Neon

Neon is serverless Postgres that finally makes database branching real. Fork your entire database like a Git branch — for testing, staging, or previews — without copying data. The cold-start autoscaling means you pay nothing when your database is idle. This is what managed Postgres should feel like.

If you're building a SaaS and want Postgres without managing infrastructure, Neon is the modern choice. Supabase bundles more (auth, storage, real-time) but gives you a regular Postgres instance. PlanetScale does branching for MySQL. RDS is AWS's managed Postgres but has no branching or scale-to-zero.

Best for indie hackers who want Postgres with a generous free tier (0.5 GiB storage, 24/7 compute). The Vercel integration makes preview deployments with branched databases trivial.

The catch: the free tier compute is shared and can be slow during cold starts. Storage beyond the free tier adds up. Some Postgres extensions aren't supported yet. And "serverless" means connection pooling quirks — you'll want to use their serverless driver or a pooler for high-concurrency apps.