Neon vs Zilliz Cloud
Neon
neon.com
Zilliz Cloud
zilliz.comSide by side
| Figure | Neon | Zilliz Cloud |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $0.11/mo | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | Yes |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | Yes | — |
| macOS | Yes | — |
| Linux | Yes | — |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 3 | 4 |
| Spec score · Ai Databases | 8.3 (#9) | 7.3 (#31) |
| Integrations | Neon documents integrations and workflows involving Vercel, Prisma, Drizzle ORM, GitHub Actions, and its CLI. | Documented integrations include Prometheus, Datadog, AWS S3, Azure Blob Storage, Google Cloud Storage, and external model providers. |
| Product | Neon describes itself as a serverless, cloud-hosted PostgreSQL database service. | Zilliz Cloud is a fully managed Milvus service for deploying and scaling vector search applications. |
| Security | Neon states that stored data is encrypted with AES-256 and data in transit uses TLS 1.2 or higher. | Zilliz Cloud documents TLS 1.2 or higher in transit and AES-256 encryption at rest. |
| Support | Neon directs customers to its Discord community for questions and discussion. | Users can contact Zilliz Support to request access to features in private preview. |
Plans
Zilliz Cloud
- Free clusterFree
- Business CriticalPriced on request
- DedicatedPriced on request
- ServerlessPriced on request
In their own words
Neon
Neon is a managed, cloud-hosted PostgreSQL service for relational databases. It adjusts compute resources to workload and can suspend compute during inactivity, restarting it when database activity resumes. Database branches are isolated, can be created in about a second, and share data through copy-on-write storage. Neon supports connection pooling through PgBouncer, read replicas, high availability, point-in-time recovery, JSON data, and seven-day backup retention. An API lets teams manage projects and databases programmatically. Documented workflows include Vercel, Prisma, Drizzle ORM, GitHub Actions, and its CLI. The Free plan is free, with 10 projects, 50 CU-hours per month per project, 0.5 GB storage per project, 10 branches per project, and 5 GB monthly egress. Launch is $0.11 a month, billed at $0.106 per CU-hour; Scale is $0.22 a month, billed at $0.222 per CU-hour. Neon states that stored data is encrypted with AES-256 and data in transit uses TLS 1.2 or higher. It says it joined Databricks in May 2025 and is now part of the Databricks Platform.
Zilliz Cloud
Zilliz Cloud is a managed Milvus service for deploying and scaling vector search applications. It supports approximate nearest neighbor, filtered, hybrid, and full-text search. Teams can choose Free, Serverless, or Dedicated cluster deployments; Serverless clusters scale automatically to zero. During ingestion, the service can create vector embeddings from raw text using a configured embedding function.
Documented integrations include Prometheus, Datadog, AWS S3, Azure Blob Storage, Google Cloud Storage, and external model providers. Migration sources include Pinecone, Qdrant, Elasticsearch, and PostgreSQL. The service supports sparse vectors, metadata filtering, up to 32768 dimensions, and a range of index types, including FLAT, HNSW, DISKANN, and AUTOINDEX. SDKs are listed for Python, Java, Go, Node.js, and C++. The Free cluster costs nothing and includes 5 GB storage, 2.5M vCUs/month, and up to 5 collections. Dedicated and Serverless pricing is pay as you go; storage charges apply to stored data and backup files even when a cluster is stopped.