neon-postgres-egress-optimizer

Postgres Egress Optimizer

When to Use

Use this skill when you need diagnose and fix excessive Postgres egress (network data transfer) in a codebase. Use when a user mentions high database bills, unexpected data transfer costs, network transfer charges, egress spikes, "why is my Neon bill so high", "database costs jumped", SELECT * optimization, query...

Guide the user through diagnosing and fixing application-side query patterns that cause excessive data transfer (egress) from their Postgres database. Most high egress bills come from the application fetching more data than it uses.

Step 1: Diagnose

Identify which queries transfer the most data. The primary tool is the pg_stat_statements extension.

Check if pg_stat_statements is available

SELECT 1 FROM pg_stat_statements LIMIT 1;

If this errors, the extension needs to be created:

CREATE EXTENSION IF NOT EXISTS pg_stat_statements;

On Neon, it is available by default but may need this CREATE EXTENSION step.

Handle empty stats

Stats are cleared when a Neon compute scales to zero and restarts. If the stats are empty or the compute recently woke up:

1. Reset the stats to start a clean measurement window: SELECT pg_stat_statements_reset();
2. Let the application run under representative traffic for at least an hour.
3. Return and run the diagnostic queries below.

If the user has