Application hosting / PaaS: read the guide

Neptune

HostedPaaS

Your AI Platform Engineer — the easiest path from code to cloud. Provision and wire your entire cloud stack through conversation.

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Scanned 7 Jun 2026 · Schema v5 · features v12

From: Free
Free public beta; no published pricing. Paid plans implied (ToS references fees collected via Stripe) but not yet public.
Free tier: Yes
No card required.
Isolation: Container
shares the host kernel
Regions: —
Runs on Neptune-managed AWS; region is not user-selectable or publicly disclosed. Example deploy IP (52.56.x.x) maps to AWS eu-west-2 (London); vendor is UK-based. The launch blog states a roadmap to be 'cloud-agnostic ... supporting AWS, GCP, and Azure through a simple plugin model', but only AWS is documented today.
Capabilities: 6 / 52
3 partial · 43 fail · 9 not assessed
Agent readiness: 9/11 · 6/11
read · drive, pre-login surface

Advertised for

Long running containerized web services (single `kind: "Service"`, HTTP, public IP + auto HTTPS URL). Any Docker buildable app.

Built for

Developers, then semi-technical builders

· Install via terminal (curl install.sh), Docker required, MCP/CLI-first onboarding.
· 'Give your coding agents DevOps superpowers'; neptune.json config; deploy via coding agent.
· Vocabulary: containers, AWS, ECR, Postgres, secrets, ports, IaC spec.

01 Pricing Free public beta; no published pricing. Paid plans implied (ToS references fees collected via Stripe) but not yet public.

Tier	EntryBeta
Price	Free (beta)

undisclosed·Card required: No·undisclosed·neptune.dev

02 Runtime Each fact carries its source; dots show confidence. Open a row for the evidence.

Isolation & lifecycle

Isolation primitive

Containershares the host kernel

Persistence

App containers are ephemeral (no attached persistent disk). Durable state via provisioned resources: managed Postgres databases, S3-compatible Storage Buckets, and AWS Secrets Manager secrets.

Snapshots / forks

Resources & limits

Storage

S3-compatible Storage Buckets (Amazon S3) + managed Postgres databases; secrets in AWS Secrets Manager.

Limits & quotas

Fixed 0.25 vCPU (256 CPU units) / 512 MB RAM per deployment in the initial release (configurable CPU/memory 'coming soon'). App must listen on port 8080 by default. Fair-use automated rate limits per ToS.

GPU

Access

Deploy interface

Conversational via MCP from your AI coding assistant (Claude Code, Cursor, Windsurf, Cline, GitHub Copilot, Warp, JetBrains) + a `neptune.json` config + the `neptune` CLI. Flow: AI generates Dockerfile + neptune.json -> build -> push to Amazon ECR -> deploy -> public IP + HTTPS URL.

SDK languages

Workloads are language-agnostic ('any containerized application'). Control plane is consumed as an MCP server / `neptune` CLI (Python). No first-party client SDK.

Network & secrets

Egress controls

Secrets

Secret resources backed by AWS Secrets Manager — encrypted at rest, injected as environment variables, set via the `set_secret_value` MCP tool.

Bring your own cloud

Placement & use

Jurisdiction

Not user-selectable. AWS region not officially disclosed; example deploy IP (52.56.x.x) maps to AWS eu-west-2 (London) and the vendor is UK-based.

Advertised workloads

Long-running containerized web services (single `kind: "Service"`, HTTP, public IP + auto HTTPS URL). Any Docker-buildable app.

03 Capabilities 6 pass · 3 partial · 43 fail · 52 of 61 assessed

Supported — Documented on the public surface and verified.
Partially supported — Exists with caveats: gated, thin, or enterprise-only.
Not supported — Checked and not offered.
Not assessed — Scanned before this capability was tracked. Not a lack.

Compute & storage 0/8

Persistent diskStorage that survives restart/stop (not ephemeral-only).

