# MCP Toolbox for Databases vs Neon MCP Server

> MCP Toolbox for Databases scores 77.7 (BB) to Neon's 72.5 (BB) for sql databases. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/mcp-toolbox-databases-vs-neon-mcp
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/mcp-toolbox-databases-vs-neon-mcp.md (~4,300 tokens)
- Site index for agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt (the key docs and every listing in one file, at most 16 MB, about 4 million tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms-full.txt)
- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
- MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (the whole catalogue as tools, no key)
- DNS: dig +short TXT <slug>.grade.anchorterminal.com (the grade as a DNS TXT record, for a sandbox with no HTTP where names still resolve; also top., best.<category>. and <a>.vs.<b>. under the zone, and the same under grade.letme.dev)
- Licence: CC BY 4.0, credit Anchor Terminal and link this page (https://www.anchorterminal.com/terms/#data)
- Updated: 2026-11-07

MCP Toolbox for Databases scores 77.7 (BB) on agent readiness against Neon MCP Server's 72.5 (BB), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Neon MCP Server leads on schema & documentation and transparency & trust. Both do sql databases.

- MCP Toolbox for Databases: grade BB, 77.7/100, rank #27 of 1510. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/mcp-toolbox-databases.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/mcp-toolbox-databases.json
- Neon MCP Server: grade BB, 72.5/100, rank #125 of 1510. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/neon-mcp.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/neon-mcp.json
- Best database, file and memory tools for AI agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/best/data/index.md
- All 111 databases comparisons: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/data/index.md

## Which one, for what

### MCP Toolbox for Databases (BB)

Good for: Agents and coding assistants that need one server across Google Cloud data services and common databases, or production agents with curated SQL tools.

Ahead on:
- Reliability, 80 against 72
- Security & auth, 75 against 69
- Payments & pricing, 60 against 40
- Maintenance & community, 95 against 80

Also in its favour:
- Runs on your own machine
- Open source

Watch for: --allowed-origins and --allowed-hosts default to *, which the docs call unsafe

### Neon MCP Server (BB)

Good for: Agents building on Neon Postgres in development, especially branch-per-change workflows. supabase-mcp and planetscale-mcp are the nearest listings; Neon itself advises against pointing it at production.

Ahead on:
- Schema & documentation, 90 against 85
- Transparency & trust, 75 against 64

Also in its favour:
- A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install

Watch for: 138 tools listed when no category or project is set


## Why the edge

### Payments & pricing: MCP Toolbox for Databases +20

- MCP Toolbox for Databases (60): Free, self-hosted, nothing to buy, so 20 + 20 + 20. No payment protocol (0).
- Neon MCP Server (40): No x402, MPP or L402 (0). Per-unit prices are public, compute per CU-hour and storage per GB-month (20). Free plan with no card (20). A person signs up and authorises in a browser; the CLI can mint a key only after a login (0). 0 + 20 + 20 + 0 = 40.

### Maintenance & community: MCP Toolbox for Databases +15

- MCP Toolbox for Databases (95): v1.16.0 on 5 November 2026, one day before this check (30). Eight releases from v1.10.0 (27 August) to v1.16.0 in the 90 days (20). Pull requests merge daily and new tools land in each fortnightly release, though 432 issues and pull requests are open (20). io.github.googleapis/mcp-toolbox is in the official registry at 1.16.0 (15). Release automation, lint, tests and conformance workflows (10). 30 + 20 + 20 + 15 + 10 = 95.
- Neon MCP Server (80): v2.0.0 on 5 November 2026, one day before this check (30). 1.0.0 (registry, 17 September) and 2.0.0 in the 90 days, two releases (10). 53 open issues and pull requests, with commits most days; reply times weren't measured (15). com.neon/mcp in the official registry, a domain-verified namespace, at 2.0.0 (15). Unit, integration and end-to-end test suites, knip and lint in CI (10). 30 + 10 + 15 + 15 + 10 = 80.

