PlanetScale Doesn't Have a Free Plan — Here's What It Costs

⚡ Quick Verdict

No free plan. The cheapest way in is Base - Postgres single node at $5/month starting price. Consider free alternatives in the cloud infrastructure category if budget is tight.

See Pricing →See Plans ↓

Who Should Pay for This

👤

Best For

✓Established business
✓Budget for premium tools
✓Need cloud infrastructure features
✓Professional use case
✓Want official support

What Users Say About PlanetScale

👍 What Users Love

✓Supports both Vitess and Postgres, giving teams options across a horizontally scalable MySQL-compatible architecture and a widely adopted relational database engine.
✓Vitess offering is specifically positioned for ultra scalability through horizontal sharding, which is valuable for applications that may outgrow a single-node database model.
✓Website highlights Metal databases with locally attached NVMe drives, making performance a central part of the platform rather than a secondary feature.
✓Deployment options include PlanetScale Managed with bring-your-own-cloud, which can help organizations with stricter security, compliance, or infrastructure ownership requirements.
✓Database Traffic Control is presented as a way to apply resource budgets to Postgres query traffic, addressing operational risk from expensive or noisy workloads.
✓Positioning is focused on production cloud databases rather than generic developer convenience, making it suitable for teams that care deeply about database reliability and scale.

👎 Common Concerns

⚠PlanetScale no longer offers a free Developer or Hobby plan, so even small projects need to start on a paid Base plan.
⚠PlanetScale appears database-focused, so teams looking for a full backend platform with built-in auth, storage, and application services may need additional tools.
⚠Vitess and horizontal sharding can introduce architectural complexity for teams that are used to simple single-instance relational databases.
⚠Bring-your-own-cloud and managed deployment options may be better suited to mature teams than small projects that want the simplest possible setup.
⚠Feature availability differs by engine, with Data Branching listed for Vitess and Database Traffic Control listed for Postgres, so teams need to validate that their preferred engine supports the exact workflow they want.

Frequently Asked Questions

How compatible is PlanetScale with existing MySQL applications?

PlanetScale’s Vitess offering is MySQL-compatible, but teams should review compatibility details before migration because distributed Vitess architectures can affect some database features and schema patterns. PlanetScale also offers Postgres, so the right compatibility review depends on which engine you choose.

What does the database branching workflow look like in practice?

For Vitess databases, you create a branch, make schema changes, test them, create a deploy request similar to a pull request, and merge to the production branch. PlanetScale’s current plan documentation lists Data Branching for Vitess and not for Postgres; Postgres development branches are billed separately as new clusters.

How does PlanetScale handle very large database migrations?

PlanetScale positions Vitess for MySQL-compatible horizontal sharding and large-scale database operations. Enterprise options include migration assistance, and buyers planning large migrations should validate engine-specific migration workflow, downtime expectations, and operational support directly with PlanetScale.

What are the cost implications of PlanetScale's scaling model?

PlanetScale is paid and usage-based, not freemium. Single-node Postgres starts at $5/month, Metal starts at $50/month, Base storage includes 10 GB and then bills additional network-attached storage at $0.50 per GB per instance, and high-availability storage is effectively $1.50/GB because it uses three instances.

Can I export data or migrate away from PlanetScale if needed?

Yes, PlanetScale supports standard relational database workflows and offers managed database engines rather than a proprietary application runtime. Migration planning should account for the selected engine, Vitess-specific architecture choices such as sharding, and any PlanetScale-specific branching or deployment workflows.

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Last verified March 2026

What Users Say About PlanetScale

👍 What Users Love

✓Supports both Vitess and Postgres, giving teams options across a horizontally scalable MySQL-compatible architecture and a widely adopted relational database engine.
✓Vitess offering is specifically positioned for ultra scalability through horizontal sharding, which is valuable for applications that may outgrow a single-node database model.
✓Website highlights Metal databases with locally attached NVMe drives, making performance a central part of the platform rather than a secondary feature.
✓Deployment options include PlanetScale Managed with bring-your-own-cloud, which can help organizations with stricter security, compliance, or infrastructure ownership requirements.
✓Database Traffic Control is presented as a way to apply resource budgets to Postgres query traffic, addressing operational risk from expensive or noisy workloads.
✓Positioning is focused on production cloud databases rather than generic developer convenience, making it suitable for teams that care deeply about database reliability and scale.

👎 Common Concerns

⚠PlanetScale no longer offers a free Developer or Hobby plan, so even small projects need to start on a paid Base plan.
⚠PlanetScale appears database-focused, so teams looking for a full backend platform with built-in auth, storage, and application services may need additional tools.
⚠Vitess and horizontal sharding can introduce architectural complexity for teams that are used to simple single-instance relational databases.
⚠Bring-your-own-cloud and managed deployment options may be better suited to mature teams than small projects that want the simplest possible setup.
⚠Feature availability differs by engine, with Data Branching listed for Vitess and Database Traffic Control listed for Postgres, so teams need to validate that their preferred engine supports the exact workflow they want.