Not supported

Object storageManaged S3-compatible / blob object store the platform PROVIDES to a user's workloads (buckets, presigned URLs). DISTINCT from persistent-disk (block/volume attached to an instance) and from a self-host dependency (source.self_host.deps[]=["object-storage"] is an infra dep to RUN an OSS tool — the opposite direction). SCOPE varies and matters: native first-class (Railway Buckets, Cloudflare R2) vs a sibling SKU / extension (Fly Tigris, Bunny Storage, DigitalOcean Spaces) — record which in the evidence quote / note. Admitted v15.

Not assessed

Snapshots / forkingSnapshot or copy-on-write fork of a running instance (filesystem-only counts). Whether the snapshot also restores memory + running processes is recorded separately by memory-snapshot (v19).

Not supported

Live-state (memory) snapshotsA snapshot / checkpoint / pause captures a running instance's MEMORY and PROCESS state and restores it, so running processes continue where they left off instead of a freshly booted instance with the same files. Counts whether user-triggered (snapshot, checkpoint, pause-to-storage) or used to restore pre-initialised state (memory snapshots for fast cold starts). Distinct from snapshots-forks (any snapshot or fork, including filesystem-only; a product passing that key may still fail this one) and from scale-to-zero (an idle-cost property; suspension may or may not keep memory). Actor multiplexing (see scale-to-zero) records its live-state half here — only when the suspended actor's MEMORY/process state is what comes back, not a freshly booted worker with the actor's files.

Not assessed

Scale to zeroIdle instances suspend at no / negligible cost. ACTOR MULTIPLEXING (many suspended stateful actors sharing a small pool of pre-warmed workers, woken on request — Agent Substrate, AX, kagent; Rivet's hibernating actors) has NO key of its own (proposal REJECTED v20) — score the idle-cost half HERE and the live-state half under memory-snapshot; the oversubscription ratio / density is a performance characteristic the registry does not key.

Not supported

GPU computeGPU-backed instances available.

Not supported

Multi-regionCompute placeable in more than one geographic region.

Not supported

Sandbox templates / custom imagesBuild reusable sandbox/VM images from an OCI image or Dockerfile (a base you fork instances from).

Not supported

Cloud-init / ignition configCustomise a VM / microVM / instance at boot via cloud-init (or ignition) user-data — the same boot-metadata interface as AWS/Azure/GCP. Inject packages, users, SSH keys, files, and run-commands declaratively at launch. Distinct from sandbox-templates (a PREBUILT image you fork instances from) — this is PER-LAUNCH declarative customisation, not a baked image.

Not supported

Desktop / computer-use sandboxA virtual desktop (GUI) for LLM computer-use — browser + desktop automation, often via noVNC/VNC.

Not supported

Selectable isolation runtimeThe user chooses the isolation runtime per workload / environment / sandbox from more than one option (e.g. microVM vs gVisor vs plain container, native namespaces vs gVisor, gVisor vs VM). Records the CHOICE; the isolation_primitive facet still records the best-evidenced primary. A platform that switches runtime automatically without a user choice (e.g. gVisor forced for GPU) does not pass on that alone.

Not assessed

Networking & delivery 2/8

Automatic HTTPSTLS endpoints provisioned automatically per workload.

Supported

Built-in reverse proxyPlatform routes external traffic to workload services.

Supported

Custom domainsBring-your-own domain via CNAME/DNS.

Not supported

Public preview URLsShareable per-deploy / per-branch URLs.

Partially supported

Direct public IPv6Per-instance stable public IPv6 for raw TCP/UDP (beyond a managed HTTPS proxy) — e.g. mosh / raw sockets.

Not supported

Egress controlsConfigurable OUTBOUND network policy — egress firewall / allowlist / egress proxy on traffic LEAVING a workload. Scoped to OUTBOUND only (v15): private-network REACHABILITY between a user's own services is private-networking, not this. Static-egress-IP belongs here (an outbound concept).

