What is Neon used for?

Neon is an open-source serverless Postgres platform that separates storage from compute to offer autoscaling, database branching and scale to zero. It is a good fit for branching databases per pull request, elastic Postgres for variable workloads and running a local Neon for experiments.

Yes. Neon is open source under the Apache-2.0 licence. Its source code is on GitHub at neondatabase/neon and is written mainly in Rust.

Yes. Neon is open source, so the software itself is free to use. A managed cloud version is also available.

Can I self-host Neon?

Yes. Neon can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure.

What is Neon an alternative to?

Neon is an open-source alternative to Amazon Aurora, PlanetScale, Azure SQL Database and Amazon RDS. Other open-source alternatives to Amazon Aurora include YugabyteDB and MySQL.

Is Neon actively maintained?

Yes. The most recent commit to Neon was on 31 August 2026. The project has 23k stars on GitHub.

Neon: open-source alternative to Amazon Aurora, PlanetScale

About Neon

Neon is a serverless Postgres database platform that is open source. It separates storage from compute and replaces the PostgreSQL storage layer with one that distributes data across a cluster of nodes, which enables autoscaling, branching of databases in the style of code, and scaling down to zero.

A running Neon system is made up of compute nodes plus a dedicated storage engine. The compute nodes are stateless PostgreSQL instances backed by that engine, whose two main components are the Pageserver, a scalable storage backend for the compute nodes, and the Safekeepers, a redundant write-ahead-log service that keeps WAL durably until the Pageserver has processed it and uploaded it to cloud storage. Developer documentation describes the architecture in more detail.

The easiest way to try Neon is the hosted Neon Free Tier, connecting with psql, DBeaver or the online SQL editor. The project is also written in Rust and licensed under Apache-2.0 so you can compile and run it locally for experiments, with build instructions for Linux and macOS. It suits teams that want Postgres with branching for development workflows and elastic scaling.

Key features

Serverless Postgres with autoscaling
Separated storage and compute
Database branching for development
Scale to zero when idle
Pageserver and Safekeeper storage engine
Hosted free tier available

Good fit for

→Branching databases per pull request
→Elastic Postgres for variable workloads
→Running a local Neon for experiments

Built with: Rust; PostgreSQL
Tags: postgresql; serverless; database; autoscaling; branching; rust; cloud-native; scale-to-zero

Neon: questions and answers

What is Neon used for?: Neon is an open-source serverless Postgres platform that separates storage from compute to offer autoscaling, database branching and scale to zero. It is a good fit for branching databases per pull request, elastic Postgres for variable workloads and running a local Neon for experiments.
Is Neon open source?: Yes. Neon is open source under the Apache-2.0 licence. Its source code is on GitHub at neondatabase/neon and is written mainly in Rust.
Is Neon free?: Yes. Neon is open source, so the software itself is free to use. A managed cloud version is also available.
Can I self-host Neon?: Yes. Neon can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure.
What is Neon an alternative to?: Neon is an open-source alternative to Amazon Aurora, PlanetScale, Azure SQL Database and Amazon RDS. Other open-source alternatives to Amazon Aurora include YugabyteDB and MySQL.
Is Neon actively maintained?: Yes. The most recent commit to Neon was on 31 August 2026. The project has 23k stars on GitHub.