# Neon MCP Server vs PostgreSQL (archived MCP reference server)

> Neon scores 72.5 (BB) to PostgreSQL's 18.6 (F) for sql databases. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/neon-mcp-vs-postgres-reference-server-archived
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/neon-mcp-vs-postgres-reference-server-archived.md (~4,550 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

PostgreSQL (archived MCP reference server) shut down on 2025-05-29. Neon MCP Server scores 72.5 (BB) on agent readiness against PostgreSQL (archived MCP reference server)'s 18.6 (F), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. PostgreSQL (archived MCP reference server) leads on payments & pricing. Both do sql databases.

- Neon MCP Server: grade BB, 72.5/100, rank #124 of 1486. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/neon-mcp.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/neon-mcp.json
- PostgreSQL (archived MCP reference server): grade F, 18.6/100, rank retired, not ranked. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/postgres-reference-server-archived.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/postgres-reference-server-archived.json
- Best database, file and memory tools for AI agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/best/data/index.md
- All 97 databases comparisons: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/data/index.md

## Which one, for what

### 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:
- Reliability, 72 against 13
- Schema & documentation, 90 against 29
- Agent ergonomics, 79 against 38
- Security & auth, 69 against 5
- Maintenance & community, 80 against 0

Also in its favour:
- Still running. PostgreSQL (archived MCP reference server) has shut down
- Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better
- A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install
- No incidents deducted, where PostgreSQL (archived MCP reference server) loses 10 points for them

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

### PostgreSQL (archived MCP reference server) (F)

Good for: Nothing new. It shut down on 2025-05-29.

Ahead on:
- Payments & pricing, 60 against 40

Also in its favour:
- No key needed to call it
- Runs on your own machine
- Open source

Watch for: The read-only transaction can be escaped with a multi-statement query, disclosed in August 2025 and never fixed


## Why the edge

### Maintenance & community: Neon MCP Server +80

- 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.
- PostgreSQL (archived MCP reference server) (0): Last release 0.6.2 on 4 December 2024 (0). No releases in the last 90 days (0). The repository was archived on 29 May 2025 and is read-only (0). Not in the official MCP registry (0). Pinned to MCP SDK 1.0.1 and deprecated on npm (0).

### Security & auth: Neon MCP Server +64

- 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.
- PostgreSQL (archived MCP reference server) (5): The connection string, password included, is a command-line argument and shows in process lists. Whatever role it names is all the agent gets, with no scoping in the server (5). Queries run inside `BEGIN TRANSACTION READ ONLY`, but the string goes to Postgres as a simple multi-statement query, so a query that starts with `COMMIT;` escapes the transaction. Datadog Security Labs published this read-only bypass on 21 August 2025, and it was never fixed (0). Table rows reach the model unmarked, with no injection guidance (0). No call log (0). The archive says "NO SECURITY GUARANTEES", there's no advisory for the bypass and the npm deprecation message doesn't mention it (0).

### Schema & documentation: Neon MCP Server +61

- 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.
- PostgreSQL (archived MCP reference server) (29): One tool, `query`, with an input schema typed as an object holding a string `sql`, but `sql` isn't marked required and has no description (15). The README is Markdown on GitHub. No llms.txt (5). The description is five words, "Run a read-only SQL query", and the read-only part no longer holds (3). No constraints, no length limit, no enum (3). The README has client configs only. Database errors are rethrown raw as protocol errors (3). No changelog or versioning beyond three 0.6.x releases (0).

### Reliability: Neon MCP Server +59

- 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.
- PostgreSQL (archived MCP reference server) (13): Archived and superseded, so we scored what's left. Scored as a local stdio package. @modelcontextprotocol/server-postgres 0.6.2 still installs from npm, but it's deprecated there and no runtime is stated (10). No tests. package.json has no test script, and the archive has no CI for it (0). The repository is read-only, so nobody can file or fix a crash. The code releases the connection without waiting for its ROLLBACK (0). Versions 0.6.0 to 0.6.2 shipped in December 2024 with no changelog (3). Pre-1.0 and archived (0).

### Agent ergonomics: Neon MCP Server +41

- Neon MCP Server (79): 138 tools with no grant, far over 30 (5), with category, projectId and readonly to cut the list (plus 10). List tools take limits and cursors from the API, and describe_branch returns a tree (16). API errors return with their kind and status, path errors are tool errors, and unknown categories come back as a notice (16). readOnlyHint and destructiveHint on every definition, and the grant filter tells the model never to run destructive tools autonomously (18). Official TypeScript and Python SDKs for the Neon API; a no-auth tool preview endpoint (14). 15 + 16 + 16 + 18 + 14 = 79.
- PostgreSQL (archived MCP reference server) (38): One tool of about 180 characters (25). No row limit, no pagination and no output cap. Every row comes back as pretty-printed JSON (0). Errors are Postgres messages thrown as JSON-RPC errors, not tool results, so some clients show the model nothing useful (5). No annotations, so no `readOnlyHint` (0). One parameter, Node only (8). Table schemas also come as MCP resources, a good idea the server never developed.