Not supported

Private networkingA platform-internal private network between a user's OWN services — service-to-service connectivity, VPC, service mesh, and/or service discovery, not exposed to the public internet. DISTINCT from egress-controls (OUTBOUND firewall/allowlist), reverse-proxy (PUBLIC inbound ingress), and direct-ipv6 (per-instance PUBLIC addressing). Admitted v15.

Not assessed

Email send / receiveSend and/or receive email from the workload.

Not supported

Edge KV storeA globally-replicated key-value store read from WITHIN an edge runtime at the PoP (low-latency, eventually-consistent) — Cloudflare Workers KV, Deno KV, Fastly KV Store, Akamai EdgeKV, Vercel Edge Config. Distinct from first-party-db (a managed DATABASE service you provision and connect to) and from http-query-api (HTTP access to an external store) — edge-kv is colocated with the edge compute and read at the edge.

Not supported

Developer access 1/9

Public APIDocumented programmatic API.

Partially supported

OpenAPI specMachine-readable OpenAPI / Swagger spec published.

Not supported

CLIOfficial command-line tool.

Supported

SDKOfficial client library/libraries.

Not supported

SSH accessDirect SSH into workloads.

Not supported

Filesystem APIRemote file operations over the API (list/read/write/watch/copy/upload) without SSH.

Not supported

Git deployDeploy from a Git repo / push-to-deploy.

Not supported

Private container registryHosted private image registry.

Not supported

E2B-compatible APIDrop-in compatibility with the E2B sandbox API/SDKs — existing E2B client code runs against this product by changing the endpoint/domain + key, with no business-code changes. E2B itself passes as the reference implementation. Distinct from public-api / sdk (the product has its own API — this key says it also speaks another vendor's) and from self-host-oss (a self-hosted E2B-compatible server is scored on both).

Not assessed

HTTP data APIQuery / read / write the stored DATA over plain HTTP/REST (or GraphQL) WITHOUT the native protocol driver (Postgres wire / Redis RESP) — agent- and edge-friendly data access via fetch(). The DATA plane; distinct from public-api (a control-plane / management API). Auto-generated-from-schema REST/GraphQL (PostgREST, pg_graphql) is a flavour of this.

Not supported

AI & agents 1/10

Built-in coding agentShips a first-party AI coding agent in the product.

Not supported

Agent skillsInstallable / declarable agent skills or tools.

Not supported

AI app builderPrompt-to-app / vibe-coding generation surface.

Not supported

MCP serverExposes a Model Context Protocol server for agents.

Supported

MCP clientActs as an MCP client / consumes MCP tools.

Not supported

MCP-server hostingRun/host MCP servers as a workload on the platform (distinct from exposing a first-party MCP control server — that is mcp-server).

Not supported

LLM gatewayRoutes LLM API calls through the platform (multi-provider).

Not supported

BYOK for LLMsBring-your-own LLM provider keys.

Not supported

Model inference API (first-party)A FIRST-PARTY hosted LLM/model inference API — the provider serves its OWN catalogue of (usually open-weight) models behind a (typically OpenAI-compatible) endpoint, billed per token. Distinct from llm-gateway (a multi-PROVIDER proxy/router for YOUR calls to external providers like OpenAI/Anthropic) and from byok-llm (bring your own provider keys) — here the platform IS the inference provider, serving its own models.

Not supported

Autonomous QA agentA first-party AUTONOMOUS AI agent that QA-TESTS a running app / implementation — exercising it like a real user (clicking through flows, checking behaviour) and reporting bugs/defects (often back to a coding agent, or before a human review). Distinct from built-in-agent (a code-AUTHORING agent — this one VERIFIES the result, it does not write the feature; a product can ship both), from ai-guided-code-review (organises a diff for a HUMAN to review — not an autonomous tester), and from observability (runtime metrics/logs, not active testing).

