How do I connect my application to my Neon database using the connection string?

Once you have a connection string from the Connect widget on your Neon Project Dashboard, save it as an environment variable (commonly DATABASE_URL) and pass it to a Postgres driver in your code. Neon speaks the standard Postgres wire protocol, so anything that talks to Postgres works: pg, psycopg2, psql, Prisma, Drizzle, SQLAlchemy, and so on. For serverless and edge runtimes, the Neon serverless driver adds HTTP and WebSocket access.

1. Save the connection string in.env

DATABASE_URL="postgresql://alex:AbC123dEf@ep-cool-darkness-a1b2c3d4-pooler.us-east-2.aws.neon.tech/dbname?sslmode=require&channel_binding=require"

Add .env to .gitignore. Keep the sslmode=require and channel_binding=require parameters in place. Neon requires TLS.

2. Connect from your code

// Best for serverless and edge runtimes
import { neon } from '@neondatabase/serverless';

const sql = neon(process.env.DATABASE_URL);
const rows = await sql`SELECT * FROM users WHERE id = ${1}`;
console.log(rows);

For Prisma, Drizzle, SQLAlchemy, and other ORMs, see the framework guides.

3. Pick the right connection type

Neon offers two flavors of the same connection string:

• Pooled (hostname has -pooler): routes through PgBouncer in transaction mode and supports up to 10,000 concurrent client connections per compute. Use it for serverless functions, web apps, and high-concurrency clients.
• Direct: opens a session straight to Postgres. Use it for migrations, pg_dump, LISTEN/NOTIFY, logical replication, and any session-level features. The number of direct connections you can hold open scales with compute size.

The Connect widget gives you either by toggling Connection pooling. Most apps set DATABASE_URL to the pooled URL and DIRECT_URL to the direct URL for migrations. See Connection pooling for when to use which.

Choose your connection method

Compare drivers and connection types based on where you're deploying.

Read the docs