Migrate from Heroku to Neon Postgres

This guide describes how to import your data from Heroku Postgres to Neon.

The instructions assume that you have installed the Heroku CLI, which is used to transfer data from Heroku. For installation instructions, see The Heroku CLI.

1. Create a Neon project and copy the connection string

   1. Navigate to the Projects page in the Neon Console.

   2. Click New Project.

   3. Specify your project settings and click Create Project.

   4. After creating a project, you are directed to the Neon Dashboard, where a connection string with your password is provided under Connection Details. Copy the connection string. It is required to import your data from Heroku.

      The example connection string used the instructions that follow is:

      postgresql://alex:AbC123dEf@ep-cool-darkness-123456.us-east-2.aws.neon.tech/dbname

2. Retrieve your Heroku app name and database name

   1. Log in to Heroku and select the project you want to import data from.
   2. Select Overview and copy the name of the Heroku Postgres database, which appears under Installed add-ons.
   3. Click Settings and copy your Heroku App Name.

   note

   You can also retrieve the Heroku Postgres database name using the following Heroku CLI command:

   heroku pg:links --app <app>

   where <app> is the Heroku App Name.

   For example:

   $ heroku pg:links --app thawing-wave-57227
   === postgresql-trapezoidal-48645

3. Import your data

   From your terminal, run the following Heroku CLI command:

   heroku pg:pull --app [app] [heroku-pg-database] [neon-connection-string]

   where:

   • [app] is the name of the Heroku app
   • [heroku-pg-database] is the name of the Heroku PostgreSQL database
   • [neon-connection-string] is the Neon connection string

   For example:

   $ heroku pg:pull --app thawing-wave-57227 postgresql-trapezoidal-48645 postgresql://alex:AbC123dEf@ep-cool-darkness-123456.us-east-2.aws.neon.tech/dbname
   
   heroku-cli: Pulling postgresql-trapezoidal-48645 ---> postgresql://alex:AbC123dEf@ep-cool-darkness-123456.us-east-2.aws.neon.tech/dbname
   
   pg_dump: last built-in OID is 16383
   pg_dump: reading extensions
   pg_dump: identifying extension members
   pg_dump: reading schemas
   pg_dump: reading user-defined tables
   pg_dump: reading user-defined functions
   pg_dump: reading user-defined types
   pg_dump: reading procedural languages
   pg_dump: reading user-defined aggregate functions
   pg_dump: reading user-defined operators
   pg_dump: reading user-defined access methods
   pg_dump: reading user-defined operator classes
   pg_dump: reading user-defined operator families
   pg_dump: reading user-defined text search parsers
   pg_dump: reading user-defined text search templates
   pg_dump: reading user-defined text search dictionaries
   pg_dump: reading user-defined text search configurations
   pg_dump: reading user-defined foreign-data wrappers
   pg_dump: reading user-defined foreign servers
   pg_dump: reading default privileges
   pg_dump: reading user-defined collations
   pg_dump: reading user-defined conversions
   pg_dump: reading type casts
   pg_dump: reading transforms
   pg_dump: reading table inheritance information
   pg_dump: reading event triggers
   pg_dump: finding extension tables
   pg_dump: finding inheritance relationships
   pg_dump: reading column info for interesting tables
   pg_dump: finding the columns and types of table "public.customer"
   pg_dump: finding the columns and types of table "public.order"
   pg_dump: flagging inherited columns in subtables
   pg_dump: reading indexes
   pg_dump: reading indexes for table "public.customer"
   pg_dump: reading indexes for table "public.order"
   pg_dump: flagging indexes in partitioned tables
   pg_dump: reading extended statistics
   pg_dump: reading constraints
   pg_dump: reading foreign key constraints for table "public.customer"
   pg_dump: reading foreign key constraints for table "public.order"
   pg_dump: reading triggers
   pg_dump: reading triggers for table "public.customer"
   pg_dump: reading triggers for table "public.order"
   pg_dump: reading rewrite rules
   pg_dump: reading policies
   pg_dump: reading row-level security policies
   pg_dump: reading publications
   pg_dump: reading publication membership
   pg_dump: reading subscriptions
   pg_dump: reading large objects
   pg_dump: reading dependency data
   pg_dump: saving encoding = UTF8
   pg_dump: saving standard_conforming_strings = on
   pg_dump: saving search_path =
   pg_dump: saving database definition
   pg_dump: dumping contents of table "public.customer"
   pg_restore: connecting to database for restore
   pg_dump: dumping contents of table "public.order"
   pg_restore: creating SCHEMA "heroku_ext"
   pg_restore: creating TABLE "public.customer"
   pg_restore: creating TABLE "public.order"
   pg_restore: processing data for table "public.customer"
   pg_restore: processing data for table "public.order"
   pg_restore: creating CONSTRAINT "public.customer customer_pkey"
   pg_restore: creating CONSTRAINT "public.order order_pkey"
   pg_restore: creating FK CONSTRAINT "public.order order_customer_id_fkey"
   heroku-cli: Pulling complete.

4. Verify that your data was imported

   1. Log in to the Neon Console.
   2. Select the Neon project that you transferred data to.
   3. Select the Tables tab.
   4. In the sidebar, verify that your database tables appear under the Tables heading.