Until now, Replit apps used a single database for both development and live customer data, making it challenging to safely test and deploy updates. We're excited to announce the launch of separate development and production databases for Replit apps, making it safer to vibe code with Replit. Users can now iterate with their app using a development database, while storing live customer data in their production Database.
Starting today, we’re rolling out this feature in Beta for new Replit apps — gradually reaching all Replit users and apps over the next few weeks. With this update, Replit apps can now maintain separate development and production databases, making it easier to build safely and deploy with confidence. In the coming weeks, we’ll automatically migrate existing Replit apps to use separate development and production databases. No user action required.
This is the next step in making Vibe Coding even more secure on Replit. This feature adds to other security enhancing features for databases users already have access to like Point-in-time Restore that allow users to securely rollback any changes to their databases.
Users will be able to review and manage both their production & development databases within the Replit workspace.
What this enables for our users
This production & development database separation makes it easier and safer to build applications requiring data persistence. You can now:
- Make changes to your app without fear of impacting your production application
- Safely preview, test, and validate database schema changes before deploying to production
How it works
- You can create the initial database with Replit as usual, by asking the agent to add a database to their app
- During first deployment, you will now see a new checkbox automatically enabled to create a Production database
- First deployment creates a production database with a fresh schema but no data.
- You can continue to iterate and build on their app and any database changes are stored in the development database
- When you are ready to re-deploy the app, the Agent will check if there were any changes made to the development database
- If the Agent detects changes in the development database, it will ask during re-deployment whether those changes need to be applied to the production database as well (regardless of whether those changes are destructive or not)
Setting a stronger foundation for more secure, production-ready apps
In the very near future, we will automate part of this experience, notably:
- Automatically resolve migration conflicts with Agent’s help
- Automatically migrate data from development to production for all Apps
This separation of development & production databases is the first step in establishing a unified development/production separation experience across Replit's cloud services (Secrets, Auth, Object Storage eventually)
It also opens up new options for users to connect their Replit apps to existing data lakes like Databricks, Snowflake, and BigQuery — while maintaining strong data governance controls.
