A practical checklist for speeding up Postgres-backed apps: query plans, indexes, caching with Redis, and what to watch for when you run on serverless Postgres like Neon.
Database performance is one of the fastest ways to improve UX. When your app is “slow”, it’s often waiting on the DB.
- Query plans (EXPLAIN), missing indexes, and high-cardinality filters
- Connection usage + pooling (especially on serverless)
- Redis caching for hot reads / derived data
- Safe pagination and avoiding deep OFFSET
- Monitoring: slow queries, p95 latency, cache hit rate
Serverless Postgres is great for elasticity, but you still need to be intentional about connection management and query efficiency. Treat DB work as product work: measure and iterate.