Neon vs PlanetScale
A side-by-side, data-driven comparison of Neon and PlanetScale — pricing, free tiers and capabilities. Prefer the long read? See our in-depth guide.
Neon is serverless Postgres with instant branching; PlanetScale is MySQL/Vitess built for high-scale sharding and safe online schema changes — the choice usually comes down to Postgres-with-branching vs MySQL-at-scale.
At a glance
- Neon has a free tier; PlanetScale does not.
- Different engines: Neon is Serverless PostgreSQL, PlanetScale is MySQL (Vitess) / PostgreSQL.
- Neon is open source; PlanetScale is not.
Specs side by side
| Neon | PlanetScale | |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Managed database | Managed database |
| Engine | Serverless PostgreSQL | MySQL (Vitess) / PostgreSQL |
| Pricing model | usage-based | tiered |
| Free tier | Yes | No |
| Regions | multi-region | multi-region |
| Self-hostable | No | No |
| Open source | Yes | No |
Pros & cons
Our editorial assessment — not vendor-stated facts. Last reviewed 2026-07-16.
Neon
Pros
- Standard Postgres compatibility means existing drivers, ORMs, and tooling work without modification
- Branching makes ephemeral dev, test, and preview databases cheap and fast to create
- Scale-to-zero and usage metering can lower cost for intermittent or spiky workloads
- Fully managed, with no servers, storage provisioning, or OS to maintain
- Configurable autoscaling ceilings per branch give a predictable upper bound on compute cost
Cons
- Scale-to-zero adds cold-start latency (typically a few hundred milliseconds up to around a second) on the first query after an idle suspend
- Restricted extension support: extensions that require persistent filesystem access or background worker processes are unavailable
- No OS-level access: you cannot SSH to the host, reach the filesystem, or run sidecar/agent processes
- The pooled (PgBouncer) connection uses transaction-mode pooling, which limits Postgres features that rely on persistent session state; a direct connection is available but does not pool
- Usage-based pricing can be less predictable and less cost-effective for always-on, steady workloads than fixed provisioning
PlanetScale
Pros
- Branch-and-deploy-request workflow makes schema migrations reviewable, reversible, and safe to apply online
- Proven horizontal scalability through Vitess, the system used to run some of the largest MySQL deployments
- Strong, consistent I/O performance from NVMe-backed Metal instances
- Supports both MySQL and Postgres, so teams aren't locked to a single engine
Cons
- No free tier: the free Hobby plan was removed in April 2024 and has not returned, though a low-cost paid single-node option was introduced in late 2025
- Metered storage, egress, and backup charges layered on top of per-cluster compute make total cost harder to predict
- Proprietary proxy, branching, and operator layers create some degree of vendor lock-in
- The Postgres engine is newer and less battle-tested than the long-established Vitess/MySQL product
Bottom line
Pick Neon for teams wanting branchable, scale-to-zero Postgres for dev and preview. Pick PlanetScale for high-scale MySQL needing Vitess sharding and safe online schema changes.
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Frequently asked questions
- What is the difference between Neon and PlanetScale?
- Neon: A serverless Postgres platform that separates storage and compute, with instant database branching for dev/preview environments and scale-to-zero pricing. PlanetScale: A managed MySQL platform built on Vitess for horizontal sharding and non-blocking schema changes, aimed at high-scale production workloads (also offers Postgres).
- Does Neon have a free tier?
- Yes.
- Does PlanetScale have a free tier?
- No.
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