Not supported

Credential-injection proxyThe platform holds real secrets OUTSIDE the workload and injects them on the wire (an egress / broker proxy swaps a placeholder or phantom token for the real credential on matching outbound requests), so code running in the sandbox — e.g. an untrusted agent — never sees or can exfiltrate the real key. Distinct from secrets-management (storage + injection INTO the workload as env vars/files — the workload holds the secret) and from egress-controls (outbound allow/deny POLICY; a product can have an allowlist without injecting credentials, and vice versa).

Not assessed

Preinstalled coding agentThe platform installs and launches a THIRD-PARTY coding agent (a harnesses.yml entry — Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode, Pi ...) inside a workspace/sandbox it provisions, with the agent's auth wired in (your own account or API key), so you start an agent session rather than an empty box. Distinct from built-in-agent (a FIRST-PARTY agent the vendor ships) and from harnesses[] (which records that a harness CAN target the product, not that the product runs it for you).

Not assessed

Data 1/4

First-party databasePlatform-provided managed database.

Supported

Database branchingCopy-on-write branch of a DATABASE (schema + data) as a dev-lifecycle primitive — branch your data like code, usually instant via a metadata operation. Distinct from snapshots-forks (forks a running compute INSTANCE / VM state) and from preview-environments (a full per-PR environment that may USE a DB branch). For a data product a CoW branch maps HERE, not to snapshots-forks.

Not supported

Vector searchFirst-class storage, indexing, and similarity search of vector embeddings — a native vector type/index or a managed vector DB. The data-layer primitive for RAG / semantic retrieval.

Not supported

Ephemeral instant DB (no-signup)Provision a working, usable instance via a single command / HTTP call with NO account, signup, or card — typically time-boxed (expires unless claimed). A zero-onboarding path an agent can hit directly.

Not supported

Platform & operations 0/6

Scheduled tasksCron / scheduled job primitive.

Not supported

Durable workflowsDurable execution / long-running workflow primitive.

Not supported

Preview environmentsA full EPHEMERAL environment spun up per PR / branch — compute + addons + (often) a DB branch — torn down on merge. More than preview-urls (which is just a shareable URL for one deploy).

Not supported

Built-in observabilityFirst-party metrics / logs / tracing / APM / profiling included in the platform (no third-party stack required to see what a workload is doing).

Partially supported

Managed CI/CD runnersPlatform-hosted, drop-in CI/CD runner VMs (GitHub Actions / GitLab), typically faster and cheaper than the CI vendor's own hosted runners, billed per runner-minute; isolated + ephemeral per job. Distinct from git-deploy (push-to-deploy of an APP) and scheduled-tasks (cron) — this is managed CI COMPUTE you point your existing pipelines at.

Not supported

Project template marketplaceA marketplace / gallery of prebuilt PROJECT STARTER templates (apps or websites) a user clones or launches a new project from and then customises — the "start from a template" surface of a builder / PaaS. Distinct from sandbox-templates (a COMPUTE base IMAGE you fork runtime INSTANCES from — Dockerfile / OCI), from app-builder (the prompt-to-app GENERATION surface — a product can have both), and from one-click OSS-app catalogues / helm-addon-marketplace (deploy a FINISHED app as-is, not a starter you build on).

Not supported

Organisation & security 1/7

Built-in authPlatform-provided authentication / IAM for workloads.

Not supported

SSO / SAMLEnterprise single sign-on.

Not supported

Secrets managementFirst-class secrets storage / injection.

Supported

TeamsMulti-user team accounts.

Not supported

SharingShare a running workload/resource via link (optionally gated).

Not supported

BYOCRuns inside the customer's own cloud account.

Not supported

Deploy into customers' VPCsA SaaS vendor uses the platform to deploy and operate ITS software inside ITS CUSTOMERS' cloud accounts / VPCs (nested or "customer BYOC"), managed from the vendor's control plane. Distinct from byoc (your own workloads in your own cloud account).

