PlanetScale

Managed MySQL and Postgres at scale

PaidDatabases & backendplanetscale.com

What it is

Vitess-based managed MySQL, plus a Postgres offering added in 2025, aimed at horizontal scaling with online schema changes and branch-based deploy requests. There is no free tier — it was removed in 2024. Metal instances use local NVMe drives with unlimited IOPS starting around $50 monthly.

Why it earns a slot

Reached for when a vibe-coded prototype gets real traffic and needs a database that will not fall over under load. The $5 single-node Postgres tier finally makes it approachable for a solo builder.

Know before you commit

No free tier at all — you pay from day one, which rules it out for throwaway experiments. The MySQL side historically disallows foreign key constraints under Vitess, which trips up ORM-generated schemas.

Field notes

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Pricing snapshot

No free tier. PlanetScale Postgres single-node from $5/mo; PS-5 MySQL from $15/mo (10GB storage); Metal NVMe instances from $50/mo.

Snapshots move fast — verify at checkout, and post a field note if it changed.

Drop into your Lovable chat

Evaluate PlanetScale (https://planetscale.com) for this project, then use it only if it fits what we are already building.
Context: Managed MySQL and Postgres at scale. Vitess-based managed MySQL, plus a Postgres offering added in 2025, aimed at horizontal scaling with online schema changes and branch-based deploy requests. There is no free tier — it was removed in 2024. Metal instances use local NVMe drives with unlimited IOPS starting around $50 monthly.
Reviewer notes (general, not written for this codebase): Reached for when a vibe-coded prototype gets real traffic and needs a database that will not fall over under load. The $5 single-node Postgres tier finally makes it approachable for a solo builder.
Watch out for: No free tier at all — you pay from day one, which rules it out for throwaway experiments. The MySQL side historically disallows foreign key constraints under Vitess, which trips up ORM-generated schemas.
Pricing: No free tier. PlanetScale Postgres single-node from $5/mo; PS-5 MySQL from $15/mo (10GB storage); Metal NVMe instances from $50/mo.
Rules: treat the notes above as background only. Do not assume a theme, style, layout or feature that is not already in this project — inspect the existing code first and ask me before changing visual direction.

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Neighbourhood

How PlanetScale sits against the rest of the atlas — swaps, companions and the tools builders actually save alongside it.

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Named in the wiringDrizzle ORM

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