### Transparency & trust: Neon MCP Server +11

- MCP Toolbox for Databases (64): Apache-2.0 (30). A self-hosted server; data goes only to the configured sources and to a telemetry exporter if one is set. There is no data-handling statement of its own (15). A versioning policy defining breaking changes, UPGRADING.md and a notice for the repository rename; prebuilt tool removals are listed in the changelog (16). Telemetry is off unless --telemetry-otlp or --telemetry-gcp is set, and the docs say so (16). 30 + 15 + 16 + 16 = 77.
- Neon MCP Server (75): MIT (30). Databricks' privacy notice (9 January 2026), the Neon product schedule (14 October 2026) with a DPA and a sub-contractor list linked from every page (24). The SSE retirement returns 410 with a pointer, and the stdio package is marked deprecated, but no notice period is stated (15). Telemetry is disclosed in the README, Segment identify with account ID, name and email plus every tool call, but hosted users have no opt-out (10). 30 + 24 + 15 + 10 = 79.

### Reliability: MCP Toolbox for Databases +8

- MCP Toolbox for Databases (80): Scored as local software the owner runs. A Go binary, a container in Artifact Registry and @toolbox-sdk/server on npm, with install paths per platform (20). Tests, lint, conformance and nightly tier-report workflows in the repository; the pass state wasn't read (15). 432 open issues and pull requests on a repository with 16,818 stars and releases every two weeks, triaged with labels, though the backlog is large (15). Semantic versioning with a published policy, release-please CHANGELOG and an UPGRADING.md (15). 1.x since well before this check, v1.16.0 now (15). 20 + 15 + 15 + 15 + 15 = 80.
- Neon MCP Server (72): Hosted reading. neonstatus.com on status.io with components per region, though no MCP component (20). The page shows only the last 30 days, three incidents, a partial disruption of monitoring data on 21 October (1 hour 22 minutes), slow compute starts in us-east-2 on 2 November (2 hours 14 minutes) and 26 minutes of console and API errors on 2 November; August and September weren't readable (15). The Neon API publishes 700 requests a minute with a 40-a-second burst per route (15). 429 with exponential backoff advice and 423 Locked for overlapping operations with retry guidance, but no idempotency keys (12). An uptime SLA on Scale only, with no percentage on the pricing page (5). The docs give the server no status label and the README says it isn't recommended for production (5). 20 + 15 + 15 + 12 + 5 + 5 = 72.

### Security & auth: MCP Toolbox for Databases +6

- MCP Toolbox for Databases (75): Source credentials stay in Toolbox, Google sources use IAM, and optional MCP authorisation validates OAuth 2.1 JWTs with required scopes. --allowed-origins and --allowed-hosts default to *, which the CLI docs themselves call unsafe even on localhost, though the default bind is 127.0.0.1 (20). Read-only mode is enforced at the engine, write tools are suppressed, and custom tools can fix SQL and bind parameters to the signed-in user (18). The security docs cover prompt injection and screening through Model Armor (12). OpenTelemetry traces and metrics per call when exported (10). Google's vulnerability intake with a stated response time and GitHub advisories (15). 20 + 18 + 12 + 10 + 15 = 75.
- Neon MCP Server (69): OAuth 2.1 with read and write scopes, per-project and per-role fixed grants, Client ID Metadata Documents and RFC 9207 iss on redirects, or API keys (28). Read-only mode keeps SQL in READ ONLY transactions and withholds connection strings, roleName limits SQL to a role's grants, and destructive tools ask the model to confirm with the user; with an API key anyone who can edit the URL can widen the grant (17). The README warns to review every action and keep the server away from production, but we found no prompt-injection guidance for query results (5). Neon has project audit logs, but we didn't read whether MCP calls appear (5). SOC 2 Type II with a public SOC 3, ISO 27001 and 27701, HIPAA; no security.txt on neon.com (14). 28 + 17 + 5 + 5 + 14 = 69.

