Neon vs Postmark
Serverless Postgres with branching and bottomless storage
vs. Reliable transactional email with fast delivery
Pricing tiers
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)
Postmark
Free
100 emails/month forever. No credit card. Side projects and testing.
Free
Basic — 10k
10,000 emails/month. Overage $1.80/1k. Unlimited emails/day.
$15/mo
Pro — 10k
10,000 emails/month. Overage $1.30/1k. Inbound email + message streams.
$17/mo
Platform — 10k
10,000 emails/month. Overage $1.20/1k. Team collab, more domains.
$18/mo
Enterprise (>1.5M)
Custom for senders exceeding 1.5M/month.
Custom
Free-tier quotas head-to-head
Comparing free on Neon vs free on Postmark.
| Metric | Neon | Postmark |
|---|---|---|
| branches per project | 10 branches | — |
| cu hours per project | 100 CU-hours/month | — |
| egress gb month | 5 GB/month | — |
| pitr retention hours | 6 hours | — |
| projects | 100 projects | — |
| storage gb per project | 0.5 GB | — |
| team members | 3 users | — |
Features
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…
Postmark · 12 features
- Activity Search — Full-text search over sent messages for 45-365 days.
- Bounce Handling — Automatic hard/soft bounce detection + suppression management.
- Broadcast Messages — Via separate Broadcast Message Stream. Bulk sends with throttling.
- DKIM + SPF — One-click verification + auto-renewal of DKIM keys.
- Inbound Email — Route inbound emails to your webhook. Parse attachments, threads.
- Message Streams — Isolate transactional from marketing for separate deliverability reputation.
- Open + Click Tracking — Configurable at template or send level.
- Raw API Access — 100+ endpoints for bounces, servers, tags, templates, stats.
- Servers — Multi-tenant isolation: each "server" has its own API token + reputation.
- Templates — Mustachio template language with variables, alias + versioning.
- Transactional Send — Reliable API for password resets, receipts, notifications. Sub-10s delivery.
- Webhook Events — Delivery, bounce, spam complaint, open, click, subscription change.
Developer interfaces
| Kind | Neon | Postmark |
|---|---|---|
| CLI | Neon CLI | — |
| SDK | @neondatabase/serverless | postmark-dotnet, postmarker (Python), postmark-go, postmark (Node), postmark-php, postmark-rails |
| REST | Management / Control Plane API, Neon Data API (REST), SQL over HTTP | Postmark REST API |
| MCP | Neon MCP Server | — |
| OTHER | Postgres Wire Protocol | Inbound Email, SMTP Relay, Webhooks |
Staxly is an independent catalog of developer platforms. Outbound links to Neon and Postmark are plain references to their official websites. Pricing is verified against vendor pages at publication time — reconfirm before buying.
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