Updated October 25, 2026
· ~2 min read
Most new products we see start on Postgres, and the hosting choice is now wider than RDS. Neon was bought by Databricks in May 2025 and cut its prices. Supabase sells Postgres with auth, storage and realtime attached. PlanetScale, known for MySQL, launched Postgres and a $5 single-node tier. Aurora Serverless v2 can scale to zero.
They are priced in different units, so a headline price comparison misleads. Each one makes a different tradeoff between price, control and what comes bundled.
For a small product the database bill is rarely the deciding number. All four are under $100 a month for a typical early workload. What matters is where the data lives and what you will need in two years. If you sell to enterprises, procurement will ask where customer data is stored and who can access it. "In our AWS account, encrypted with our KMS keys, in our VPC" is an easy answer. A third-party database is also an acceptable answer, with one more vendor in your security review and subprocessor list. If you are iterating fast with a small team, Neon's branching and Supabase's bundled services save weeks, and the migration to Aurora later is a pg_dump or logical replication away, as long as you have not built on vendor-specific features.
Question 1 of 3
Must the data stay inside your AWS account for customers, auditors or a BAA?
**Aurora Serverless v2:** the database sits in your AWS account and VPC, under your IAM, backups and compliance controls, next to the rest of your stack. More expensive per unit of compute, and no branching. **Neon:** cheap development and preview environments through branching, scale to zero, and low compute prices. The tradeoff is a vendor outside your AWS account. **Supabase:** you want auth, storage, realtime and an API alongside the database, from one vendor, quickly. You are buying a platform, and leaving it later means replacing more than a database. **PlanetScale Postgres:** small, predictable node prices, and high performance from local NVMe on Metal. A good fit when you want a fixed monthly cost.
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As of October 25, 2026. Provided as is, for general information, and accurate to the best of our knowledge on the date shown. Not legal, compliance, tax, financial or other professional advice. Prices, limits and vendor services change; check current vendor documentation before relying on anything here. Terms of use.