A price, not a meter
You pick a plan and pay that every month. Neon meters compute per hour and storage per gigabyte, so a busy month costs more than a quiet one. Here it does not.
What you get instead of serverless
This is not a feature match for Neon. It is a different trade: a smaller database product, a simpler bill, and European ownership.
Always on, no cold start
The database stays up between requests. No scale-to-zero, so no first query waiting on a compute to wake, and connection pools stay warm.
Hot standby included
Every plan, shared and dedicated, runs a primary plus a streaming standby with automatic failover. It is in the plan price, not a tier you upgrade into.
The app lives here too
Neon is a database on its own. Hostim runs the Docker app, the Postgres, the Redis and the volumes in one project, on private networking, on one invoice.
EU-owned, not just EU-hosted
Neon has a Frankfurt region, so data residency is available there. The difference is who owns the company: Neon belongs to Databricks and runs on AWS. Hostim is a German UG on its own bare metal.
Plain Postgres, easy to leave
No proprietary driver and no branch-based workflow to unpick. It is a standard PostgreSQL endpoint, so pg_dump moves you in and pg_dump moves you out.
Hostim.dev vs. Neon
Neon figures from its published price list and plans documentation, read on 7 August 2026.
| Feature | Hostim.dev | Neon |
|---|---|---|
| Billing model | ✅ Flat monthly plan | ❌ Metered compute and storage |
| Always-on 4 GB database | ✅ €50/month (drp-50, 50 GB included) | ❌ ~$77/month compute + $0.35/GB storage |
| Free tier | ⚠️ 256 MB, always on | ✅ 0.5 GB and 100 CU-hours per project |
| Database branching | ❌ No | ✅ Yes, 10–25 per project |
| Scale to zero | ❌ No, always on | ✅ Yes, configurable on paid plans |
| Autoscaling | ❌ Manual plan change | ✅ Up to 16 CU |
| Point-in-time restore | ❌ Support request only | ✅ 7 days (Launch), 30 days (Scale) |
| High availability | ✅ Standby + failover on every plan | ⚠️ Uptime SLA on Scale |
| Public connection string | ❌ Via SSH bastion only | ✅ Yes |
| App hosting on the same platform | ✅ Docker, Compose, Git | ❌ Database only |
| Regions | ❌ 1 (Falkenstein, Germany) | ✅ 8 AWS regions, incl. Frankfurt |
| Ownership and infrastructure | ✅ German UG, own bare metal | ⚠️ Databricks (US), on AWS |
When Neon is the better choice
If you branch the database the way you branch the code — a fresh copy per pull request, per test run, per migration rehearsal — Neon does something Hostim simply cannot. There is no equivalent here, and no plan to fake one with dumps and restores. That workflow alone is a good enough reason to stay.
Scale-to-zero is the second one. If the database is idle most of the month — a side project, a demo environment, a seasonal internal tool — Neon charges for the hours it was awake and Hostim charges for the plan either way. A dormant database is cheaper there, sometimes free. The same is true of the free tier: 0.5 GB per project with 100 CU-hours is more generous than the 256 MB Hostim gives away, and Neon lets you spin up a hundred projects on it.
Neon is also the bigger operation. It is owned by Databricks, runs in eight AWS regions, publishes SOC 2 and ISO certifications, HIPAA eligibility and an uptime SLA on the Scale plan, and gives every database a public connection string that any external service can reach. Hostim is founder-led, in production since October 2025, runs one region, and keeps databases on private networking with SSH bastion access rather than a public endpoint. If a compliance list or a direct external connection is a requirement, that is a requirement, not a preference.
Where Hostim is the better fit is narrower: an ordinary application database that stays awake, next to the app that uses it, on a bill that reads the same every month, run by a European company on hardware it owns. If that is the shape of the thing you are hosting, the serverless machinery is complexity you are paying for and not using. If it is not, take Neon — it is a good product.
For the wider question of what managed Postgres costs and how it performs, see the pgbench comparison against AWS RDS and self-hosted Hetzner, or start on the free Postgres tier.
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Neon vs Hostim: the numbers
An always-on Postgres with the same memory, at Neon list prices read on 7 August 2026.
$77.38/month
Neon compute, 1 CU always on
730 hours at the Launch rate of $0.106/CU-hour. One CU is about 4 GB of RAM. Storage is billed separately.
$0.35/GB-month
Neon storage
On both Launch and Scale. Fifty gigabytes is $17.50/month on top of the compute above.
€50/month
Hostim drp-50 — 2 vCPU, 4 GB RAM, 50 GB
Flat. The same memory, always on, with storage and a hot standby included in the price.
