Neon + Drizzle

Neon + Drizzle — The DIY baseline: serverless Postgres, a typed SQL query builder, nothing else. The reference point for this comparison rather than a competitor: serverless Postgres with branching and scale-to-zero, plus a TypeScript query builder that generates SQL you can read. There is no reactivity, no auth, no storage and no scheduler — you assemble those. In exchange every query is SQL, every migration is a file, and moving to any other Postgres is a connection string change. Built by Neon (Databricks) / Drizzle Team. Founded 2021. Acquired by Databricks, 2025 raised. Open source under Apache-2.0. We carry it as the do-it-yourself baseline, not as a vendor.

We track it in 1 comparison — Convex alternatives — so every claim below is a cell in a table you can open and check rather than an impression. Across those rosters it sits against 10 other tools, and what follows is where it visibly separates from them.

Where it wins.

• Exit cost — 1, the best figure of the 11 here.
• Full-text search — Yes, which only 4 of 11 tools here manage.
• Backing — big-tech, tied for best across 2 of 11 tools.
• Agent fit — 4, 2nd of 11.

Each of those is ranked against the whole roster on its category page, not against a hand-picked subset, so a first place here means first of everything we list.

Where it gives ground.

• Reactivity — manual, the weakest of the 11 here. Convex records push.
• Auth — bring-your-own, 8th of 11. Supabase records built-in.
• File storage — No. Convex records Yes.
• Optimistic writes — No. Convex records Yes.

None of these disqualify it on their own. They are the fields to check against your own requirements before you commit, because they are the ones where a competitor genuinely does better.

Provenance. 25 of 26 tracked fields carry a value for Neon + Drizzle, and 10 of those cite a document you can open. Last verified 2026-07-20. Every figure keeps its own provenance — measured by us, claimed by the vendor, inferred, or community-reported — and we would rather print a dash than a guess.

Its nearest neighbour in our data is Appwrite. Neon + Drizzle is ahead on Transactions (mvcc against none) and Raw SQL (Yes against No). Appwrite takes Reactivity (push against manual) and Cron & scheduling (Yes against No). That pattern repeats across the rest of the roster — see Neon + Drizzle alternatives for the other rivals, each compared the same way.

Company

Neon (Databricks) / Drizzle Team

Founded

2021

Funding

Acquired by Databricks, 2025

Licence

Apache-2.0 (open source)

Fields we track

25 of 26

Last verified

2026-07-20

Not a competitor — the yardstick. You write the realtime layer, the auth, the file handling and the scheduler yourself, and in exchange nothing you build is owned by anyone else. Every exit-cost score here is measured against this row.

Exit cost

11st of 11

Inferred

Reactivity

manual11th of 11

Inferred

Auth

bring-your-own8th of 11

Inferred

File storage

○No8th of 11

Inferred

Full-text search

●Yes1st of 11

Inferred

Backing

big-tech1st of 11

Vendor-claimedverified 2026-07-20source

Cold start

500 ms4th of 6

Vendor-claimedverified 2026-07-20source

Agent fit

42nd of 11

Inferred

Neon + Drizzle is the right call in these situations, each one drawn from a field we actually record:

• Teams that already know what backend they want to build.
• Applications expected to outlive several vendor relationships.
• Anyone whose realtime requirement is smaller than it first appeared.
• Exit cost is your binding constraint. Neon + Drizzle records 1, the best figure in the Convex alternatives roster. We define that field as 1–5 judgement score, lower is better, for how much application code must be rewritten to move off the platform, assuming the data is already extracted.
• Full-text search is your binding constraint. Neon + Drizzle records Yes, which only 4 of the 11 tools in the Convex alternatives roster do. We define that field as first-party text indexing with relevance ranking.
• Backing is your binding constraint. Neon + Drizzle records big-tech, the best figure in the Convex alternatives roster.
• Agent fit is your binding constraint. Neon + Drizzle records 4, 2nd of 11 in the Convex alternatives roster.

Reach for something else when any of the following is a requirement rather than a nice-to-have:

• Reactivity. Neon + Drizzle records manual, the weakest of the 11 tools in the Convex alternatives roster. Convex records push on the same field. If that is a hard requirement rather than a preference, start elsewhere.
• Auth. Neon + Drizzle records bring-your-own, 8th of 11 in the Convex alternatives roster. Supabase records built-in on the same field. If that is a hard requirement rather than a preference, start elsewhere.
• File storage. Neon + Drizzle records No on the Convex alternatives table. Convex records Yes on the same field. If that is a hard requirement rather than a preference, start elsewhere.
• Optimistic writes. Neon + Drizzle records No on the Convex alternatives table. Convex records Yes on the same field. If that is a hard requirement rather than a preference, start elsewhere.
• Cron & scheduling. Neon + Drizzle records No on the Convex alternatives table. Convex records Yes on the same field. If that is a hard requirement rather than a preference, start elsewhere.

We publish this block because a comparison that only lists what a tool is good at is marketing. Every figure above sits on the same page as its source, and the field definitions are on the category tables if you want to check how we measured them.

What we don't know. 1 of the 26 fields we track for Neon + Drizzle are still blank: Function timeout. Those render as dashes rather than as zeroes or assumptions, because an empty cell and a bad cell are not the same thing and only one of them is honest. If you know any of these figures and can point at a document, tell us.