The Dream: True Preview Environments
Vercel's preview deployments are amazing — every PR gets its own URL. But they all share the same database. One wrong migration in a preview can break production.
Neon's database branching solves this.
How It Works
main branch (Git) → production DB (Neon)
feature/auth PR → preview DB (auto-created)
feature/search PR → preview DB (auto-created)Each preview deployment gets its own database branch, automatically.
Setup
- Install Neon integration on Vercel
- Connect your Neon project
- That's it — Vercel handles the rest
# .github/workflows/neon-cleanup.yml
# Clean up Neon branches when PRs are closed
on:
pull_request:
types: [closed]
jobs:
cleanup:
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
steps:
- uses: neondatabase/delete-branch-action@v3
with:
project_id: ${{ vars.NEON_PROJECT_ID }}
branch: preview/pr-${{ github.event.number }}
api_key: ${{ secrets.NEON_API_KEY }}
The Three Environments
| Environment | Trigger | Database |
|---|
| Production | Push to main | production branch |
|---|---|---|
| Preview | PR created | Auto-created branch |
| Development | Local | vercel-dev branch |
Benefits
- Safe migrations - Test schema changes without risk
- Isolated data - Each PR has its own data
- Automatic cleanup - Branches deleted when PRs close
Conclusion
The combination of Vercel + Neon gives you true environment isolation with zero configuration. It's the infrastructure equivalent of "it just works."