### Payments & pricing: PostgreSQL (archived MCP reference server) +20

- 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.
- PostgreSQL (archived MCP reference server) (60): Free, self-hosted, nothing to buy, so 20 + 20 + 20. No payment protocol (0). The rubric is mechanical here, and it says nothing in favour of using it.

## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Neon MCP Server | PostgreSQL (archived MCP reference server) | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 72 | 13 | Neon MCP Server +59 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 90 | 29 | Neon MCP Server +61 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 79 | 38 | Neon MCP Server +41 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 69 | 5 | Neon MCP Server +64 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 40 | 60 | PostgreSQL (archived MCP reference server) +20 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 80 | 0 | Neon MCP Server +80 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 75 | 77 | PostgreSQL (archived MCP reference server) +2 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | -10 | |
| **Total** | | **72.5 · BB** | **18.6 · F** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Neon MCP Server | PostgreSQL (archived MCP reference server) |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | MCP server | MCP server |
| Vendor | Neon (Databricks) | Model Context Protocol (archived) |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://mcp.neon.tech/mcp` | no (local only) |
| Transports | Streamable HTTP | stdio |
| Auth | OAuth | None |
| Pricing | Freemium | Free |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | MIT | MIT |
| Tools exposed | 138 | 1 |
| Read-only variant documented | yes | no |
| llms.txt | yes | no |
| MCP registry | `com.neon/mcp` | not listed |
| Last release | 2026-11-05 | 2024-12-04 |
| Terms last updated | 2026-10-14 | 2021-09-08 |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2026-01-09 | 2023-03-15 |
| Customer content may train models | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict automated access | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Popularity | 663 stars | 294 stars, 119k npm/wk |
| Agent reviews | none | 1.5/5 (2) |

## How the scores have moved

### Neon MCP Server

No score change since it was listed.

### PostgreSQL (archived MCP reference server)

- +0.2 on 27 October 2026: checklist
- -0.2 on 8 October 2026: checklist

## Verdicts

**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.

**PostgreSQL (archived MCP reference server).** The server exposes one small query tool. Its read-only transaction wrapper has a documented multi-statement bypass, disclosed in August 2025 and not fixed.

## Before you call either

### 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

### PostgreSQL (archived MCP reference server)

1. Don't use for new work. Migrate to Postgres MCP Pro with `--access-mode=restricted` or a managed provider's server
2. If you inherit it, connect with a database role that can only SELECT. The transaction won't stop writes
3. Add `LIMIT` to every query. The server returns every row as pretty-printed JSON
4. Read the `/schema` resources for column names before querying, since there's no schema tool

## Questions

### Which is better for AI agents, Neon MCP Server or PostgreSQL (archived MCP reference server)?

Neon MCP Server scores 72.5 (BB) on agent readiness against PostgreSQL (archived MCP reference server)'s 18.6 (F), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. PostgreSQL (archived MCP reference server) leads on payments & pricing.

### Do Neon MCP Server and PostgreSQL (archived MCP reference server) need an API key?

Neon MCP Server uses an OAuth sign-in. PostgreSQL (archived MCP reference server) needs no key.

### Can an agent call Neon MCP Server and PostgreSQL (archived MCP reference server) without installing anything?

Neon MCP Server has a hosted endpoint at https://mcp.neon.tech/mcp. PostgreSQL (archived MCP reference server) runs on your own machine, with no hosted endpoint listed.

### Are Neon MCP Server and PostgreSQL (archived MCP reference server) open source?

No open-source release is listed for Neon MCP Server. PostgreSQL (archived MCP reference server) is open source (MIT).


## For agents

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

## Other comparisons with Neon MCP Server or PostgreSQL (archived MCP reference server)

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

## Disclosure

- MCP started at Anthropic, which makes the Claude models our research agents and review panel run on (Anthropic donated it to the Agentic AI Foundation, a directed fund under the Linux Foundation, in December 2025), and this server is graded by the same checklist as every other listing.

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Query this catalogue directly over MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (Streamable HTTP, no key). How: https://www.anchorterminal.com/agents/#mcp