# Best Practices for Running Neon in Production

DevFeed: [Best Practices for Running Neon in Production](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/best-practices-for-running-neon-in-production-4926.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://neon.com/blog/6-best-practices-for-running-neon-in-production>)

Author: Russ Dias

Published: 2025-08-18T17:26:31Z

Content type: article

Language: en

Sources: [Blog -- Neon Docs](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/blog-neon-docs.md>)

Topics: [autoscaling](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/autoscaling.md>), [configuration](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/configuration.md>), [Database](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/database.md>), [Latency](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/latency.md>), [dashboards](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/dashboards.md>), [Development](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/development.md>)

Tags: [autoscaling](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/autoscaling.md>), [best-practices](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/best-practices.md>), [capacity](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/capacity.md>), [compute](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/compute.md>), [configuration](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/configuration.md>), [dashboards](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/dashboards.md>), [database](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/database.md>), [jobs](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/jobs.md>), [latency](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/latency.md>), [performance](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/performance.md>), [pitfalls](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/pitfalls.md>), [postgres](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/postgres.md>), [product](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/product.md>), [reports](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/reports.md>), [work](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/work.md>)

## AI overview

This article presents production guidance for Neon, focusing on configuration choices such as autoscaling, branching, and scale to zero. It recommends higher compute capacity and disabling scale to zero on production branches to avoid cold-start latency and maintain performance during traffic spikes, while retaining scale to zero for cost savings in suitable development, staging, testing, and internal-tool environments. It also introduces lightweight read replicas for read-heavy workloads such as analytics dashboards, background jobs, and reports.

## Source excerpt

In Neon, we're always trying to strike a balance between out-of-the-box configurations that work for most people and the flexibility to accommodate a wide range of use cases. By tweaking features like autoscaling, branching, and scale to zero, you can optimize Neon for many diffe...