Neon

Neon is a serverless backend platform built around Lakebase Postgres and now part of the Databricks Platform, which it has been since May 2025. It combines a branchable Postgres database with managed authentication, S3-compatible object storage, serverless functions and an AI Gateway, and can be operated via MCP, CLI and SDK so coding agents can work with it.

What It Is

Neon is a managed Postgres and backend service aimed at developers, SaaS platforms and agent-driven app builders. Its Lakebase architecture separates storage from compute, and autoscaling adjusts CPU and memory to load. The company says it monitors database load ten times a second. Each database lives in a project with its own connection string, and a npx neon init command is shown for getting started.

Backend Primitives

Beyond the database, Neon offers Managed Better Auth for user authentication, object storage that branches with projects, functions that run close to the data without timeouts, and an AI Gateway that provides one API for frontier and open-source models. It also lists a Data API and search covering vector, keyword and hybrid queries.

Branching and Agent Workflows

Branching lets you create isolated copies of an environment, much like pull requests, and restore to an earlier point instantly instead of relying on manual backups. Neon says agents can create, test and roll back changes in these branches. The company also states that 80% of its databases are deployed by automated agents.

Embedded Postgres for Platforms

Platforms can provision a dedicated Postgres project per user through the API, usually in about a second, with resume from scale-to-zero in around 500ms. Per-project quotas cover active time, compute time, written data, data transfer and branch size, and consumption endpoints return hourly, daily or monthly usage for billing. A claimable-database flow hands out a database without signup; it expires after 72 hours unless the user claims it into a Neon account.

Security and Availability

The site lists SOC 2, ISO 27001, ISO 27701, GDPR, CCPA and HIPAA compliance, and says the platform runs on AWS and Azure. The enterprise page states a 99.95% uptime SLA for enterprise customers.