- Price
- From $5/month (single-node Postgres)
- Free plan
- No
- Setup
- Needs a developer
- Up and running
- The database is up in minutes; connecting the app takes an afternoon.
What PlanetScale is for
PlanetScale hosts your app's database (Postgres or MySQL) on fast servers, with two standby copies that take over in seconds if the main one fails. It's built for products that already have traffic and can't go down, and it's the database behind companies like Cash App. There is no free plan: you pay a fixed monthly price for the server size you choose.
How it plugs into your product
- 1Create an account at planetscale.com with a card and pick Postgres or Vitess (MySQL), the region and the size.
- 2Choose single node (cheaper, no standby copies) or the 3-node high availability setup for production.
- 3Put the connection string in your server's environment variables and create tables through your ORM's migrations.
- 4Use a development branch to test schema changes before applying them to production.
Does it fit your idea?
It fits if
- A SaaS with paying customers where an hour of downtime costs sales, and $30 to $60 a month for a standby setup is fine.
- A product with heavy, steady traffic that needs a fast database it won't have to migrate off later.
- A team that already runs MySQL and wants to scale it without rewriting queries.
Look elsewhere if
- You're still validating the idea and want to pay nothing: there's no free plan.
- You want the cheapest plan in a region other than the main US ones: the $5 sizes aren't sold everywhere.
- You also need login and file storage from the same vendor: PlanetScale is only the database.
What people only find out after building
Read this before you build on it. Each item links to the official page that says so.
There's no free plan or listed trial; the cheapest database is a $5/month single-node Postgres in us-east-1.
Official source: planetscale.comSome regions only offer the metal (local NVMe) Postgres sizes, not the cheap PS sizes, so running there costs much more than the headline price.
Official source: planetscale.comSingle-node databases have no replicas: if that server fails, there's no standby copy to take over until you move to the 3-node setup.
Official source: planetscale.comThe single-node PS-5 includes only 10 GB of egress a month; storage beyond the included disk, extra egress and extra backups are billed on top.
Official source: planetscale.com
Price
From $5/month (single-node Postgres)
No free plan; the cheapest database is $5/month.
- Free tier
- No free plan
- First paid plan
- PS-5 Postgres: $5/mo (single node)
- Database type
- Postgres or MySQL (Vitess)
Checked on Oct 28, 2026 · official pricing
What it costs in practice
A SaaS with 2,000 monthly active users and 3 GB of data fits in the smallest sizes in us-east-1. Single-node PS-10 (1 GiB RAM, ARM): $10/month. For production with two standby copies, the 3-node PS-10 ARM: $30/month. Both include 10 GB of disk (estimate, before extra egress).
Estimate from the official price. Check it before you decide.
At a glance
- Free plan: no
- Open source: no
“Not stated” means the official site doesn’t say.
Who uses it
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