Not assessed

Workload identityThe platform gives each workload its own verifiable identity (OIDC token, SPIFFE SVID, cloud IAM federation) that it exchanges for short-lived credentials, so no long-lived static secret is stored or injected. Distinct from secrets-management (stores / injects static secrets) and credential-injection-proxy (swaps real secrets in on the wire).

Not assessed

Self-host / OSS coreOpen-source core that can be self-hosted.

Not supported

Proposed, not verified

Capabilities the scan saw but the registry does not track yet. A key is admitted only once two distinct products exhibit it. These are not scored.

Infrastructure-from-code (infers required infra from your source and generates a reviewable IaC spec)infra-from-code
“It reads your code, infers the infra it needs, and generates a simple IaC spec you can inspect, approve, and apply.” github.com

04 Agent readiness Pre-login surface · counts, not a grade

Can an agent read it?

parse-ability · docs, metadata, machine-readable surfaces

9/11

7 full · 2 partial · 82% of applicable checks

llms.txt
Supported
“docs.neptune.dev/llms.txt is a real Mintlify index (~20 doc links across ai-tools/deployments/resources + Discord + Blog). Apex /llms.txt returns the SPA 404 shell — scored on the docs copy per rubric v3.”
llms-full.txt
Supported
“docs.neptune.dev/llms-full.txt = 95KB comprehensive concatenation of all doc pages.”
robots.txt AI policy
Supported
“docs.neptune.dev/robots.txt: 'Content-Signal: ai-train=yes, search=yes, ai-input=yes' — explicit AI allow. Apex robots is the SPA shell (default-allow).”
JSON-LD
Not supported
“No <script type=ld+json> on the homepage.”
Sitemap
Supported
“Apex /sitemap.xml is a real XML sitemap with 46 URLs.”
Meta tags
Supported
“Complete title + description + OG + Twitter cards, descriptive ('Neptune — Your AI Platform Engineer ...').”
Markdown negotiation
Supported
“Mintlify serves clean .md (docs.neptune.dev/quickstart.md -> 200, real markdown); llms.txt links use .md URLs.”
Content efficiency
Partially supported
“Next.js homepage ~108KB HTML; readable text ratio in the ~1-5% band (JS-heavy but server-rendered).”
Docs discoverable
Partially supported
“Docs reachable (try-it-now -> docs.neptune.dev/quickstart, blog header 'Docs' link) but on a separate subdomain and the marketing homepage is JS-rendered.”
Machine-readable pricing
Not supported
“No pricing page (/pricing 404).”
No anti-bot wall
Supported
“No challenge on public content; curl + firecrawl fetched homepage/docs/legal cleanly.”

Can an agent drive it?

act-ability · APIs, SDKs, MCP, credentials, webhooks

6/11

2 full · 4 partial · 55% of applicable checks

Public API
Partially supported
“Documented MCP tool API (Available Tools table) reachable over stdio or an HTTP transport; no traditional public REST API.”
OpenAPI spec
Not supported
“No OpenAPI/Swagger. (neptune.json JSON Schema via get_project_schema is config, not an API spec.)”
MCP server
Supported
“Neptune IS an MCP server — installable binary or `uvx --from git+https://github.com/shuttle-hq/neptune-mcp.git neptune mcp`, stdio + HTTP (localhost:8001/mcp), fully documented with a tool table.”
SDK packages
Not supported
“No first-party client SDK; resources are accessed via standard AWS SDKs (boto3).”
Auth documented
Partially supported
“GitHub OAuth login flow documented (the `login` MCP tool), but no scoped-API-key / programmatic-credential docs.”
Self-serve credentials
Partially supported
“The agent calls the `login` tool which triggers GitHub OAuth — a human approves in-browser (no fully programmatic key issuance).”
Webhooks
Not supported
“No webhooks documented.”
CLI tool
Supported
“Official `neptune` CLI (binary + Python/uv).”
Error model
Not supported
“No documented JSON error model (only prose troubleshooting).”
Rate limits documented
Partially supported
“ToS 'Fair Use Guardrails' mentions automated rate limits, but no documented limits + response headers.”
Agent config files
Not supported
“No agents.md / .well-known/agent / skills listing (the MCP server, credited under mcp_server, is the agent surface).”

