Neon Has a Free API You Should Know About

#neon #postgres #serverless #database

Neon gives you serverless PostgreSQL with branching, autoscaling, and a management API — and the free tier includes 0.5GB storage.

The Management API

# Create a project
curl -X POST 'https://console.neon.tech/api/v2/projects' \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $NEON_API_KEY" \
  -d '{"project": {"name": "my-saas"}}'

# Create a branch (instant database copy!)
curl -X POST 'https://console.neon.tech/api/v2/projects/PROJECT_ID/branches' \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $NEON_API_KEY" \
  -d '{"branch": {"name": "feature-auth", "parent_id": "main"}}'

Database Branching — Git for Databases

import { neon } from '@neondatabase/serverless'

// Production branch
const prodDb = neon(process.env.DATABASE_URL)

// Create a preview branch for each PR
const previewDb = neon(process.env.PREVIEW_DATABASE_URL)

// Both have the same schema and data — instant, zero-copy
const users = await prodDb`SELECT count(*) FROM users`
const previewUsers = await previewDb`SELECT count(*) FROM users`
// Same data, different branches!

Serverless Driver — HTTP Queries

import { neon } from '@neondatabase/serverless'

const sql = neon(process.env.DATABASE_URL)

// Tagged template queries (SQL injection safe)
const users = await sql`SELECT * FROM users WHERE active = ${true}`

// With parameters
const [user] = await sql`
  INSERT INTO users (name, email) 
  VALUES (${name}, ${email}) 
  RETURNING *
`

// Transaction
const results = await sql.transaction([
  sql`UPDATE accounts SET balance = balance - 100 WHERE id = 'alice'`,
  sql`UPDATE accounts SET balance = balance + 100 WHERE id = 'bob'`
])

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)

const activeUsers = await db.select()
  .from(users)
  .where(eq(users.active, true))
  .orderBy(desc(users.createdAt))
  .limit(10)

Autoscaling — Scale to Zero

Neon automatically scales your compute:

Active queries → scales up instantly
No queries for 5 minutes → scales to zero ($0 cost)
Cold start → ~500ms (vs hours for traditional RDS)

Real-World Use Case

A SaaS company was paying $300/month for RDS PostgreSQL that sat idle 95% of the time (dev/staging environments). They migrated to Neon: production runs on autoscaling compute, each dev gets their own branch (instant, shared storage), staging is a branch too. Monthly bill dropped from $300 to $19.

Neon made PostgreSQL act like a serverless database should.

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