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Serverless Postgres speaks PostgreSQL

Connect Neon to Excel, Google Sheets, AI and REST

Neon serverless Postgres, direct or through the pooled endpoint. Paste the string Neon gave you.

Start free 13 destinations

One connection, every surface

Where your Neon data can go

Neon live tables · read-only
Federated queries + any other connector · one SQL across sources · every plan
Network Agent
  • 1 outbound connection
  • 0 inbound ports
  • read-only · credentials stay put

runs on

Query Streams connects Neon to Microsoft Excel, Google Sheets, AI assistants over MCP, the REST API and Power BI through one read-only connection. The self-hosted agent speaks standard PostgreSQL to Neon's direct or pooled endpoint — TLS forced for .neon.tech hosts, the PgBouncer -pooler endpoint auto-detected, scale-to-zero wake absorbed by a 30-second timeout. No ODBC drivers, no inbound firewall ports.

Neon is PostgreSQL on the wire — the standard driver, so every guide below applies unchanged. The only Neon-specific part is the connection string, covered under connection details.

  1. For your team, vendors and partners

  2. Neon to Excel Microsoft Excel · Excel add-in

    Pull live Neon results straight into a worksheet and refresh them on demand — desktop Excel, Excel Online, Microsoft 365.

    PostgreSQL guide

  3. Neon to Google Sheets Sheets add-on

    Run a saved Neon query from the sidebar and drop the rows into the sheet. Shared collaborators can refresh it themselves.

    PostgreSQL guide

  4. Ask Nova about Neon Nova AI · text to SQL

    Ask a question in plain English. Nova already knows your Neon tables, writes and runs the SQL, explains the answer and charts it — no query to write, no credentials to hand over.

    How Nova works

  5. Neon to Data Viewer result sharing · team, vendors, partners · phone, tablet, desktop

    Share a live Neon result with anyone — a colleague, a vendor, a partner — as a bookmarkable grid that re-runs fresh when opened, on a phone, a tablet or a desktop. They see the results, never the SQL or the credentials.

    How the Data Viewer works
  6. For apps and systems

  7. Neon REST API HTTP endpoint

    Publish a Neon query as an authenticated JSON endpoint any application can call, with an OpenAPI 3.1 spec and ready-made Postman, Insomnia and Hoppscotch collections. No database port is opened.

    PostgreSQL guide

  8. Neon to Power BI Power Query M

    Paste the generated Power Query M into the Power BI Advanced Editor and the report reads live Neon results over HTTPS — no ODBC driver, no database port opened.

    How Power BI works

  9. Neon to Airtable Automation platform

    Sync Neon rows into an Airtable base on a schedule, or fetch them inside an Airtable automation script.

    PostgreSQL guide

  10. Neon to Baserow Automation platform

    Feed a Baserow table from Neon over the REST endpoint — self-hosted or Baserow cloud.

    PostgreSQL guide

  11. Neon to SeaTable Automation platform

    Keep a SeaTable base current with Neon data without exporting a file or exposing the database.

    PostgreSQL guide

  12. Neon to Smartsheet Automation platform

    Push Neon results into a Smartsheet grid so plans and reports read from the source system, not last week's export.

    PostgreSQL guide

  13. Neon to Anvil Anvil Works · App platform

    Back an Anvil Python app with Neon through the REST endpoint instead of embedding database credentials in the app.

    PostgreSQL guide
  14. For AI tools

  15. Neon MCP server Claude, Cursor and MCP clients

    Give an AI assistant read-only access to Neon with the schema it needs to write correct SQL — no credentials in the chat.

    PostgreSQL guide
  16. Delivered to people

  17. Neon alerts and reports Slack · Discord · Email · Webhook

    Put a Neon query on a schedule and have the rows delivered to Slack, Discord, email or a signed webhook — or hold the message until a row count, threshold or percentage change crosses the line you set.

    How alerts and reports work

How it works

5 steps, no inbound firewall change

01

Install the Network Agent wherever suits you — a laptop, a VM, a container. Neon is a public endpoint, so the agent needs outbound HTTPS and nothing else: no inbound rule, no VPC peering, no IP allow-list.

02

Paste the URI from the Neon console. Host, port, database and role are read out of it, and the pooled and direct strings are both accepted.

03

Choose pooled or direct. Pooled is the default and the right answer for query traffic; direct is capped by the compute's max_connections.

04

Leave SSL on. The agent forces it for any .neon.tech host, so a string that lost its ?sslmode=require somewhere in the clipboard still connects encrypted.

05

Save. The schema is read through information_schema and pg_catalog, and from then on Excel, Sheets, an MCP client and the REST API all read that branch through the one connection.

Feature deep-dive

What Neon gives you

Shared by every database connector

True of every database connector

  • Outbound only — the agent opens one encrypted connection out to Query Streams. No inbound port to forward, no VPN, no IP allowlist, nothing about your database exposed to the internet.
  • Credentials stay put — the database username and password live on the machine you installed the agent on. Query Streams never receives them and cannot reach your database on its own.
  • Read-only, enforced — one statement at a time, SELECT and friends only. A write is rejected on your own machine before it is ever sent to the server, rather than relying on a permission somebody remembered to set.
  • Deploy as many agents as you like — one per site, region or cloud. Every data source they can see arrives in a single dropdown, so nobody has to know which agent hosts what.

