# Daily Neon spend forecast with Linear and Slack alerts

> Every morning, see where your Neon database spend will land by month end and get alerted with the exact projects driving it, well before the invoice arrives.

- Workflow type: agent
- Services: Neon, Linear, Slack
- Categories: Engineering, Finance
- Published: 2026-08-07

## What it does

- Checks your Neon usage every morning and builds a month to date picture of what you have spent so far across all of your projects
- Projects where your bill will land at month end based on your current run rate, and compares that against the budget you set
- Pinpoints what is actually driving the growth, flagging branches that are burning far more compute than their age would suggest rather than just the biggest numbers
- Files a detailed Linear issue and posts a short Slack alert only when you are heading over budget, so you are not handed the same ticket every single day

## What you'll need

- A Neon account containing the databases you want to keep an eye on
- A Linear workspace, and the team where cost issues should be filed
- A Slack workspace and the channel that should receive the alert
- A monthly budget figure to measure your spend against

## Prompt

Every morning at 7am, check whether my Neon spend is on track for the month and escalate before the invoice surprises me. I want to hear about a cost overrun while I can still do something about it, not when the bill lands.

Start with Neon List projects to enumerate every project on my account, then build a month to date picture with Retrieve project consumption metrics for the current billing period. If my account is on a legacy Scale, Business, or Enterprise plan, use Retrieve project consumption metrics (legacy plans) instead, so this works whichever plan I am on. Pull Retrieve branch consumption metrics for the per branch detail, and use Retrieve project details where you need a project's retention settings and compute configuration to interpret what you are seeing.

Project the month end total from the current run rate: take the spend so far, divide by the days elapsed in the billing period, and extend it across the full period. Report the month to date figure, the projected month end figure, and how both compare against my budget threshold of $500 per month. Treat that threshold as the number I am most likely to want to change, so make it easy to adjust.

When you work out what is driving the growth, do not simply rank by the largest absolute numbers. Neon's usage breaks compute down by branch, so the thing worth flagging is an individual branch showing far more active compute hours than its age would suggest. A two day old preview branch burning compute like a long lived production branch is the real signal, and it will be invisible in a plain top ten list. Compare each branch's compute against how long that branch has existed, call out the outliers relative to branch age, and report those alongside the largest absolute consumers. Say explicitly which projects and branches account for the increase compared with earlier in the month.

If the projected month end total crosses my budget threshold, create a Linear issue with Create Issue containing the full breakdown: month to date spend, projected month end total, how far over budget that lands, the top offending projects, and the branch level outliers with their age and their compute hours.

Before filing anything, use Linear Search Issues to find previous alerts raised by this workflow, so I am not handed an identical ticket every single day. Only create a new issue when the situation is newly over threshold, meaning the previous run was under budget or there is no open alert, or when it has materially worsened since the last one. Treat materially worsened as the projected total rising more than 10 percent since that issue was filed, or a project or branch newly entering the top offenders. If an open alert already exists and nothing has meaningfully changed, add a short comment to that existing issue with the updated numbers rather than opening a new one.

Then post a short Slack alert with Send a Message to my engineering channel, linking to that Linear issue. Keep it to a few lines carrying only the numbers that matter: month to date spend, projected month end total, how far over budget that is, and the single biggest driver. No preamble, no full table, because the detail belongs in the Linear issue.

If the projection is comfortably under my budget threshold, do nothing and stay silent. This workflow reports and escalates only. It must never delete, suspend, or otherwise modify any branch, compute endpoint, or project, even when a branch is obviously wasteful. Recommending that I clean something up is welcome, doing it for me is not.

## How to customize

- Change the budget threshold, or set separate thresholds per project when some are expected to cost more than others
- Adjust the time it runs, or drop it from every morning to a couple of times a week
- Choose which Slack channel gets pinged and which Linear team the issue lands in
- Tune what counts as materially worse before a follow up issue is filed rather than skipped

## Example output

Neon spend alert: projected $612 for August against a $500 budget, 22% over.
Month to date: $394 across 6 projects.
Biggest driver: api-prod, up $118 on last month, mostly from branch preview/pr-2841 which is 3 days old and has already burned 61 compute hours.
Full breakdown: LIN-482

## FAQ

### Does this work on the Neon Free plan?

It is designed for paid usage based plans, where there is real spend to forecast. On the Free plan you can still get a useful readout of which projects and branches are consuming the most compute, but there is no invoice to project. It also works if you are on one of the older Scale, Business, or Enterprise plans, since it reads whichever usage history your account provides.

### Will this delete or change any of my databases?

No. This workflow only reads your usage and reports on it. It never deletes, suspends, or modifies a branch, a compute endpoint, or a project. If it spots a branch that looks wasteful it will tell you, and leave the decision and the action to you.

### Will I get an identical ticket every single morning?

No, and that is the point. Before filing anything it looks back at the alerts it has already raised. A new issue is only created when you have newly crossed the threshold or when the picture has got materially worse, for example the projection climbing further or a new project appearing among the top offenders. Otherwise it stays quiet or adds a short note to the existing issue.

### How accurate is the month end projection?

It is a straight run rate projection, so it takes what you have spent so far and extends it across the rest of the billing period. It gets steadily more reliable as the month progresses. Early in the month a short burst of heavy activity can make the forecast look alarming, which is usually still worth knowing about.

### Can it watch more than one Neon project at once?

Yes. It covers every project in your account, builds the combined month to date total, and then breaks the spend down per project and per branch so you can see which one is responsible for the growth.

Use this prompt in General Input: https://www.generalinput.com/prompts/daily-neon-spend-forecast-with-linear-and-slack-alerts