### Schema & documentation: Neon MCP Server +5

- MCP Toolbox for Databases (85): Every tool's parameters are typed in tools.yaml and published as JSON Schema over MCP (25). mcp-toolbox.dev serves llms.txt (10). Prebuilt descriptions vary from one line ("Use this tool to execute a single SQL statement.") to detailed, and few say when not to use a tool (12). Typed parameters with required flags; execute_sql takes free SQL (12). Many examples, samples and codelabs; error responses are thinly documented (11). Semver, a dated CHANGELOG and versioned docs (15). 25 + 10 + 12 + 12 + 11 + 15 = 85.
- Neon MCP Server (90): Every tool has a JSON Schema, many generated from the Neon OpenAPI spec (25). neon.com serves llms.txt and Markdown pages (10). Descriptions say when and when not ("branch_id is a branch id, not a branch name. Call list_branches to resolve a name", "NEVER run autonomously") (18). Typed inputs with enums such as access read_only or read_write, and path arguments checked for . and .. since 2.0.0 (13). Examples in the README and docs, and API 4xx errors classified by kind (11). CHANGELOG with dated releases and a registry version (13). 25 + 10 + 18 + 13 + 11 + 13 = 90.

## Score by category

| Category | Weight | MCP Toolbox for Databases | Neon MCP Server | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 80 | 72 | MCP Toolbox for Databases +8 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 85 | 90 | Neon MCP Server +5 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 82 | 79 | MCP Toolbox for Databases +3 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 75 | 69 | MCP Toolbox for Databases +6 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 60 | 40 | MCP Toolbox for Databases +20 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 95 | 80 | MCP Toolbox for Databases +15 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 64 | 75 | Neon MCP Server +11 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **77.7 · BB** | **72.5 · BB** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | MCP Toolbox for Databases | Neon MCP Server |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | MCP server | MCP server |
| Vendor | Google | Neon (Databricks) |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | `https://mcp.neon.tech/mcp` |
| Transports | stdio, Streamable HTTP | Streamable HTTP |
| Auth | OAuth or key | OAuth |
| Pricing | Free | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Tools exposed | 29 | 138 |
| Read-only variant documented | yes | yes |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| MCP registry | `io.github.googleapis/mcp-toolbox` | `com.neon/mcp` |
| Last release | 2026-11-05 | 2026-11-05 |
| Terms last updated | no document linked | 2026-10-14 |
| Privacy policy last updated | no document linked | 2026-01-09 |
| Customer content may train models | not read yet | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict automated access | not read yet | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | not read yet | not found in the text |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not read yet | not found in the text |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | not read yet | not found in the text |
| Popularity | 17k stars | 663 stars |

## Verdicts

**MCP Toolbox for Databases.** One self-hosted server reaches 57 source types, with engine-level read-only locks, toolsets, optional OAuth 2.1 and fortnightly semver releases under Apache-2.0. Prebuilt sets list 9 to 41 tools, origin and host checks default to any, and 432 issues and pull requests are open.

**Neon MCP Server.** OAuth with read or write scopes, per-project and per-role grants, read-only SQL in READ ONLY transactions, and migrations tried on temporary branches. With no grant it lists 138 tools, the README advises against production use, and it sends account name and email to Segment with no opt-out for hosted users.

## Before you call either

### MCP Toolbox for Databases

1. Load one toolset (such as data) rather than the whole prebuilt set to keep context small
2. Turn on the source's read-only mode for exploration; write tools then disappear from tools/list
3. Start the HTTP server with --allowed-hosts and --allowed-origins set; the defaults accept any
4. Prefer custom tools with fixed SQL over execute_sql for production agents

### Neon MCP Server

1. Connect with ?category=querying&category=schema&projectId=... or untick Allow writes at consent to cut 138 tools to a handful
2. Use prepare_database_migration and complete_database_migration for schema changes, and ask the user before completing
3. Pass branch IDs (br-...), not names; call list_branches to resolve a name
4. On 429 back off exponentially, and on 423 Locked wait for the running operation to finish

## Questions

### Which is better for AI agents, MCP Toolbox for Databases or Neon MCP Server?

MCP Toolbox for Databases scores 77.7 (BB) on agent readiness against Neon MCP Server's 72.5 (BB), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Neon MCP Server leads on schema & documentation and transparency & trust.

