# Neon Pricing Plans > Serverless Postgres with three plans: Free, Launch, and Scale. Pay only for what you use on paid plans; no monthly minimum. ## How billing works Paid plans are pay-as-you-go: usage is metered hourly and billed at the end of the month, with no monthly minimum. Plans apply per **organization**, and one Neon account can belong to multiple orgs on different plans. The Free plan is permanent (not a trial); no credit card required. | Unit | Meaning | | ----------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | CU (Compute Unit) | ~4 GB RAM + CPU + SSD. | | CU-hour | `compute size × hours running`. 0.25 CU × 4 hours = 1 CU-hour. Suspended (scaled-to-zero) compute = $0. | | GB-month | Storage, metered hourly. | | branch-month | Extra branch kept for one month. Prorated hourly. | Compute suspends automatically after inactivity (**scale-to-zero**); no CU-hours accrue while suspended. Always on for Free; configurable on Launch and Scale. Invoices under $0.50 are not collected. ## Plans at a glance | Feature | Free | Launch | Scale | | -------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------ | ------------------------------------ | ---------------------------------------------------------------- | | Price | $0/month | Pay for what you use | Pay for what you use | | Who it's for | Prototypes, side projects, and small teams | Startups and growing teams | Production-grade workloads and larger companies | | Organization members | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited | | Projects | 100 | 100 | 1,000 (can be increased on request) | | Branches per project | 10 | 10 | 25 | | Extra branches | - | $1.50/branch-month (prorated hourly) | $1.50/branch-month (prorated hourly) | | Compute | 100 CU-hours/project | $0.106/CU-hour | $0.222/CU-hour | | Autoscaling | Up to 2 CU (8 GB RAM) | Up to 16 CU (64 GB RAM) | Up to 16 CU autoscaling, or fixed sizes up to 56 CU (224 GB RAM) | | Scale to zero | After 5 min | After 5 min, can be disabled | Configurable (1 minute to always on) | | Storage | 0.5 GB/project | $0.35/GB-month | $0.35/GB-month | | Instant restore | - | $0.20/GB-month | $0.20/GB-month | | Restore window | 6 hours (1 GB limit) | Up to 7 days | Up to 30 days | | Snapshots (manual) | 1 | 10 | 10 | | Snapshots (scheduled) | - | Yes | Yes | | Public network transfer (egress) | 5 GB included | 100 GB included, then $0.10/GB | 100 GB included, then $0.10/GB | | Private network transfer | - | - | $0.01/GB | | Auth (MAU) | Up to 60k MAU | Up to 1M MAU | Up to 1M MAU | | Monitoring retention | 1 day | 3 days | 14 days | | Metrics/logs export | - | - | Yes | | Set spending limits | - | Yes | Yes | | Protected branches | - | Yes | Yes | | IP Allow rules | - | - | Yes | | Private Networking | - | - | Yes | | HIPAA | - | - | Available | | SOC 2 | - | - | Available | | Uptime SLA | - | - | Yes | | Support | Community | Billing support | Standard, Business, or Production | A "-" means the feature is not available on that plan. All plans include: multi-AZ storage, autoscaling, database branching, read replicas, connection pooling, Postgres extensions (pgvector, PostGIS, TimescaleDB, and more), full management API and CLI, and a Data API for querying over HTTP. ## Table clarifications - **Branches** are capped at 5,000 per project on paid plans (10/25 included). Free is capped at 10 per project. - **Instant restore** is charged only on root branches; child branches don't add to this charge. - **Storage on child branches** uses copy-on-write: they start at $0 and grow with writes on that branch, capped at the branch's data size. Root branches are billed on their full data size. - **Snapshots** are billed at $0.09/GB-month for both manual and scheduled storage. The table figures are per-project count limits, not free allowances. Scheduled snapshots don't count against the manual limit. - **Read replicas** are separate computes and count toward CU-hours. - **Auth (MAU)** can scale beyond 1M; contact Neon for higher limits. - **Private Networking** ($0.01/GB on Scale) counts traffic in **both directions**. - **HIPAA** is self-serve on Scale (BAA required), currently at no additional cost. See [HIPAA](https://neon.com/docs/security/hipaa.md) for details. See [Plans](https://neon.com/docs/introduction/plans.md) for full details. ## Common questions ### How can I try Neon without signing up? Use [Claimable Postgres](https://neon.new/) for an instant database, with no signup and no card. Run `npx neon-new --yes` (or the [API](https://neon.com/docs/reference/claimable-postgres.md)) to provision Postgres that lasts 72 hours. Claim it to a Neon account before expiration to keep it. ### What is a project? Your top-level container: primary database, branches, compute. Like a Git repo, with one project and many branches. Projects belong to **organizations**, where plans and billing apply. ### How are extra branches billed? Branches above your plan's allowance (10 included on Free/Launch, 25 on Scale) are billed at $1.50/branch-month, prorated hourly (~$0.002/hour). Example: 2 extra branches kept for 5 hours each = 10 branch-hours × $0.002 = $0.02. ### What happens when I hit Free plan limits? Hitting any Free monthly limit (100 CU-hours, 0.5 GB storage, 5 GB egress) suspends compute until the next billing month. Upgrade to Launch or Scale to resume immediately. ### How can I control my costs? | Action | Effect | | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | --------------------------------------- | | Cap autoscaling per compute | Hard ceiling on compute spend | | Keep scale-to-zero on for non-prod | Idle compute = $0 | | Delete unused branches, or set TTL | Saves $1.50/branch-month each | | Shorten the restore window | Saves $0.20/GB-month on restore storage | | Org-level [spending limits](https://neon.com/docs/introduction/spending-limit.md) (Launch/Scale) | Email alerts at 80% and 100% | See [Cost optimization](https://neon.com/docs/introduction/cost-optimization.md) for the full guide and [Reduce network transfer costs](https://neon.com/docs/introduction/network-transfer.md) for egress. ## Links - Get started: https://neon.com/signup - Full plan details: https://neon.com/docs/introduction/plans.md - Open Source Program: https://neon.com/programs/open-source.md - Agent Plan (for AI agent platforms): https://neon.com/docs/introduction/agent-plan.md - Startup credits: https://neon.com/startups