What you get once a query is saved

  • Share the capability, not the SQL — a colleague or an outside partner can run your query and change its filters without ever seeing the statement behind it.
  • Filters from either direction — declare them yourself as @variables, or let the connector spot the literal values already sitting in your WHERE clause and offer those as dropdowns.
  • Read it from anywhere — Microsoft Excel, Google Sheets, Power BI, the REST API, AI assistants over MCP, the Query Builder and Nova all read the same saved query.
  • Run several at once — five saved queries into five worksheet tabs, streamed concurrently, however large the results.
  • Join it to anything else you have connected — another database, a business API, or a folder of files, in one read-only statement.

Cross-source SQL

Join Neon to the rest of your data

One statement can span Neon and your other connections at once. Each source runs only the part it can, streams the result back, and the join happens centrally — the sources never talk to each other and nothing is copied anywhere.

3 connections · 3 agents

Neon Serverless Postgres
Microsoft SQL Server Relational engine
Stripe Payments & billing

One statement

-- nothing copied, nothing merged, nothing scheduled
SELECT   c.region, COUNT(*) AS orders, SUM(i.amount_due) AS invoiced
FROM     neon.public.orders1      f
JOIN     erp_sql.dbo.customers2   c ON c.id = f.customer_id
JOIN     billing.stripe.invoices3 i ON i.customer = c.stripe_id
GROUP BY c.region
ORDER BY invoiced DESC;

The three parts are connection, schema and table — and the connection name is whatever you called it. Illustrative columns; your tables will be your tables. Read-only applies to every piece: SELECT, WITH and EXPLAIN only, with a ceiling on how much any one source may hand over for a single query. How federated queries work

Connection details

What Neon needs

Port
5432
Driver
Npgsql 9.0.3, carried by the agent — nothing to install at the Neon end
TLS
Required, and forced by the agent for every .neon.tech host
Database
neondb, unless you renamed it
Role
Any Neon role and its password from the console; a SELECT-only role is the right one
Direct host
ep-<name>-<id>.<region>.aws.neon.tech
Pooled host
ep-<name>-<id>-pooler.<region>.aws.neon.tech — same domain, same port
Connect timeout
30 seconds, sized to cover a wake from scale-to-zero

Pooled or direct is the only real decision, and it is reversible. Neon's pooled endpoint is the same domain and port with -pooler added to the hostname, running PgBouncer in transaction mode for up to 10,000 client connections. The agent recognises that infix and adapts to it: it stops resetting the session on close and pins auto-prepare off, because Npgsql's auto-prepare uses named prepared statements and those do not survive the backend being reassigned between transactions. None of that is yours to configure — paste either string and the right behaviour follows.

A Neon compute suspends when it is idle, so the first query after a quiet spell pays a few seconds to wake it. The 30-second connect timeout is sized for that rather than for a fast failure, which is why a cold branch feels slow exactly once.

Grant the role SELECT and nothing more — Neon is ordinary Postgres, so GRANT SELECT ON ALL TABLES IN SCHEMA public plus ALTER DEFAULT PRIVILEGES covers tables added later. Independently of that grant, the agent refuses any statement that is not a read before it ever reaches Neon.

Every Neon branch has its own endpoint, so a branch is simply another connection. Point one data source at main and another at a dev branch and both sit in the same account, queryable side by side.

Vendor documentation: neon.com

FAQ

Questions about Neon

Which tools can read Neon data through Query Streams?

All of them, from one connection: Excel, Google Sheets, MCP, REST API, Airtable, Baserow, SeaTable, Smartsheet, Anvil, Power BI, scheduled alerts and reports. Connect the database once and every surface reads the same read-only connection — there is no per-tool setup and no second copy of the data.

Do I have to open a firewall port to my Neon database?

No. The Query Streams Network Agent runs inside your network and opens a single outbound encrypted connection. Nothing listens for inbound traffic, no VPN is required, and the database keeps its existing firewall rules.

Can Query Streams change data in Neon?

No. The agent enforces read-only at the point of execution — one statement at a time, SELECT and friends only. Credentials stay on the agent and are never sent to Query Streams.

What does Query Streams need to connect to Neon?

A reachable host, a role and its password — the agent carries the driver, so nothing is installed on the database. Port: 5432. Driver: Npgsql 9.0.3, carried by the agent — nothing to install at the Neon end. TLS: Required, and forced by the agent for every .neon.tech host. Database: neondb, unless you renamed it.

Can I join Neon to another database in the same query?

Yes — that is a federated query. One statement can reference Neon and your other connections at once, written as connection.schema.table. Each source runs only the part it can and streams the result back; the join happens centrally, so the sources never connect to each other and nothing is copied or scheduled. Read-only applies to every piece — SELECT, WITH and EXPLAIN only — and there is a ceiling on how much any one source may hand over for a single query. Federated queries are a plan feature; the federated queries page carries the current source and size limits.

Is connecting Neon different from connecting PostgreSQL?

Only the connection string. Neon speaks the PostgreSQL wire protocol, so filters, scheduling, sharing, the Excel and Google Sheets add-ons and the MCP server all behave identically. The Neon card pre-fills the host, port and SSL settings that provider expects.

Is there a Neon to Excel guide?

Yes — it is the PostgreSQL guide, and it is correct for Neon as written. Neon speaks the PostgreSQL wire protocol, so Neon to Excel, Neon to Google Sheets and every other destination follow the same steps. The only Neon-specific part is the connection string, and the Neon card fills that in for you.

Put Neon where the work happens

Install the agent, point it at your database, and pick a destination.

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Read-only Outbound only Credentials stay on the agent