### Do MCP Toolbox for Databases and Neon MCP Server need an API key?

MCP Toolbox for Databases takes an API key or an OAuth sign-in. Neon MCP Server uses an OAuth sign-in.

### Can an agent call MCP Toolbox for Databases and Neon MCP Server without installing anything?

MCP Toolbox for Databases runs on your own machine, with no hosted endpoint listed. Neon MCP Server has a hosted endpoint at https://mcp.neon.tech/mcp.

### Are MCP Toolbox for Databases and Neon MCP Server open source?

MCP Toolbox for Databases is open source (Apache-2.0). No open-source release is listed for Neon MCP Server.


## For agents

- This comparison as JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/mcp-toolbox-databases-vs-neon-mcp.json, and with the fewest tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/mcp-toolbox-databases-vs-neon-mcp.min.md
- Over MCP at https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (no key): `compare_tools {"a": "mcp-toolbox-databases", "b": "neon-mcp"}`. From a terminal: `anchor compare mcp-toolbox-databases neon-mcp`
- Each listing in full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/mcp-toolbox-databases.json and https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/neon-mcp.json

## Other comparisons with MCP Toolbox for Databases or Neon MCP Server

- [ClickHouse MCP Server vs MCP Toolbox for Databases](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/clickhouse-mcp-server-vs-mcp-toolbox-databases.md)
- [ClickHouse MCP Server vs Neon MCP Server](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/clickhouse-mcp-server-vs-neon-mcp.md)
- [DBHub vs MCP Toolbox for Databases](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/dbhub-vs-mcp-toolbox-databases.md)
- [DBHub vs Neon MCP Server](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/dbhub-vs-neon-mcp.md)
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- [MCP Toolbox for Databases vs PlanetScale MCP Server](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/mcp-toolbox-databases-vs-planetscale-mcp.md)
- [MCP Toolbox for Databases vs Postgres MCP Pro](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/mcp-toolbox-databases-vs-postgres-mcp-pro.md)
- [MCP Toolbox for Databases vs PostgreSQL (archived MCP reference server)](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/mcp-toolbox-databases-vs-postgres-reference-server-archived.md)
- [MCP Toolbox for Databases vs Snowflake-managed MCP server](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/mcp-toolbox-databases-vs-snowflake-managed.md)
- [MCP Toolbox for Databases vs Supabase API + MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/mcp-toolbox-databases-vs-supabase-mcp.md)
- [Neon MCP Server vs ObsessionDB](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/neon-mcp-vs-obsessiondb.md)
- [Neon MCP Server vs PlanetScale MCP Server](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/neon-mcp-vs-planetscale-mcp.md)
- [Neon MCP Server vs Postgres MCP Pro](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/neon-mcp-vs-postgres-mcp-pro.md)
- [Neon MCP Server vs PostgreSQL (archived MCP reference server)](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/neon-mcp-vs-postgres-reference-server-archived.md)
- [Neon MCP Server vs Snowflake-managed MCP server](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/neon-mcp-vs-snowflake-managed.md)
- [Neon MCP Server vs Supabase API + MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/neon-mcp-vs-supabase-mcp.md)
- [MongoDB MCP Server vs Neon MCP Server](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/mongodb-mcp-vs-neon-mcp.md)
- [Neon MCP Server vs Redis MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/neon-mcp-vs-redis-mcp.md)
- [Neon MCP Server vs ReqRes MCP server](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/neon-mcp-vs-reqres-mcp.md)
- [MCP Toolbox for Databases vs MongoDB MCP Server](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/mcp-toolbox-databases-vs-mongodb-mcp.md)
- [MCP Toolbox for Databases vs Redis MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/mcp-toolbox-databases-vs-redis-mcp.md)
- [MCP Toolbox for Databases vs ReqRes MCP server](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/mcp-toolbox-databases-vs-reqres-mcp.md)

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