Managed databases

PlanetScale vs Neon

PlanetScale sells dedicated Postgres and MySQL clusters from $5 a month with HA, NVMe Metal and sharding; Neon is serverless Postgres with a free plan, scale to zero and pure usage billing.

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The short answer

PlanetScale runs fixed-size clusters that bill while they run. In AWS us-east-1 a single-node Postgres PS-5 lists $5 a month, a three-node HA cluster $15, Metal on local NVMe $50 and Vitess MySQL $39. There is no free plan. Neon’s compute suspends after five minutes idle; paid plans bill $0.106 (Launch) or $0.222 (Scale) per CU-hour with no minimum, and the Free plan covers up to 100 projects.

Branching works differently. Each PlanetScale branch is its own cluster, billed separately. Neon branches are copy-on-write, so a branch of a large database starts at no extra cost, with 10 per project included.

PlanetScale covers workloads Neon does not: MySQL, horizontal sharding through Vitess or Neki, and a 99.999% multi-region SLA. Neon suits idle-heavy and preview workloads, but an always-on database pays for every CU-hour.

Choose PlanetScale if

You need MySQL or horizontal sharding
You want a three-node HA cluster or NVMe storage with unlimited IOPS
Your database is busy around the clock and you want a fixed cluster price

Choose Neon if

You need a free database for a side project
Your databases sit idle for long periods
You want cheap copy-on-write branches for every pull request

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Side by side

	PlanetScale	Neon
Stages	HobbyIndieStartupScale-upEnterprise	HobbyIndieStartupScale-upEnterprise
What it is	Managed Postgres and MySQL (Vitess)	Serverless Postgres
From	From $5/mo (PS-5 single-node Postgres, AWS us-east-1)	From $0.106 per CU-hour (Launch, no monthly minimum)
Free tier	None	100 projects, 100 CU-hours of compute per project per month, autoscaling up to 2 CU, 0.5 GB storage per project, 5 GB egress, 10 branches per project, 6-hour restore window, up to 60,000 auth MAU; compute suspends when a limit is hit
Engines	PostgreSQL, MySQL (Vitess), sharded Postgres (Neki)	PostgreSQL
Scale to zero	No; fixed cluster sizes billed per millisecond	Yes; scale to zero after 5 min, CU-hour billing
Branching	Yes; each branch runs on its own cluster	Yes, copy-on-write; 10 per project included
Backups	Automatic; 2x disk size backup storage included	Instant restore: 6 h Free, 7 days Launch, 30 days Scale
Open source	No	Yes
Self-hostable	No	No
EU data residency	Available	Available
Compliance	SOC 1, SOC 2, HIPAA, PCI DSS, GDPR DPA	SOC 2, HIPAA
Checked	28 Sept 2026	28 Sept 2026
Strengths	Dedicated clusters with predictable performance instead of shared compute $5 single-node entry price with a path to HA, Metal and sharding without changing vendor NVMe-backed Metal instances with unlimited IOPS Vitess sharding proven on very large MySQL deployments	Idle databases cost nothing for compute on every plan No monthly minimum on paid plans, so small projects pay cents Fast copy-on-write branches for preview deployments SOC 2, HIPAA, SLA and private networking without a fixed-fee enterprise tier
Limitations	No free plan Single-node clusters are not highly available; HA starts at $15/mo Every branch is a separately billed cluster No scale to zero; clusters bill while running	Free plan compute suspends for the rest of the month once 100 CU-hours, 0.5 GB or 5 GB egress is used A cold start follows each scale-to-zero suspension Region is fixed at project creation; moving means creating a new project and migrating New projects are limited to 8 AWS regions; Azure regions are deprecated

Sources: PlanetScale pricing, Neon pricing. Full plans on each tool's page.

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Plans

PlanetScale

Postgres single node PS-5 1/16 vCPU, 512 MiB RAM, non-HA; 10 GB network storage included	$5/mo
Postgres single node PS-10 1/8 vCPU, 1 GiB RAM (arm64); $13 on x86-64	$10/mo
Postgres HA PS-5 Primary plus 2 replicas across three availability zones	$15/mo
Postgres HA PS-10 1/8 vCPU, 1 GiB RAM, 3 nodes (arm64); $39 on x86-64	$30/mo
Postgres Metal M-10 3 nodes on local NVMe, 10 GiB storage included, unlimited IOPS	$50/mo
Vitess (MySQL) PS-10 1/8 vCPU, 1 GiB RAM, 3 nodes, x86-64	$39/mo
Enterprise / Managed Single-tenant or deployed in your own AWS/GCP account; PCI DSS on Managed	Custom

Neon

Free 100 CU-hours per project per month, 0.5 GB storage per project, 5 GB egress, always scales to zero	$0
Launch Storage $0.35/GB-month, 500 GB egress per project then $0.10/GB, autoscaling to 16 CU, 7-day restore window	$0.106/CU-hour
Scale Adds SOC 2, HIPAA (BAA), private networking, IP allow rules, uptime SLA, 30-day restore window, up to 56 CU fixed	$0.222/CU-hour

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