Compare
Neon vs PlanetScale
PlanetScale focuses on hosted MySQL/Postgres scaling without integrated auth, storage, or AI gateway.
Which to pick
Pick Neon if you want…
- Serverless Postgres with full backend suite
- Serverless Postgres
- A free plan to start with
- Integrations with Better Auth, Databricks or pgBouncer (on Neon's list, not PlanetScale's)
Pick PlanetScale if you want…
- Sharded MySQL/Postgres with unlimited IOPS
- Scalable hosted databases
- Integrations with Fivetran, Airbyte or Hightouch (on PlanetScale's list, not Neon's)
Neon offers serverless Postgres with autoscaling but no built-in sharding or unlimited IOPS.
Side by side
- What it is
- Neon:Neon provides a serverless Postgres database with built-in auth, object storage, functions and an AI gateway.
- PlanetScale:PlanetScale provides managed, horizontally-sharded MySQL, Vitess, and Postgres databases with unlimited IOPS and high-availability.
- Best for
- Neon:Serverless Postgres with full backend suite
- PlanetScale:Sharded MySQL/Postgres with unlimited IOPS
- Who it’s for
- Neon:Developers building apps or agents that need instant, branchable backends.
- PlanetScale:Developers and teams needing scalable, high-performance cloud databases.
- Pricing
- Neon:Freemium
- PlanetScale:Paid
- Plans
- Neon:Free $0
- PlanetScale:Single-node Postgres $5 per month · PlanetScale Metal $50 per month
- Works with
- Neon:Better Auth, Databricks, pgBouncer
- PlanetScale:Fivetran, Airbyte, Hightouch, Datadog, Vantage, Debezium, Prometheus, pganalyze
Neon features
- Serverless Postgres. Lakebase Postgres scales compute and storage independently and auto-scales in real time.
- Managed Auth. Fully-managed Better Auth integration provides free user authentication per database.
- Branchable Storage. S3-compatible object storage and database branches copy-on-write for isolated environments.
- Functions. Serverless functions run close to the database without timeouts.
- AI Gateway. Single API to access frontier and open-source models at cost-based rates.
- Autoscaling & Scale-to-Zero. Compute auto-adjusts to demand and scales to zero when idle, billed per CU-hour.
- High Availability & Read Replicas. Multi-AZ storage and read replicas are included on all plans.
- Extensions Library. Supports Postgres extensions such as pg_vector, PostGIS, TimescaleDB, etc.
PlanetScale features
- Horizontal sharding. Vitess and Neki enable explicit sharding for MySQL and Postgres across thousands of nodes.
- Branch-per-environment. Each branch runs on its own isolated cluster for safe schema changes.
- Unlimited IOPS on NVMe. PlanetScale Metal uses blazing-fast NVMe drives with unlimited IOPS.
- High-availability clusters. One primary and two replicas across three availability zones with automated failover.
- Built-in connection pooling. PgBouncer for Postgres and similar pooling for MySQL reduce connection overhead.
- Query Insights & observability. Integrated monitoring dashboards for Vitess, Neki, and Postgres workloads.
- Database Traffic Control™. Set flexible budgets on query traffic to prevent runaway queries.
- Security & compliance. SOC 1/2, PCI DSS, HIPAA compliance with IP restrictions and private link options.
Neon vs PlanetScale FAQ
Is Neon or PlanetScale free?+
Neon has a free plan and paid plans. PlanetScale is paid, from $5/month (Single-node Postgres).
Do Neon and PlanetScale integrate with the same tools?+
Their integration lists don't overlap: Neon lists Better Auth, Databricks and pgBouncer; PlanetScale lists Fivetran, Airbyte, Hightouch, Datadog and 8 more.
On DevHunt
Based on each tool's website and DevHunt data. Details may change; check the official sites.