05 Coding harnesses Which agents and IDEs are documented to run here

Advertised integrations 5

Claude Code Anthropic
Supported
“Troubleshooting Neptune MCP in Claude Code (CLI) ... claude mcp add --transport stdio neptune -- neptune mcp”
Source docs.neptune.dev
Cursor Anysphere
Supported
“Troubleshooting Neptune MCP in Cursor — Cursor Settings -> Tools & MCP -> Add new MCP server”
Source docs.neptune.dev
Windsurf Codeium
Supported
“Troubleshooting Neptune MCP in Windsurf — edit ~/.codeium/windsurf/mcp_config.json”
Source docs.neptune.dev
Cline Cline
Supported
“VS Code + Cline — Install the Cline extension ... Add this to your cline_mcp_settings.json”
Source docs.neptune.dev
GitHub Copilot GitHub
Supported
“Troubleshooting Neptune MCP with GitHub Copilot”
Source docs.neptune.dev

Plausible compatibility 0

Derived, not stored: the product passes SSH access, so any CLI coding agent is installable inside it. This is plausible compatibility, not a supported integration.

No general shell access documented, so nothing is derived. Absence is not unsupported.

06 Compliance & regions Standards held, with ordinal rigor; never a score

Certifications held 1

GDPR
self-attestedhostedUK-based data controller/processor posture with a published Data Processing Addendum (/dpa) and privacy policy under UK/EU data-protection law. Self-attested — no third-party GDPR audit shown.
“At Openquery Ltd we respect your privacy ... We process such Customer Data on your behalf, in our capacity as data processor, in accordance with our Data Processing Addendum https://www.neptune.dev/dpa”
Source neptune.devConfidence: medium

Regions —

Regions are not disclosed on the public surface.

Runs on Neptune-managed AWS; region is not user-selectable or publicly disclosed. Example deploy IP (52.56.x.x) maps to AWS eu-west-2 (London); vendor is UK-based. The launch blog states a roadmap to be 'cloud-agnostic ... supporting AWS, GCP, and Azure through a simple plugin model', but only AWS is documented today.

Legal

Privacy notice Terms of service

07 Company & presence Facts only, not scored

Company

Headquarters: London, England, United Kingdom (91 Wimpole Street, W1G 0EF)
Founded: OpenQuery Ltd (England no. 12268176) — the company behind Shuttle (Rust PaaS, repo created 2022-02-19, YC-backed); pivoted to Neptune in 2025.
Team size: Not disclosed (small team; ex-Shuttle).
Hiring: Unknown — no /careers page found (404).

Activity

Last release: Public beta as of 2026-06-07 (site footer (c) 2025 Neptune). neptune-mcp CLI last pushed 2026-01-08. neptune.dev
Last blog post: Active blog (14 posts incl. launch 'Introducing the AI Platform Engineer' + model/tool reviews — Gemini 3, Kimi K2, Cursor 2.0, Claude Code best practices). neptune.dev

Presence 5

Links found on the public surface scanned; not an exhaustive search.

08 Sources & method How this entry was produced

Public surface only

Everything here was read from neptune.dev's unauthenticated pages, docs, pricing and repository on 7 Jun 2026. Nothing behind a login was used.

Statuses, not scores

Capabilities are pass, partial or fail against a written rubric (features v12). “Not assessed” means the scan predates the key.

Confidence is separate

Each fact carries its own confidence. Low-confidence facts are shown, never hidden, so you can weigh them.

Schema: scan v5
Features registry: v12
Keys tracked today: 61
Assessed on this entry: 52

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