--- title: Rethinking Snapshots at Scale: Neon vs AWS RDS | daily.dev description: Neon's snapshot architecture differs fundamentally from AWS RDS by using copy-on-write storage and database branching instead of S3-based backups. RDS... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/rethinking-snapshots-at-scale-neon-vs-aws-rds-ibpn1u8up twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Rethinking Snapshots at Scale: Neon vs AWS RDS | daily.dev og:description: Neon's snapshot architecture differs fundamentally from AWS RDS by using copy-on-write storage and database branching instead of S3-based backups. RDS... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/rethinking-snapshots-at-scale-neon-vs-aws-rds-ibpn1u8up og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/IBPn1u8up.png og:image:alt: Rethinking Snapshots at Scale: Neon vs AWS RDS og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Rethinking Snapshots at Scale: Neon vs AWS RDS **[Neon](https://daily.dev/sources/neontech)** · 8 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Neon's snapshot architecture differs fundamentally from AWS RDS by using copy-on-write storage and database branching instead of S3-based backups. RDS snapshots require full instance provisioning and can take hours to restore for large databases, while Neon snapshots are instant regardless of database size (10 GB or 10 TB), queryable without a full restore, and don't require duplicate infrastructure. This enables workflows like safe migration testing, historical data inspection, and ad-hoc queries on past states — all impractical with RDS at scale. Neon's compute-storage separation means you can attach compute to any snapshot on demand, paying only for active usage. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Compute Autoscaling Report](https://daily.dev/posts/compute-autoscaling-report-vsfuupvnx) · Neon · 1 upvotes · 0 comments - [Three Ways to Use Your Snapshots](https://daily.dev/posts/three-ways-to-use-your-snapshots-cuqip9udd) · Neon · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Amazon Redshift reduces manual snapshot cost for Serverless and RG instances](https://daily.dev/posts/amazon-redshift-reduces-manual-snapshot-cost-for-serverless-and-rg-instances-z3okefqe9) · AWS · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [How Neon's lakebase architecture stays resilient to cloud failures](https://daily.dev/posts/how-neon-s-lakebase-architecture-stays-resilient-to-cloud-failures-j7quhswdh) · Neon · 6 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#postgresql](https://daily.dev/tags/postgresql), [#aws-rds](https://daily.dev/tags/aws-rds) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/rethinking-snapshots-at-scale-neon-vs-aws-rds-ibpn1u8up) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Rethinking Snapshots at Scale: Neon vs AWS RDS","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/rethinking-snapshots-at-scale-neon-vs-aws-rds-ibpn1u8up","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/rethinking-snapshots-at-scale-neon-vs-aws-rds-ibpn1u8up"},"datePublished":"2026-07-09T06:58:02.972Z","dateModified":"2026-07-09T07:05:08.637Z","description":"Neon's snapshot architecture differs fundamentally from AWS RDS by using copy-on-write storage and database branching instead of S3-based backups. 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