# Create a Neon Twin

Explore our dev/test use case

Move development and testing to Neon; keep production right where it is.\
Read more about our dev/test use case [here](https://neon.com/use-cases/dev-test).

[Sign Up](https://console.neon.tech/signup)

## What is a Neon Twin?

A Neon Twin is a full or partial clone of your production or staging database, providing developers and teams with isolated, sandboxed environments that closely mirror production.

<img src="/current/media/t/75c5dc71-055f-4496-bcaf-6966eeb0b645/p/af70e81f-ccf2-4beb-9df8-efafa018b2a1/f0f769245d50cf5a6a664fdfd6535843ed613a0c5af1f5eaca61aedc7612dea5.png/raw" alt="Dev/Test Twin Workflow">

## Designed for efficiency

Creating a Neon Twin will streamline development workflows, enhance productivity, and help teams ship faster, all while being more cost-effective and easier to manage than traditional development/testing environments.

## Automatically synced

The workflows in this section enable automatic synchronization between your production database and your Neon Twin.

## Instant Branches

With a Neon Twin created, [branches](/guides/postgres-introduction-branching) can be quickly spun up or torn down, enabling developers to build new features or debug issues, all within their own isolated environments with a dedicated compute resource.

Branches can be created and managed through the [Neon console](https://console.neon.tech/) or programmatically via the [API](/guides/ai-agents-on-neon-reference-api).

## Get started

Pick the workflow that fits your needs. A full Twin mirrors your entire production database; a partial Twin clones only the schema and selected tables, which is faster and useful when you don't need every row of production data.

::::card-grid
:::card{title="Create a full Twin" href="/guides/postgres-guides-neon-twin-full-pg-dump-restore"}
Clone your entire production database to Neon using pg\_dump and pg\_restore in a GitHub Actions workflow.
:::

:::card{title="Create a partial Twin" href="/guides/postgres-guides-neon-twin-partial-pg-dump-restore"}
Clone only the schema and selected tables from production using pg\_dump, pg\_restore, and psql.
:::
::::

## Related pages

- [Data anonymization](./postgres-workflows-data-anonymization.md)
- [pgdump / pgrestore — Full Twin](./postgres-guides-neon-twin-full-pg-dump-restore.md)
- [pgdump / pgrestore — Partial Twin](./postgres-guides-neon-twin-partial-pg-dump-restore.md)

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