DuckDB
The in-process SQL OLAP database — SQLite-style embedding, columnar speed, and 1.5.2 ships DuckLake 1.0 GA.
PlanetScale is a managed database platform that runs MySQL (Vitess) and Postgres on dedicated NVMe hardware with Git-style branching. It is fast, mature, and now finally Postgres-capable, but the $5+/month minimum and 2024 free-tier removal still hurt the community story.
PlanetScale is a fully managed database platform that pairs a Vitess-based MySQL service with a new Metal-powered Postgres offering, all wrapped in a developer experience built around Git-style branching and zero-downtime schema migrations. We rate it 82/100 — if you need serious database performance, branching workflows, and don't mind the $39/month minimum since the Hobby tier was retired, PlanetScale is the most polished managed Postgres or MySQL on the market.
PlanetScale is a managed database platform founded in 2018 by Jiten Vaidya and Sugu Sougoumarane, the two former YouTube engineers who created Vitess — the database scaling system that runs YouTube, Slack, Square, and GitHub internally. The company is led today by CEO Sam Lambert and is headquartered in San Francisco. PlanetScale started as a managed Vitess (sharded MySQL) cloud, opened to general availability in , and dramatically widened its scope on when it shipped PlanetScale for Postgres in general availability.
The specific problem PlanetScale solves is that running a high-performance OLTP database on a shared cloud node is brutal: noisy neighbors, network-attached storage I/O ceilings, and operational fire-drills around schema changes. PlanetScale's answer is two-pronged. First, PlanetScale Metal — databases that run on dedicated hosts with local NVMe drives, marketed as "unlimited I/O" because customers exhaust CPU long before they touch the disk ceiling. Second, a Git-flow branching model where every schema change is a deploy request that gets reviewed, tested, and shipped without locking the production table.
On Hacker News, the September 2025 Postgres GA thread surfaced strong technical praise — commenters who had run benchmarks called Metal "the first managed Postgres that doesn't get punished by I/O" — alongside lingering bitterness about the March 2024 removal of the free Hobby tier, which many bootstrappers and side-project builders never recovered from. On G2 the average rating sits around 4.6/5, with reviewers consistently calling out branching, deploy requests, and customer support; the recurring complaints are about row-read billing surprises (now mitigated by Database Traffic Control) and the entry-level price floor. Convex publicly migrated their entire production workload to PlanetScale for Postgres in a 2025 case study, and named customers include Cursor, Intercom, and Block.
PlanetScale split its plans by database type and resource model in 2025. There is no free production tier — Hobby was retired in March 2024 — but Postgres entry pricing was lowered to $5/month in late 2025.
| Plan | Price | Best For |
|---|---|---|
| Free trial | $0 (limited time) | Evaluating PlanetScale before committing |
| Postgres single | $5/month | Low-traffic Postgres production workloads |
| PS-5 (Vitess/Postgres) | $15/month | Standard production workloads |
| Metal HA | $50/month and up | High-performance, dedicated NVMe production |
| Enterprise | Custom | SSO, audit logging, dedicated support, PlanetScale Managed |
Best for: Series A through later-stage startups and engineering teams running production OLTP workloads where database performance is on the critical path, teams that value Git-style schema migration workflows, and any company that has outgrown shared-tenant Postgres on AWS RDS or Aurora.
Not ideal for: Hobbyists, side projects, and bootstrappers under $40/month database budgets — Neon or Supabase remain the right choice. Also a poor fit for teams that need analytical queries on the same primary, where a separate warehouse will serve better.
Pros:
Cons:
Neon — serverless Postgres with branching and a generous free tier, but built on networked storage; better for hobbyists and Vercel-shaped workloads. Supabase — open-source Postgres-plus-backend with auth, storage, and realtime baked in; broader scope but less raw database performance focus. AWS Aurora — the incumbent managed MySQL/Postgres on AWS; cheaper at small scale, slower at large scale, and missing branching entirely.
For production teams who care about p99 query latency and want a managed database with real branching workflows, PlanetScale is the most credible option in 2026 — and the Postgres GA closes the door on the "but I want Postgres" objection that defined the previous five years. We rate it 82/100: held back from a higher score only by the $39/month price floor that locks out hobbyists and the still-fresh memory of the Hobby tier removal. Pay the entry fee, run Metal, and you'll find very few managed databases that match it on speed.
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