PostgreSQL vs PlanetScale

At a Glance

Attribute	PostgreSQL	PlanetScale
Category	Database	Database
Pricing Model	open-source	paid
Starting Price	Free	$39/mo
Free Tier	Yes	No
Open Source	Yes	No
Platforms	linux, macos, windows, containers	web, api

PostgreSQL

PlanetScale

PostgreSQL

PlanetScale

PostgreSQL

No data available.

PlanetScale

Pros

Branching model for database schema changes means you never run a raw ALTER TABLE in production again — a game changer for team workflows+183
Zero-downtime schema migrations are solved by default — no more 3am maintenance windows for adding a column+162

Database

Supabase vs Firebase vs PlanetScale

Database

PlanetScale vs Neon

Database

Supabase vs Neon vs PlanetScale

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Cons

They killed the free tier in 2024 and the cheapest plan is $39/mo — hard to justify for early-stage projects that might not survive+198
It's MySQL not Postgres, which cuts you off from a huge ecosystem of Postgres-native tools, extensions, and hiring pool+176
Foreign key constraints aren't supported because of the sharding model — you have to enforce referential integrity in application code+152
Prisma support works but you lose some ORM features due to the missing FK support, and you'll hit confusing errors if you're not aware+91