---
title: Scale your AI application with Neon
subtitle: Scale your AI application with Neon's Autoscaling and Read Replica features
summary: >-
  Covers the scaling of AI applications using Neon's Autoscaling and Read
  Replica features, detailing vertical and horizontal scaling options with
  specific compute sizes and associated memory configurations.
enableTableOfContents: true
updatedOn: '2026-02-06T22:07:32.727Z'
---

You can scale your AI application built on Postgres with `pgvector` in the same way you would any Postgres app: Vertically with added CPU, RAM, and storage, or horizontally with read replicas.

In Neon, scaling vertically is a matter of selecting the desired compute size. Neon supports compute sizes ranging from .25 CU (1 GB RAM) up to 56 CU (224 GB RAM). Autoscaling is supported up to 16 CU. Larger computes are fixed size computes (no autoscaling). The `maintenance_work_mem` values shown below are approximate.

| Compute Units (CU) | RAM    | maintenance_work_mem |
| :----------------- | :----- | :------------------- |
| 0.25               | 1 GB   | 64 MB                |
| 0.50               | 2 GB   | 64 MB                |
| 1                  | 4 GB   | 67 MB                |
| 2                  | 8 GB   | 134 MB               |
| 3                  | 12 GB  | 201 MB               |
| 4                  | 16 GB  | 268 MB               |
| 5                  | 20 GB  | 335 MB               |
| 6                  | 24 GB  | 402 MB               |
| 7                  | 28 GB  | 470 MB               |
| 8                  | 32 GB  | 537 MB               |
| 9                  | 36 GB  | 604 MB               |
| 10                 | 40 GB  | 671 MB               |
| 11                 | 44 GB  | 738 MB               |
| 12                 | 48 GB  | 805 MB               |
| 13                 | 52 GB  | 872 MB               |
| 14                 | 56 GB  | 939 MB               |
| 15                 | 60 GB  | 1007 MB              |
| 16                 | 64 GB  | 1074 MB              |
| 18                 | 72 GB  | 1208 MB              |
| 20                 | 80 GB  | 1342 MB              |
| 22                 | 88 GB  | 1476 MB              |
| 24                 | 96 GB  | 1610 MB              |
| 26                 | 104 GB | 1744 MB              |
| 28                 | 112 GB | 1878 MB              |
| 30                 | 120 GB | 2012 MB              |
| 32                 | 128 GB | 2146 MB              |
| 34                 | 136 GB | 2280 MB              |
| 36                 | 144 GB | 2414 MB              |
| 38                 | 152 GB | 2548 MB              |
| 40                 | 160 GB | 2682 MB              |
| 42                 | 168 GB | 2816 MB              |
| 44                 | 176 GB | 2950 MB              |
| 46                 | 184 GB | 3084 MB              |
| 48                 | 192 GB | 3218 MB              |
| 50                 | 200 GB | 3352 MB              |
| 52                 | 208 GB | 3486 MB              |
| 54                 | 216 GB | 3620 MB              |
| 56                 | 224 GB | 3754 MB              |

See [Edit a compute](/docs/manage/computes#edit-a-compute) to configure your compute size. Available compute sizes differ according to your Neon plan.

To optimize `pgvector` index build time, you can increase the `maintenance_work_mem` setting for the current session beyond the preconfigured default shown in the table above with a command similar to this:

```sql
SET maintenance_work_mem='10 GB';
```

The recommended `maintenance_work_mem` setting is your working set size (the size of your tuples for vector index creation). However, your `maintenance_work_mem` setting should not exceed 50 to 60 percent of your compute's available RAM (see the table above). For example, the `maintenance_work_mem='10 GB'` setting shown above has been successfully tested on a 7 CU compute, which has 28 GB of RAM, as 10 GB is less than 50% of the RAM available for that compute size.

## Autoscaling

You can also enable Neon's autoscaling feature for automatic scaling of compute resources. Neon's _Autoscaling_ feature automatically scales up compute on demand in response to application workload and down to zero on inactivity.

For example, if your AI application experiences heavy load during certain hours of the day or at different times throughout the week, month, or calendar year, Neon automatically scales compute resources without manual intervention according to the compute size boundaries that you configure. This enables you to handle peak demand while avoiding consuming compute resources during periods of low activity.

Enabling autoscaling is also recommended for initial data loads and memory-intensive index builds to ensure sufficient compute resources for this phase of your AI application setup.

To learn more about Neon's autoscaling feature and how to enable it, refer to our [Autoscaling guide](/docs/introduction/autoscaling).

## Storage

On the Free plan, you get 0.5 GB of storage plus 0.5 GB of storage per branch. Storage on paid plans is usage based. See [Neon plans](/docs/introduction/plans) for details.

## Read replicas

Neon supports read replicas, which are independent read-only computes designed to perform read operations on the same data as your primary read-write compute. Read replicas do not replicate data across database instances. Instead, read requests are directed to the same data source. This architecture enables read replicas to be created instantly, enabling you to scale out CPU and RAM, but because data is read from a single source, there are no additional storage costs.

Since vector similarity search is a read-only workload, you can leverage read replicas to offload reads from your primary read-write compute to a dedicated compute when deploying AI applications. After you create a read replica, you can simply swap out your current Neon connecting string for the read replica connection string, which makes deploying a read replica for your AI application very simple.

Neon's read replicas support the same compute sizes outlined above. Read replicas also support autoscaling.

To learn more about the Neon read replicas, see [read replicas](/docs/introduction/read-replicas) and refer to our [Working with Neon read replicas](/docs/guides/read-replica-guide) guide.
