Does Ruby on Rails Work With Neon?

Fully CompatibleLast verified: 2026-02-20

Rails works seamlessly with Neon as a drop-in PostgreSQL replacement, requiring only connection string changes.

Quick Facts

Compatibility

full

Setup Difficulty

Trivial

Official Integration

No — community maintained

Confidence

high

Minimum Versions

Ruby on Rails: 6.0

How Ruby on Rails Works With Neon

Ruby on Rails uses PostgreSQL as its primary database, and Neon is a fully PostgreSQL-compatible serverless database. This means Rails applications connect to Neon exactly as they would any other PostgreSQL instance—just point your database URL to Neon's connection string. Rails' ActiveRecord ORM handles all query execution transparently. Neon's branching feature is particularly valuable for Rails development: create isolated database branches for feature branches, testing, or CI/CD pipelines without affecting production. The autoscaling and generous free tier make Neon ideal for Rails side projects and startups. Connection pooling via pgBouncer is built into Neon, which handles Rails' typical connection patterns well. The only architectural consideration is that Neon connections are HTTP-based with some latency characteristics that differ from local PostgreSQL, but this is negligible for typical Rails applications.

Best Use Cases

→SaaS applications with multi-tenant schemas using Neon's branching for isolated testing environments

→Rails startups leveraging the free tier for development and small production workloads with automatic scaling

→Rapid prototyping where database branching enables risk-free feature experimentation

→CI/CD pipelines that spin up ephemeral database branches per test run, automatically cleaning up after completion

Rails Database Configuration with Neon

bash

rails new myapp --database=postgresql

ruby

# config/database.yml
default: &default
  adapter: postgresql
  encoding: unicode
  pool: <%= ENV.fetch("RAILS_MAX_THREADS") { 5 } %>
  timeout: 5000

production:
  <<: *default
  url: <%= ENV['DATABASE_URL'] %>

# Use Neon connection string:
# DATABASE_URL=postgresql://user:password@ep-cool-cloud.us-east-1.neon.tech/dbname?sslmode=require

# Or set in .env for development:
# POSTGRES_HOST=ep-cool-cloud.us-east-1.neon.tech
# POSTGRES_DB=myapp_dev
# POSTGRES_USER=neonuser
# POSTGRES_PASSWORD=your_password

Known Issues & Gotchas

warning

Connection pooling misconfiguration can exhaust Neon's connection limit on high-concurrency workloads

Fix: Configure Rails' database.yml with appropriate pool size (typically 5-10 for most Rails apps) and use pgBouncer integration that Neon provides by default

info

Cold starts on serverless tier may cause initial query latency if the compute hasn't been accessed recently

Fix: Use Neon's autosuspend feature carefully in development; for production, keep a fixed compute instance or configure wake-up queries

info

Some Rails database-specific migration features may behave differently due to Neon's PostgreSQL version differences

Fix: Verify your Neon PostgreSQL version matches your Rails database adapter expectations; Neon typically runs recent stable versions

Alternatives

•Amazon RDS Aurora PostgreSQL with Rails - traditional managed database with more manual scaling configuration
•Vercel Postgres (built on Neon) - similar serverless PostgreSQL but with tighter Vercel ecosystem integration
•PlanetScale MySQL with Rails - serverless MySQL alternative with different branching model and MySQL-specific quirks

Resources

docsNeon PostgreSQL Documentation docsRails Database Configuration Guide tutorialNeon with Ruby on Rails Tutorial

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