Neon — Serverless Postgres with Database Branching

Key Features

Database Branching

# Create a branch for testing a migration
neon branches create --name feat/new-schema

# Branch has full copy of data — test freely
# Delete when done — production untouched
neon branches delete feat/new-schema

Use cases:

• Preview deployments (each PR gets its own DB branch)
• Schema migration testing
• AI agent sandboxing (let agents write to a branch, not production)

Scale to Zero

No traffic? Database sleeps and costs nothing. First query wakes it in ~500ms.

Serverless Driver

Works in edge functions (Cloudflare Workers, Vercel Edge):

import { neon } from "@neondatabase/serverless";

// Works in edge functions — no TCP connection needed
const sql = neon(process.env.DATABASE_URL);
const result = await sql`SELECT NOW()`;

MCP Server Tools

With the Neon MCP server, AI agents can:

"Create a new database branch for testing"
"Run this migration on the test branch"
"Show all branches and their sizes"
"Delete the test branch"
"List all tables in the production database"

Drizzle ORM Integration

import { drizzle } from "drizzle-orm/neon-http";
import { neon } from "@neondatabase/serverless";

const sql = neon(process.env.DATABASE_URL);
const db = drizzle(sql);

Free Tier

Key Stats

• 16,000+ GitHub stars
• Instant database branching
• Scale to zero (pay nothing when idle)
• Edge-compatible serverless driver
• MCP server available

FAQ

Q: What is Neon? A: Serverless PostgreSQL with instant database branching, autoscaling, and a free tier. Branch your database like git branches for safe testing.

Q: Is Neon free? A: Free tier includes 0.5 GB storage and 190 compute hours/month. Pro from $19/month.

Q: How fast is branching? A: Instant — branches use copy-on-write, so creating one takes milliseconds regardless of database size.