Create a Neon project and add data

The steps that follow describe how to sign up for Neon, create a Neon project, and create a table and insert data using the Neon SQL Editor. You are also introduced to the Tables feature in the Neon Console, which you can use to explore your data.

Create a Neon account

If you do not have a Neon account, navigate to the Sign-in page and create an one using your GitHub or Google account.

When you sign up, you are automatically enrolled in Neon's Free Tier. If you are require larger compute and storage limits, Neon also offers paid plans. For more information, see Neon plans.

Create a project

After you sign in, click Create a project. Enter a name for your project or let Neon generate one for you, select a PostgreSQL version and a region, and click Create project.

• Neon supports both PostgreSQL 14 and 15. PostgreSQL 15 is the default.
• Neon supports several regions. For information about Neon's region support, see Regions.

You may have noticed that your project was created in just a few seconds. That’s one of the benefits of Neon’s serverless architecture. Neon is serverless PostgreSQL that separates compute and storage. A Neon compute is a stateless PostgreSQL instance, which allows Neon to provision PostgreSQL very quickly.

Another benefit of Neon's serverless architecture is that Neon is able to scale compute resources to zero after a period of inactivity to save on compute costs. This feature, referred to as Auto-suspend, suspends a compute after five minutes of inactivity. If you navigate to the Branches page in the Neon Console, you can watch how a compute switches from an Active to an Idle state. Active means that the compute is running. Idle means that the compute is suspended.

To learn more about Neon's serverless architecture, refer to the Neon architecture documentation.

Create a table

This tutorial uses a table called elements, which contains data from the periodic table. The example is based on the Neon with Next.js and Prisma application, which you can find in our examples repo on GitHub.

In the following steps, you will use the Neon SQL Editor to create the elements table. The SQL Editor allows you to query your databases directly the Neon Console. For more information about this feature, see Query with Neon's SQL Editor.

To create the elements table:

1. Navigate to the Neon Console.
2. Select your project.
3. Select SQL Editor from the sidebar.
4. Select a branch and a database. This tutorial uses the main branch and the default neondb database.
5. Enter the following query into the editor and click Run or use the ⌘+Enter shortcut.

CREATE TABLE elements (
  id INTEGER NOT NULL,
  elementName TEXT NOT NULL,
  atomicNumber INTEGER NOT NULL,
  symbol TEXT NOT NULL
);

The editor should report that the request ran successfully.

Insert data

In this step, you will add data to the elements table. In the SQL Editor, click New Query to clear the editor, and enter the following INSERT query to add data to your table:

INSERT INTO elements (id, elementName, atomicNumber, symbol)
VALUES
  (1, 'Hydrogen', 1, 'H'),
  (2, 'Helium', 2, 'He'),
  (3, 'Lithium', 3, 'Li'),
  (4, 'Beryllium', 4, 'Be'),
  (5, 'Boron', 5, 'B'),
  (6, 'Carbon', 6, 'C'),
  (7, 'Nitrogen', 7, 'N'),
  (8, 'Oxygen', 8, 'O'),
  (9, 'Fluorine', 9, 'F'),
  (10, 'Neon', 10, 'Ne');

To view the data that you added, select Tables from the sidebar in the Neon Console and select the elements table. The Tables feature allows you to easily explore the data in your Neon databases.

The data you inserted should be visible.