Summary: Hard limits for Neon Functions: lifecycle and eviction behavior, 15-minute timeouts, slug constraints, and the Node.js 24 runtime. Functions are long-running but still serverless.

Hard constraints for Neon Functions.

Neon Functions run on Node.js 24.

Neon Functions are long-running: you can host WebSocket servers, SSE endpoints, and agents that stream over HTTP without hitting a short execution timeout. They're still serverless. The platform shuts a function down when it's idle, with no open connections or pending waitUntil work, and can also evict and restart it for operational reasons. Treat eviction like a process restart: clients should reconnect when a connection drops.

When the platform stops a function, it sends SIGINT. If the process is still running 5 seconds later, the platform forcibly stops the function. Handle SIGINT with process.on('SIGINT', ...) to flush in-flight work within that window. You don't need to drain a pg pool: when the process exits, the OS closes its sockets and Neon's pooler reclaims those connections, so dropped connections are detected without extra handling.

Time to first byte: 15 minutes. Your handler must begin returning a response within 15 minutes of receiving a request. The limit prevents runaway functions that hold resources indefinitely with no way to cancel them. In practice most handlers complete in seconds. The 15-minute limit gives agent workloads like image or video generation enough time to finish.

Heartbeat: 15 minutes. Active WebSocket connections and HTTP streams stay open as long as data flows. The timeout only fires when the connection goes silent. Send at least one byte every 15 minutes to keep a quiet stream alive.

waitUntil: 15 minutes. Work registered with waitUntil continues after the response is sent. It's for short post-response work: analytics writes, audit logs, webhook fan-outs, agent callbacks, and other short follow-up calls. It's not a background job runner. Use a dedicated system for work that needs its own lifecycle or cancellation.

import { Hono } from 'hono';
import { waitUntil } from '@neon/functions';

const app = new Hono();

app.post('/event', async (c) => {
  waitUntil(writeAnalytics(c.req.raw)); // writeAnalytics returns Promise
  return c.json({ ok: true });
});

export default app;

Pass waitUntil a promise and the invocation stays alive until the promise settles, up to the 15-minute cap. The API follows the same shape as waitUntil on Vercel and other serverless platforms. Off the Neon runtime (local dev, tests) it's a no-op: the promise still runs but isn't tracked, so the same code is safe to call in neon dev.

Each isolate is a Node.js process. Because work runs on the event loop, a single isolate can handle several requests at once, interleaving them. Under load the platform starts more isolates on demand: a request that doesn't fit on an existing isolate goes to a freshly booted one or waits briefly in a queue.

Because each isolate is its own process and handles concurrent requests, module-scope state behaves as follows:

• Shared within an isolate: module-scope objects (a pg pool, an in-memory cache) are shared across all requests on the same isolate. Create connection pools once at module scope and reuse them.
• Not shared across isolates: every isolate holds its own module state. Keep max small on pg pools (for example, 5). The effective connection count is max × the number of live isolates. Any module-scope setup (seeding, migrations) runs once per isolate, so make it safe to repeat or guard it with a Postgres advisory lock.
• Lost on eviction: in-memory state disappears when an isolate is evicted. Persist anything that matters in Postgres.

To prevent abusive use, Neon also enforces an account-wide limit of 100 concurrent invocations across all your functions. This is a default, not a hard ceiling tied to your plan; due to internal load balancing, the effective ceiling can run modestly higher. Exceeding it returns a 429 Too Many Requests with the plain-text body per-account concurrency limit reached and a Retry-After header (in seconds). A slot frees up as soon as one of your in-flight requests completes, so a near-term retry is usually enough.

Slugs must match ^[a-z0-9]{1,20}$ and are immutable after the first deployment. See Slugs for the full rules.

See Environment variables for limits on variable count and total size.

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