Budget storage costs
Estimate charges from a known storage amount retained for a full billing month.
Neon · Const
Storage GB-month
A GB-month is Neon’s unit for storage: one gigabyte retained for one month. Usage reflects both stored amount and retention time, so shorter retention produces proportionally fewer GB-months.
How it works
Neon calculates GB-month usage from both the amount of data stored and the duration it remains stored. Usage is measured periodically, accumulated during the billing period, and resets when the next billing period begins.
Key points
- One GB-month represents one gigabyte stored for one month.
- Neon defines a gigabyte as a decimal billion bytes, not a binary gibibyte.
- Periodic storage measurements are added together throughout the billing period.
- The metric accounts for both stored volume and retention duration.
- Ten gigabytes kept for a complete month count as ten GB-months.
- The same ten gigabytes kept for half a month count as five GB-months.
Common mistakes
- Deleting data slows future accumulation but does not undo GB-months already accrued.
- The displayed GB-month total starts over at each billing-period boundary.
Example: Calculate GB-months
const gbMonths = 10 * 1;
console.log(gbMonths);Ten gigabytes stored for one full month equals ten GB-months.
When to use it
Evaluate retention policies
Compare the effect of keeping temporary data for different durations.
Interpret billing metrics
Explain usage-metering behavior to teammates or finance stakeholders.
Interview questions
QWhat does Neon mean by GB-month?
A GB-month measures one gigabyte stored for one month. Therefore, 10 GB retained for a full month produces 10 GB-months, while retaining it for half a month produces 5 GB-months.
Follow-up: How does deleting data affect the current period? It lowers the future accumulation rate, but previously accrued usage remains counted.
QWhy does storage duration matter?
GB-months combine storage quantity with retention time rather than representing only a capacity limit. The same data size contributes less when it is stored for a shorter portion of the billing period.
Follow-up: What happens at the next billing-period boundary? The accumulated GB-month usage resets to zero and a new period begins.
QHow is GB-month usage accumulated?
Neon measures storage usage periodically and adds those measurements across the billing period. The total reflects both how much data was stored and how long it was present.
Follow-up: Does removing data erase earlier usage? No; it only reduces the rate at which additional usage accumulates after removal.
Related
Storagebilling periodGBgibibyte