Included on every plan
Database high availability
Primary plus hot standby with automatic failover, on shared plans too. Neon publishes an uptime SLA on Scale but bills compute per hour either way.
2,708 TPS
Managed PostgreSQL write throughput
pgbench, 4 clients, 300 s, plan drp-50 (2 vCPU / 4 GB). AWS RDS db.t4g.medium scored 1,080 TPS on the same test.
0.5 GB and 100 CU-hours per project
Neon free tier
Larger on storage than the Hostim free plan of 256 MB, but compute suspends when a monthly limit is hit and scale-to-zero after 5 minutes cannot be turned off.
Branching, scale-to-zero, 8 regions
Where Neon wins
Database branches per Git branch, compute that costs nothing while idle, autoscaling to 16 CU, and 8 AWS regions including Frankfurt and London. Hostim has none of the first three and runs one region.
Databricks (US)
Who owns Neon
Acquired for about $1 billion, announced May 2025. Neon runs on AWS. Hostim is a German UG running its own bare metal.
“If you want replicated Postgres without running it yourself, the flat, HA-included price is the number to compare against, not the single-node sticker.”
— Hostim.dev blog, “PostgreSQL Benchmark: AWS RDS vs Hostim vs Self-Hosted on Hetzner”
Sources
- Neon pricing — Neon (checked 2026-08-07)
- Plans — compute rates, scale to zero, branching limits — Neon docs (checked 2026-08-07)
- Supported regions — Neon docs (checked 2026-08-07)
- Databricks agrees to acquire Neon — Databricks (checked 2026-08-07)
- Hostim.dev price list — Hostim.dev (checked 2026-08-06)
- Managed PostgreSQL — high availability and failover — Hostim.dev docs (checked 2026-08-06)
- PostgreSQL benchmark: AWS RDS vs Hostim vs self-hosted on Hetzner — Hostim.dev blog, July 2026 (checked 2026-08-06)
Frequently asked questions
Is Hostim a Neon alternative?
For a normal application database, yes. Hostim runs managed PostgreSQL in Germany at a flat monthly price, from €0 for 256 MB and €10 for 10 GB, with a hot standby and automatic failover on every plan. It is not a feature match for Neon: Hostim has no database branching, no scale-to-zero and no autoscaling. If you use those, Neon is the better tool.
What does Neon do better than Hostim?
Three things, clearly. Branching — a full copy-on-write branch of the database per Git branch or per test run, which Hostim cannot do at all. Scale-to-zero — compute that costs nothing while idle, so a dormant database is close to free, where a Hostim plan is billed whether or not anything connects. And autoscaling up to 16 CU on demand, where a Hostim plan is a fixed size you change by hand. Neon also has 8 AWS regions to Hostim's one, and a larger free tier at 0.5 GB per project.
How does Hostim pricing compare to Neon?
Neon bills compute per hour and storage per gigabyte: $0.106/CU-hour on Launch, $0.222/CU-hour on Scale, and $0.35/GB-month for storage on both. A database that stays awake all month at 1 CU — roughly 4 GB of RAM — is 730 hours, about $77 in compute, plus storage on top. The comparable Hostim plan, drp-50 with 2 vCPU, 4 GB RAM and 50 GB of storage, is €50/month flat with the standby included. Where Neon wins on price is the opposite case: a database that is idle most of the time, or a free-tier project, can cost far less on Neon than any paid Hostim plan.
Can I connect to a Hostim database from outside the platform?
Only through the SSH bastion container. There is no public connection string like Neon's — Hostim databases are reachable from apps in the same project over private networking, and from your laptop through the bastion tunnel for dumps, restores and a psql session. If you need a database that any external service can dial directly over the internet, that is a real difference and Neon fits better.
Does Hostim support point-in-time restore or database branching?
No branching, and no self-service restore yet. Managed PostgreSQL is backed up off-site on every plan, but a restore is done by support on request rather than from the dashboard, and there is no instant-restore window like Neon's 7 or 30 days. You can take your own dumps at any time with pg_dump from the bastion.
Who owns Neon and where does it run?
Neon was acquired by Databricks, a US company, for about $1 billion — announced in May 2025. Neon runs on AWS, with EU regions in Frankfurt and London, so EU data residency is available there. The difference is corporate: a US-owned provider on US-owned cloud infrastructure falls under the US CLOUD Act, while Hostim is a German UG running its own bare-metal servers in Falkenstein.
How do I move a Neon database to Hostim?
A standard pg_dump from Neon and psql restore into the Hostim database, over the SSH bastion. Postgres is Postgres on both sides, so the schema and data move without translation. What does not move is anything built on Neon-specific features — branch-per-preview workflows, the Neon serverless driver over HTTP, or the Neon API — those need replacing before the cutover.
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