Neon's Free Plan Boosts Project Limit to 60: Empowering Developers

Over the past few weeks, you might have noticed a significant update in our changelog: we've progressively increased the number of projects included in Neon’s Free Plan from 10 to a generous 60.

You might be asking, "Why are we doing this, and why now?"

This expansion is possible thanks to two major milestones:

1. Scaling Infrastructure Efficiency: Our unique architecture separates storage and compute, allowing for continuous infrastructure scalability and significant platform optimizations.
2. Becoming a Databricks Company: As part of our integration, Neon now runs on Databricks’ global infrastructure. This transition has directly led to lower operating costs, enabling us to pass these efficiencies on to you.

While we could have leveraged these efficiency gains for larger margins, it's not aligned with Neon's core mission. Instead, we are committed to delivering even greater value to our customers and developers, driven by two strategic goals:

• Achieve the most competitive pricing in the industry. We've already transitioned to fully usage-based plans, eliminated fixed fees and add-ons, and significantly reduced compute and storage prices. We continue to work towards further improvements.
• Make our Free plan genuinely useful, not merely a trial. Whether you're working on side projects, prototypes, small applications, or simply exploring new ideas, we want Neon’s Free plan to be a robust and supportive environment.

The Vision Behind Our Free Plan

Our long-term goal is straightforward: we envision Neon as the default Postgres provider for all developers. Just as you instinctively create a GitHub repository for every new project, we want Neon to be your immediate choice whenever you need Postgres.

To achieve this, our Free plan must be spacious, capable, and reflective of how developers truly work – with numerous small projects, extensive exploration, and ample resources for testing, building, and iterating. If Neon is where your ideas take root, then we must provide ample room for many ideas.

This creates a win-win scenario for both developers and Neon:

• Developers gain access to an incredibly powerful and spacious Postgres environment for every project they undertake.
• In turn, Neon becomes the central hub for all things Postgres. We anticipate that if projects begin on Neon, developers will naturally choose to continue using our platform as those projects grow.

How Can We Afford This Long-Term?

This ambitious offering is made possible by Neon’s architectural design. This isn't about mere generosity or absorbing costs; we can provide an expanded Free plan because of how Neon is fundamentally built.

If every free project required a dedicated Postgres instance, or if we had to offer minuscule compute slices (e.g., 1/16 CPUs), our Free plan would either be unsustainable or unusable.

We circumvent both these challenges because our architecture is inherently different:

• Complete separation of compute and storage.
• When a database is idle, compute costs drop to zero—not just for the end-user, but for us as well.
• This ephemerality pairs perfectly with autoscaling: we don't need to severely cap CPU capacity. Most free projects are idle most of the time (much like most GitHub repos aren't active 24/7), and when you're not running anything, neither is Neon. Temporary scaling up (even to 1-2 CPUs) doesn't alter this fundamental efficiency.
• Object storage is the source of truth. Data resides in a modular storage system within Neon, where small volumes are exceptionally cheap to maintain.

In essence, the Neon platform is engineered to efficiently manage millions of projects.

The End Result and Next Steps

We believe you should never exhaust your project limit on the Free plan. Want to spin up five ideas in a week? Go for it. Prototype something at midnight on a Saturday? Absolutely. Use Neon as your primary development environment? Fantastic. Our aim is for Neon to be your default choice whenever you need Postgres, regardless of the use case.

For those patiently awaiting expansions in other limits or our paid plans, rest assured, those updates are also on the horizon. In the meantime, we welcome your feedback and suggestions—reach out to us on Discord or X.

Posted by Brad Van Vugt Growth Product Manager