The production of energetic neutrons in ep collisions has been studied with the ZEUS detector at HERA. The neutron energy and pT2 distributions were measured with a forward neutron calorimeter and tracker in a 40 pb-1 sample of inclusive deep inelastic scattering (DIS) data and a 6 pb-1 sample of photoproduction data. The neutron yield in photoproduction is suppressed relative to DIS for the lower neutron energies and the neutrons have a steeper pT2 distribution, consistent with the expectation from absorption models. The distributions are compared to HERA measurements of leading protons. The neutron energy and transverse-momentum distributions in DIS are compared to Monte Carlo simulations and to the predictions of particle exchange models. Models of pion exchange incorporating absorption and additional secondary meson exchanges give a good description of the data. © 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.