PlanetScale — Pricing, Alternatives & Review — notanothertool

Overview

PlanetScale is a serverless MySQL platform built on Vitess, the same technology that scales YouTube's database. It introduces database branching for safe schema changes, deploy requests for review workflows, and automatic scaling without manual sharding.

PlanetScale removed its free tier in 2024, with plans now starting at $39/month for the Scaler plan. This includes 10GB of storage and 1 billion row reads per month, scaling with usage beyond that.

Strengths

Git-like branching for safe schema changes
Non-blocking schema migrations with zero downtime
Built on Vitess for proven horizontal scalability
Excellent developer experience and CLI tools

Weaknesses

No free tier — minimum $39/month commitment
No foreign key constraint support by default
MySQL only — no Postgres option
Vendor lock-in with proprietary branching features

Pricing estimate

Team size

10

$390 /month

$4680/year

Quick info

Category: Database
Starting price: $39/mo
Free tier: No
Open source: No
Best for: Small teams
Founded: 2018

Last updated 2026-04-12

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Quick comparisons

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1

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2

Neon Free tier Open Source

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PlanetScale comparisons

Supabase vs PlanetScale

Supabase gives you open source and self-hosting; PlanetScale is a managed service. Which trade-off works for you?

PlanetScale vs Neon

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PlanetScale vs Firebase

Firebase is the free option; PlanetScale charges $39/mo but may offer more polish. Here is how they compare.

PlanetScale vs Airtable

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PlanetScale vs Xata

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PlanetScale vs Turso

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