The Neon alternative
that never cold-starts.
Serverless Postgres is great until a user hits a cold database. Rivestack runs always-on dedicated NVMe PostgreSQL with pgvector tuned out of the box — flat pricing from $15/month instead of usage-based billing, and a p95 that does not depend on when the last query ran. Migration help is free.
- 0
- cold starts — always-on dedicated nodes
- < 4ms
- p50 vector search latency
- $15/mo
- fixed price, not usage-based
- EU
- Hosted in Europe · GDPR-ready
Why teams switch from Neon
Serverless trades latency for elasticity. Not every workload should take that trade.
No cold starts, ever
Neon scales compute to zero when idle — great for cost, brutal for latency. The first query after a pause waits for compute to wake and caches to warm, which shows up as multi-second p95 spikes in RAG and search endpoints. Rivestack nodes are always-on dedicated VMs: the first query is as fast as the thousandth.
PostgreSQL for AI →Local NVMe, not separated storage
Neon separates storage from compute, which enables branching but puts a network between your queries and your data. Rivestack keeps everything on local NVMe at 500K+ IOPS — the difference that decides tail latency when a vector index outgrows memory.
NVMe vs cloud SSD benchmarks →A bill you can predict
Usage-based pricing means your bill depends on compute-hours you cannot fully predict — a traffic spike or a misbehaving cron job shows up on the invoice. Rivestack is flat: $15/mo Solo, HA from $35/node. The bill on day 30 matches the quote on day 1.
Managed Postgres pricing compared →Rivestack vs Neon
An honest comparison — opposite trades, different workloads.
| Rivestack | Neon | |
|---|---|---|
| Compute model | Always-on dedicated VM | Serverless, autoscaling, scale-to-zero |
| Cold starts | None | On wake from scale-to-zero |
| Storage | Local NVMe (500K+ IOPS) | Separated storage/compute over network |
| Pricing model | $15/mo flat · HA from $35/node | Usage-based (compute-hours + storage) |
| pgvector | Pre-installed + tuned (HNSW) | Extension included, tuning on you |
| Branching | Not offered | Built-in (its standout feature) |
| Backups + PITR | Included (7–14 day retention) | Included (retention by plan) |
| Data residency | EU by default (US-East optional) | Region selection at project creation |
| Best fit | Latency-sensitive, steady workloads | Spiky/dev workloads, branch-per-PR |
Neon is excellent at what it is built for — serverless elasticity and branch-per-PR workflows. If your workload is spiky or development-heavy, it is a great choice. Rivestack is the focused choice for steady, latency-sensitive Postgres + pgvector workloads that want a warm database and a flat bill.
Migrating from Neon
It is standard Postgres on both ends — and we help, free.
Send us your workload
Row counts, vector dimensions, and your current Neon usage. We reply within ~48 hours with a plan recommendation, expected QPS and latency, and a cost comparison against your recent invoices. If Rivestack is not a better fit, we say so in the same reply.
Migrate with standard Postgres tools
Neon is Postgres, so pg_dump / pg_restore moves smaller databases in minutes. For always-on production we set up logical replication and cut over with under a minute of write downtime — your read traffic stays online.
Point your connection string at us
Standard PostgreSQL over SSL on port 5432. Your driver, ORM, and queries work unchanged — and your p95 stops depending on whether the database happened to be awake.
Want the full white-glove version? See the Switch offer — we plan and run the migration with you, or email rescue@rivestack.io with your workload for a free review.
Flat pricing, always on
One price per node. No compute-hours, no usage meters, no surprises.
Shared PostgreSQL with pgvector for development and testing.
- Shared CPU · 2 GB storage
- pgvector enabled
- 5 connections
- SSL encrypted
Your own dedicated VM for small production apps. Never deleted.
- 2 vCPU · 4 GB RAM
- 55 GB NVMe storage
- Daily backups + 7d PITR
- Up to 100 connections
- Never deleted
Production dedicated PostgreSQL with HA-ready architecture.
- 2 vCPU · 4 GB RAM per node
- 55 GB NVMe storage
- HA ready (add nodes)
- Daily backups + 14d PITR
- Monitoring dashboard
More compute and storage for larger workloads.
- 4 vCPU · 8 GB RAM per node
- 135 GB NVMe storage
- Automatic failover (2+ nodes)
- Priority support
High-performance dedicated PostgreSQL for demanding workloads.
- 8 vCPU · 16 GB RAM per node
- 295 GB NVMe storage
- Custom PostgreSQL config
- Priority support
Neon alternative FAQ
What teams ask before moving off serverless Postgres.
The two reasons we hear most: cold starts from scale-to-zero adding seconds to first queries — painful for RAG and search endpoints that face users — and usage-based bills that are hard to predict month to month. If your workload is steady and latency-sensitive, a dedicated always-on node is the simpler model.
Yes — structurally, not with a workaround. Your database runs on an always-on dedicated VM with local NVMe, so there is no compute to wake and no cache to re-warm. No keep-alive pings, no minimum-compute settings to tune. First query after a quiet night is as fast as any other.
Those are real strengths, and we do not pretend to match them. Neon is excellent for spiky workloads that benefit from scale-to-zero and for branch-per-PR development flows. Rivestack is the opposite trade: fixed dedicated capacity, always warm, flat price. Pick by workload — steady and latency-sensitive favours dedicated.
For steady workloads, usually. Neon usage-based pricing is efficient when your database is mostly idle, but compute-hours add up fast once it runs around the clock — always-on production workloads commonly land at $69+/month. Rivestack Solo is $15/month flat, always on. Send us your recent invoices and we will give you a realistic comparison for your usage.
Neon is standard Postgres, so pg_dump / pg_restore handles most databases in minutes; for larger always-on systems we use logical replication and a sub-minute cutover. Migration help is included free — we will plan it with you and sit in the cutover if you want us to.
Yes, and with no warm-up penalty. pgvector is pre-installed and tuned for HNSW — we measure ~1,000 QPS at recall@10 0.93 on 250k × 1536-dimension vectors on a $35 node, on local NVMe rather than network-attached storage. Your schema, indexes, and queries move unchanged.
Your data is encrypted in transit and at rest, backed up daily to separate S3-compatible storage with point-in-time recovery, and HA clusters run Patroni-managed automatic failover. Everything is vanilla PostgreSQL — you can pg_dump your entire database and leave at any moment. No lock-in is the strongest guarantee we can offer.
Yes. The free tier gives you a Postgres database with pgvector in about a minute, no credit card. Load a sample of your data, run your real queries against a warm database, and compare p95 before you commit.
Keep reading
More on comparing and migrating managed Postgres.
PostgreSQL for AI
Why always-on NVMe Postgres is the right base for RAG and vector search.
pgvector on NVMe vs cloud SSD
Benchmarks showing why storage decides vector search tail latency.
The Switch offer
We plan and run your migration with you, free, for the first 25 teams.
Comparing other providers? See the Supabase alternative and Pinecone alternative pages, or the full managed PostgreSQL overview.
