LayerbaseLayerbase

Best database for Next.js and Vercel in 2026

Next.jsVercelPostgresDatabases

Vercel does not run a database anymore. Vercel Postgres was their white-labelled Neon offering, and they wound it down in Q4 2024 and Q1 2025. Existing instances were migrated to Neon. The @vercel/postgres driver is no longer maintained. What Vercel sells now is a marketplace, and the database choice is yours.

So if you are starting a Next.js app on Vercel today, you have to pick. The list of credible options is shorter than the marketplace would suggest.

Neon

The default if you do not want to think about it. The Vercel marketplace integration is one click and the bill comes through Vercel. Branching is genuinely useful for preview deployments because each git branch can get its own database branch in seconds.

The thing to know is that Neon is now owned by Databricks (May 2025, $1B). Prices actually went down post-acquisition (storage 80% cheaper, free tier doubled). If that is fine with you, Neon is a good pick. If you would rather your database vendor not also be an enterprise AI platform, see Neon is now a Databricks product for the longer take.

Layerbase Cloud

What I build. Plain managed Postgres (and 20 other engines) with a Vercel-friendly serverless connection profile. Free dev tier, no card. Scale-to-zero on the free tier so cold and idle apps cost nothing. If your bill is going through Vercel and you want it to stay there, Neon is the smoother integration. If you want a database vendor that is not also chasing enterprise data-lakehouse customers, Layerbase Cloud is the one to try.

The other thing Layerbase gets you, which neither Neon nor Supabase do, is the rest of the engine catalog under one account. Postgres for your app, Redis for sessions, Meilisearch for full-text, Qdrant for vector. Same dashboard, same bill, same auth. For most Next.js apps that is one Postgres and one Redis, but it scales nicely if the stack grows.

Supabase

Postgres plus auth plus storage plus realtime plus row-level-security as one product. If you want all of that bundled and you like the Supabase developer experience, it is a good fit. The trade is that you are now opinionated about your auth and your storage layers in a way that you will pay to undo later if you outgrow them.

For a side project or an early-stage product, Supabase is fast. For a serious product where you expect to swap auth providers eventually, the bundling becomes a tax.

Convex

Not Postgres. A reactive document database with a TypeScript-native query language. If you are building something heavily real-time (collaborative editors, multiplayer, live dashboards), Convex is a different shape of database and the shape often fits better than bolting websockets onto Postgres.

The trade is that you are off SQL. If your team knows SQL, has SQL tooling, and might want a different backend in two years, Convex is a higher commit than Postgres.

PlanetScale

MySQL, not Postgres. They killed the Hobby tier in April 2024 and their pricing now starts higher than most Next.js side projects can justify. For teams that genuinely need PlanetScale's branching and schema migration tooling at scale, it is still good. For most Next.js apps, this is not the answer.

Turso / LibSQL

SQLite at the edge. Read-heavy globally-distributed apps get great latency from this because the database lives close to the user. For a Next.js app where most pages are read-mostly content, this is interesting. For write-heavy apps it is harder, because SQLite is single-writer per database.

Firebase

The default for "I do not want to deal with auth and database, just let me write the app." It works. It also locks you into a Google product surface that has burned a lot of developers (App Engine standard, Google Cloud Print, Stadia, the various Google chat apps). For a startup planning a multi-year product, Firebase is a bigger bet than it looks.

What about the non-database storage stuff?

A Next.js app on Vercel typically needs four pieces. Database, KV / sessions, file storage, and sometimes search or vector. Here is the short matrix:

  • Database: One of the above. For most apps, Postgres. Pick a host.
  • KV / Redis / sessions: Vercel KV is Upstash KV underneath. Upstash directly works, Layerbase Cloud Redis works, and a free-tier Redis is usually enough.
  • File storage: Vercel Blob is fine and bills through Vercel. Cloudflare R2 is cheaper at scale. S3 is the default if you have AWS already.
  • Full-text search: Postgres' tsvector is enough for most apps. Meilisearch on Layerbase or Algolia if you outgrow it.
  • Vector / RAG: pgvector inside your existing Postgres is fine through about 50M vectors. Qdrant or Weaviate above that. See the vector DB roundup for the longer take.

Short version

For a typical Next.js app on Vercel in 2026:

  • Postgres is still the right answer. Pick a host.
  • If you want the smoothest Vercel integration and do not care about the Databricks ownership, use Neon.
  • If you want plain managed Postgres without the enterprise-AI parent company, use Layerbase Cloud.
  • If you want Postgres plus auth plus storage in one product and you accept the lock-in, use Supabase.
  • If your app is heavily real-time and you do not need SQL, look at Convex.
  • Skip PlanetScale unless you specifically need their tooling at scale.
  • Skip Firebase unless you really do not want to think about the backend.

The good news is that all of these speak standard protocols (Postgres wire, MySQL wire, HTTPS). Migration between them is annoying but not exotic. Pick the one that fits today, plan to swap if it does not.

Something not working?

Best database for Next.js and Vercel in 2026 | Layerbase Blog