Short answer: use a direct (non-pooled) connection string for migrations, even if your application uses PgBouncer/Neon pooled connections.

golang-migrate acquires an advisory lock (pg_try_advisory_lock) to prevent concurrent migrations from running simultaneously. Advisory locks are session-level in PostgreSQL — they are held by the session and released when the session ends. This fundamentally breaks with PgBouncer in transaction mode, where each transaction may go to a different underlying connection, so the lock would be acquired on one connection and never seen by another.

The Neon docs are correct: transaction-pooling proxies are incompatible with tools that rely on session-level state (advisory locks, temporary tables, prepared statements, etc.).

Correct setup for Neon:

# For migrations: use the direct (non-pooled) connection string
DATABASE_URL=postgresql://user:[email protected]/dbname?sslmode=require

# For your application: use the pooled connection string  
DATABASE_URL=postgresql://user:[email protected]/dbname?sslmode=require

Neon provides both a pooled endpoint (-pooler.) and a direct endpoint. Use the direct endpoint for migrate up / migrate down, and the pooled endpoint for your application's runtime queries.