Comparison · Verified September 2026
Looking for a Neosync alternative?
Neosync did two jobs: it anonymized real production data, and it generated synthetic data. It is no longer maintained. SynthForge does one of those two jobs, and this page is clear about which.
TL;DR
Neosync was acquired by Grow Therapy, announced in September 2025, and its GitHub repository now says it is no longer actively maintained. If you used Neosync to mask or subset real production data, Greenmask is the closer successor and SynthForge is not a substitute: SynthForge never reads production data. If you used Neosync to get realistic relational test data without touching production at all, SynthForge is the closer match. Design the schema, generate every table in one pass with foreign keys intact, and download ready-to-load files.
Recent context
Grow Therapy announced the acquisition on 2025-09-25, describing Neosync as a company specializing in data privacy and security. The nucleuscloud/neosync repository (MIT, about 4,100 stars) opens with a disclaimer that Neosync has been acquired and the repository is no longer actively maintained, and it is archived; its last commit is dated 2025-08-30. As of September 2026, neosync.dev returns a 404 and app.neosync.dev and docs.neosync.dev no longer resolve. The code and its Docker Compose file are still in the archived repository, but nothing in it will be updated.
When Neosync, or an anonymization tool, is the right call
- • You need to anonymize or mask a real production database before copying it to staging or sharing it. That was Neosync's core job, and SynthForge cannot do it. Greenmask is an actively maintained open-source database anonymizer built for exactly this.
- • You need to subset a large production database into a smaller slice that keeps its relationships. Neosync did this; SynthForge does not.
- • You need data moved between environments through direct database connections. Neosync connected to Postgres, MySQL, SQL Server, MongoDB, DynamoDB and S3. SynthForge produces files and load scripts that you run yourself.
- • You need everything to run on your own infrastructure. SynthForge is cloud-only.
When SynthForge is the right call
- • You used Neosync's synthetic data generation to fill dev, CI or demo databases, and production data was never part of it. SynthForge generates every table in one pass, and every foreign key points at a parent row that exists.
- • You would rather not run and patch test data infrastructure yourself. SynthForge is a hosted web app with an API, a TypeScript SDK and a hosted MCP server.
- • You need ready-to-load output for several databases: DDL, CSV files and a native bulk-load script for PostgreSQL, MySQL, SQLite, SQL Server, MariaDB, DuckDB and CockroachDB, plus JSON, JSONL and Parquet.
- • You want to start from a plain-English description or pasted CREATE TABLE statements, and set how many children each parent gets as a ratio instead of a fixed count.
- • You want to start without a contract: the first 20,000 rows of every dataset are free, and larger runs use credits.
Feature comparison
Verified against primary sources in September 2026.
| Feature | SynthForge | Neosync |
|---|---|---|
| Product status (September 2026) | Live and hosted | Acquired by Grow Therapy. Repository archived and no longer maintained. |
| Reads production data | No, never | Yes. Anonymization and subsetting work on real source databases. |
| Anonymization / masking | No | Yes, with built-in transformers and custom ones in JavaScript or via an LLM |
| Subsetting | No | Yes, with referential integrity |
| Synthetic data generation | Yes, from a schema, across related tables in one pass | Yes |
| Foreign key integrity | Yes (single-column, by construction) | Yes |
| Database connections | None. You download files and load them. | Postgres, MySQL, SQL Server, MongoDB, DynamoDB, S3 |
| Output | DDL, CSV and a bulk-load script for 7 SQL dialects, plus JSON, JSONL and Parquet | Data written into connected destinations |
| Deployment | Hosted, cloud only | Self-hosted (Docker Compose or Kubernetes). The hosted app no longer resolves. |
| License | Proprietary, not open source | MIT |
Pricing comparison
SynthForge
All features. The first 20,000 rows of every dataset are free, no credit card. 10,000,000 rows per table, and a 1 GB cap on the download.
500 credits for $5. About 12 datasets of 1,000,000 rows, or many more at typical sizes.
Neosync
Archived and no longer maintained. You run it, and you patch it.
neosync.dev returns a 404 and app.neosync.dev no longer resolves, as of September 2026.
What SynthForge does not do that Neosync does
Honest tradeoffs, in case they decide the comparison for you.
- • SynthForge does not anonymize, mask or subset real data. If that was your Neosync use case, SynthForge is the wrong tool; look at Greenmask.
- • SynthForge does not connect to your databases or sync data between environments. It produces files and load scripts.
- • SynthForge is cloud-only and not open source. Neosync's code is MIT-licensed and still on GitHub, even though it is archived.
- • There is no way to import Neosync job definitions or transformers. You recreate the schema in SynthForge.