Neon has expanded its Free Plan to include read replicas, which allow users to efficiently utilize their 190 CU-hours by offloading reporting and analytics tasks from the primary database without duplicating data. Unlike traditional read replicas, Neon's unique serverless architecture enables these replicas to read directly from a shared storage backend, making them lighter, cost-efficient, and fast to deploy. This setup allows users to create numerous replicas with minimal cost, as they scale to zero when idle. Popular use cases for Neon's read replicas include providing safe, low-cost read access for team members and facilitating horizontal scaling by offloading read queries from the primary compute. To create a read replica, users simply navigate to the desired branch in their Neon Free account, configure the replica, and use a dedicated connection string to access it.