Get started with Neon AI Gateway

To set up Neon AI Gateway with an AI coding assistant, install the Neon Platform (neon) and Neon AI Gateway skills with the Neon CLI Without the Neon CLI, run npx skills add neondatabase/agent skills ...

To set up Neon AI Gateway with an AI coding assistant, install the Neon Platform (neon) and Neon AI Gateway skills with the Neon CLI:

Bash

neon skills -s neon -s neon-ai-gateway

Without the Neon CLI, run npx skills add neondatabase/agent-skills -s neon -s neon-ai-gateway instead.

Get access
You need a project in AWS US East (Ohio) (aws-us-east-2), AWS US East (N. Virginia) (aws-us-east-1), AWS Europe (Frankfurt) (aws-eu-central-1), or AWS Asia Pacific (Singapore) (aws-ap-southeast-1). Support is expanding toward all regions. Using the AI Gateway requires a paid Neon plan with prepaid credits, which gives you the open-weight models. To request access to foundation models, see Model access.
Create a credential
With the Neon CLI, run:
Bash
```
neon credentials create --scope ai_gateway:invoke
```
Or, in the Neon Console, click Connect at the top of the sidebar and open the AI Gateway tab. Click Reveal credential to show NEON_AI_GATEWAY_TOKEN, or Copy snippet to copy it together with NEON_AI_GATEWAY_BASE_URL. Use Rotate credential to issue a new token.
Or use the API:
Bash
```
curl -X POST "https://console.neon.tech/api/v2/projects/{project_id}/branches/{branch_id}/credentials" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $NEON_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"scopes": ["ai_gateway:invoke"], "principal_type": "user"}'
```
Using neon.ts?
If your project has a neon.ts file, run neon config add ai-gateway (or declare aiGateway: true yourself) and then neon deploy. Credentials are provisioned and pulled into your local .env automatically, with no manual creation step. See Authentication for details.
Store the credential as an environment variable:
Bash
```
export NEON_AI_GATEWAY_TOKEN=nt_live_...
```
Find your branch host
Your branch's AI Gateway host is available in the Neon Console from the Connect dialog's AI Gateway tab, or via the Neon API. It follows this format:
```
br-<name>-api.ai.<cell>.<region>.aws.neon.tech
```
For example:
Bash
```
export NEON_AI_GATEWAY_BASE_URL=https://br-winter-pond-aptw82ef-api.ai.c-2.us-east-2.aws.neon.tech
```
This is different from your database connection string.
Install dependencies
The quickstart uses the OpenAI SDK because the chat completions endpoint is OpenAI-compatible. It works with any model in the catalog, including GPT and Gemini.
- npm
- yarn
- pnpm
- pip
npm
npm install openai dotenv
yarn
yarn add openai dotenv
pnpm
pnpm add openai dotenv
pip
pip install openai python-dotenv

Make your first request

The chat completions endpoint is OpenAI-compatible. Set baseURL to your branch host and apiKey to your credential. No other changes needed.

TypeScript

import OpenAI from 'openai';
import 'dotenv/config';

const client = new OpenAI({
  apiKey: process.env.NEON_AI_GATEWAY_TOKEN,
  baseURL: `${process.env.NEON_AI_GATEWAY_BASE_URL}/v1`,
});

const response = await client.chat.completions.create({
  model: 'gpt-5-mini',
  messages: [{ role: 'user', content: 'Hello!' }],
});

console.log(response.choices[0].message.content);

Python

from openai import OpenAI
from dotenv import load_dotenv
import os

load_dotenv()

client = OpenAI(
    api_key=os.environ["NEON_AI_GATEWAY_TOKEN"],
    base_url=f"{os.environ['NEON_AI_GATEWAY_BASE_URL']}/v1",
)

response = client.chat.completions.create(
    model="gpt-5-mini",
    messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "Hello!"}],
)

print(response.choices[0].message.content)

cURL

curl -X POST "$NEON_AI_GATEWAY_BASE_URL/v1/chat/completions" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $NEON_AI_GATEWAY_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "model": "gpt-5-mini",
    "messages": [{"role": "user", "content": "Hello!"}]
  }'

Stream a response

Add stream: true to receive a streamed response. Your existing streaming code works without changes. The gateway forwards text/event-stream responses from the upstream provider.

TypeScript

import OpenAI from 'openai';
import 'dotenv/config';

const client = new OpenAI({
  apiKey: process.env.NEON_AI_GATEWAY_TOKEN,
  baseURL: `${process.env.NEON_AI_GATEWAY_BASE_URL}/v1`,
});

const stream = await client.chat.completions.create({
  model: 'gpt-5-mini',
  messages: [{ role: 'user', content: 'Write a haiku about serverless databases.' }],
  stream: true,
});

for await (const chunk of stream) {
  process.stdout.write(chunk.choices[0]?.delta?.content ?? '');
}

Python

from openai import OpenAI
from dotenv import load_dotenv
import os

load_dotenv()

client = OpenAI(
    api_key=os.environ["NEON_AI_GATEWAY_TOKEN"],
    base_url=f"{os.environ['NEON_AI_GATEWAY_BASE_URL']}/v1",
)

with client.chat.completions.create(
    model="gpt-5-mini",
    messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "Write a haiku about serverless databases."}],
    stream=True,
) as stream:
    for chunk in stream:
        print(chunk.choices[0].delta.content or "", end="", flush=True)

cURL

curl -X POST "$NEON_AI_GATEWAY_BASE_URL/v1/chat/completions" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $NEON_AI_GATEWAY_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "model": "gpt-5-mini",
    "messages": [{"role": "user", "content": "Write a haiku about serverless databases."}],
    "stream": true
  }'

Swap models
Change the model field to use a different provider. No other code changes required.
TypeScript
```
// OpenAI
model: 'gpt-5-mini'

// Google
model: 'gemini-3-flash'

// Alibaba
model: 'qwen3-next-80b-a3b-instruct'
```
See Models for the full list of available model IDs.
Using the AI SDK?
For TypeScript apps and agents, use @neon/ai-sdk-provider with the Vercel AI SDK. It reads NEON_AI_GATEWAY_BASE_URL and NEON_AI_GATEWAY_TOKEN, then routes each catalog model to the best AI Gateway endpoint for that provider.

Next steps

Models: full model catalog and which endpoint to use per provider
Chat completions: detailed reference for the unified endpoint
Authentication: credential scopes, branch binding, and rotation

Need help?

Join our Discord Server to ask questions or see what others are doing with Neon. For paid plan support options, see Support.