL or Neon Serverless Postgres?

Neon Serverless Postgres does — 0.5 GB of storage and 190 compute hours per month. Google Cloud SQL bills from the first unit of usage.

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.

Google Cloud SQL vs Neon Serverless Postgres

Google Cloud SQL is cheaper across every workload modelled here.

List prices checked May 2026

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	Google Cloud SQL	Neon Serverless Postgres	Difference
Entry plan	$9.37/mo	$19.00/mo	2× Google Cloud SQL
Storage	$0.170/GB-mo	$0.350/GB-mo	2.1× Google Cloud SQL
Free tier	No	Yes	—

Source: Google 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	Google Cloud SQL	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.	$13	$26	Google Cloud SQLsaves $13/mo (51%)
Growing SaaSA funded product serving a few thousand daily users, with an image-heavy frontend and two application servers.	$94	$194	Google Cloud SQLsaves $100/mo (51%)
Media-heavy siteA publisher or video product where delivery dominates the bill and compute is almost an afterthought.	$349	$719	Google Cloud SQLsaves $370/mo (51%)

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

Google Cloud SQL

by Google

Managed MySQL, Postgres, and SQL Server on Google Cloud, billed per instance-hour with automatic storage growth that is easy to leave running unnoticed.

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 Google Cloud SQL or Neon Serverless Postgres cheaper in 2026?: Google Cloud SQL is cheaper in all 3 modelled workloads.
Which has the better free tier, Google Cloud SQL or Neon Serverless Postgres?: Neon Serverless Postgres does — 0.5 GB of storage and 190 compute hours per month. Google Cloud SQL bills from the first unit of usage.
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.