Courier vs Neon
Notification API with multi-channel orchestration, templates, and preferences
vs. Serverless Postgres with branching and bottomless storage
Pricing tiers
Courier
Free
Up to 10,000 notifications/month. All channels. Community support.
Free
Business
From $99/mo. Higher volumes, advanced routing, preference center, branding removal.
$99/mo
Enterprise
Custom. SOC 2, SSO, dedicated support, volume discounts, SLA.
Custom
Neon
Free
100 projects, 0.5 GB storage + 100 CU-hours each. Great for prototypes and preview envs.
Free
Launch
Usage-based, no minimum. Small production workloads. $0.35/GB-month storage, $0.106/CU-hour.
$0 base (usage-based)
Scale
Usage-based, higher compute tier + faster instances ($0.222/CU-hour). Up to 30-day PITR, 1,000 projects.
$0 base (usage-based)
Business
Usage-based with 99.95% SLA, HIPAA available. Private networking $0.01/GB.
$0 base (usage-based)
Free-tier quotas head-to-head
Comparing free on Courier vs free on Neon.
| Metric | Courier | Neon |
|---|---|---|
| branches per project | — | 10 branches |
| cu hours per project | — | 100 CU-hours/month |
| egress gb month | — | 5 GB/month |
| notifications monthly | 10000 notifications/mo | — |
| pitr retention hours | — | 6 hours |
| projects | — | 100 projects |
| storage gb per project | — | 0.5 GB |
| team members | — | 3 users |
Features
Courier · 13 features
- Chat — Slack, Microsoft Teams, Discord, Mattermost.
- Email — SendGrid, Postmark, Mailgun, AWS SES, Resend, SMTP.
- Inbox (In-App) — React/JS drop-in in-app inbox component.
- Lists — Segment recipients for bulk notification sends.
- Logs + Analytics — Per-message delivery timeline + engagement.
- Multi-channel Routing — Provider failover + preferred channel per user.
- Notification Designer — Visual editor for templates across channels.
- Preferences — Per-user notification preferences hub.
- Push — APNs, FCM, Expo, OneSignal.
- Send API — POST /send with template + recipients + data.
- SMS — Twilio, MessageBird, Vonage, Plivo, Telnyx.
- Templates + Versioning — Template brands, variants, localization, version history.
- Webhooks — Delivery + engagement event webhooks.
Neon · 14 features
- Autoscaling — Compute scales CPU + memory between min and max CU in seconds based on load.
- Branching — Git-like DB branches: copy-on-write snapshots of data + schema. Instant, cheap. …
- Data API (REST) — PostgREST-compatible REST endpoint auto-generated from your schema. Uses Postgre…
- IP Allowlist — Restrict DB access to specific CIDRs. Launch+.
- Launchpad — One-click create-a-database link that can be embedded in OSS repos (DATABASE_URL…
- Logical Replication — Publish changes to Snowflake, BigQuery, Kafka, or other Postgres. Subscribe from…
- Monitoring — Built-in dashboards for CPU/RAM/connections/slow queries. Prometheus export on B…
- Neon Auth — Stack Auth integrated: users table auto-synced into your Postgres (public.users_…
- Point-in-Time Restore — Restore DB to any moment in the retention window (6h free → 30d Scale) via branc…
- Private Networking — AWS PrivateLink / VPC peering. Business plan.
- Read Replicas — Create a read-only compute endpoint on the same branch. Zero replication lag (re…
- Scale to Zero — Compute suspends when idle — no charge for compute while paused. Cold-start ~300…
- Schema Diff — Compare schema between branches — build PR checks and preview migrations safely.
- SQL over HTTP — Serverless driver lets you query Postgres over HTTPS — works in edge runtimes (V…
Developer interfaces
| Kind | Courier | Neon |
|---|---|---|
| CLI | Courier CLI | Neon CLI |
| SDK | courier-go, courier-java, @trycourier/courier, trycourier (Python), @trycourier/react-inbox, trycourier (Ruby) | @neondatabase/serverless |
| REST | Courier REST API | Management / Control Plane API, Neon Data API (REST), SQL over HTTP |
| MCP | — | Neon MCP Server |
| OTHER | Courier Studio, Outbound Webhooks | Postgres Wire Protocol |
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