PlanetScale vs Neon

Side-by-side — pricing, strengths, tradeoffs, and fit.

PlanetScale

MySQL-compatible serverless database that scales without limits

Neon

Serverless Postgres with branching and scale-to-zero

At a glance

Open Source
● Established·From $5/mo
Open SourceFree Tier
● Established·From Freemium

Overview

One-liner

MySQL-compatible serverless database that scales without limits

One-liner

Serverless Postgres with branching and scale-to-zero

Maturity

Established

Maturity

Established

Open source

✓ Yes

Open source

✓ Yes

Pricing

Free tier

✕ None

Free tier

✓ Available

Starts at

$5/mo

Starts at

Freemium

Model

Usage-based

Model

Usage-based

Enterprise

✕ None

Enterprise

✕ None

Best for

✓ Best for

Growth-stage startups and scale-ups who need MySQL compatibility with horizontal scaling and zero-downtime schema changes
Enterprise teams running high-traffic applications that have outgrown single-node MySQL
Agency and consultant teams managing multiple production databases who need reliable branching workflows

✓ Best for

Startups and solo developers who want serverless Postgres with a generous free tier and instant database branching for staging environments
Teams using Vercel or Next.js who need a modern Postgres backend that scales to zero
Indie developers building MVPs who need to minimize database costs with pay-per-use pricing

Not ideal for

✕ Not for

Hobby developers or solo developers on a tight budget since the free tier was removed
Teams requiring Postgres instead of MySQL

✕ Not for

Enterprises requiring on-premise deployment or strict data residency requirements
Applications needing persistent connections with high concurrency without connection pooling

Strengths

↑ Strengths

MySQL-compatible
Vitess-powered sharding
Non-blocking schema migrations
Database branching

↑ Strengths

Serverless Postgres
Database branching
Scale-to-zero
Autoscaling

Weaknesses

↓ Weaknesses

—

↓ Weaknesses

Neon does not support Postgres event triggers due to superuser requirements
Neon lacks a local development setup for the serverless proxy
Neon does not provide cross-regional read replicas
Neon does not provide the pg_net extension
Full PlanetScale profile →Full Neon profile →