The Best PlanetScale Alternatives in 2026
Tolodora Editorial Team
Independent software reviews for founders and small businesses.
PlanetScale built its name on Vitess, the MySQL-sharding technology that powers YouTube's database layer, wrapping it in a serverless platform with Git-style schema branching. That pedigree comes at a cost: PlanetScale removed its free Hobby plan in 2024, and its cheapest production-ready cluster now sits well above the price of a typical side-project database, which has pushed a lot of hobbyists and early-stage teams to look elsewhere.
The right alternative depends on what you actually valued about PlanetScale — the branching workflow, the serverless scaling, or just "MySQL that someone else operates." If you want Postgres with the same instant-branching feel, Neon is the closest match; if you want a full backend platform built on Postgres, look at Supabase; and if your workload is small, edge-distributed, or multi-tenant, Turso's SQLite-based model is worth a serious look.
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| # | Tool | Best for | Rating |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Neon | Teams that want PlanetScale's branching workflow but built for Postgres instead of MySQL. | 4.4/5 |
| 2 | Supabase | Teams that want a complete app backend, not just a database, replacing PlanetScale plus several other services. | 4.2/5 |
| 3 | Turso | Edge-first apps and multi-tenant SaaS that want one lightweight database per user or customer. | 4.1/5 |
| 4 | Railway | Small teams and indie developers who want a database and app hosting in one dashboard without PlanetScale's pricing floor. | 3.9/5 |
| 5 | CockroachDB | Large-scale, multi-region applications that need PlanetScale-style horizontal scaling on a Postgres-compatible engine. | 4.0/5 |
| 6 | Aiven | Enterprises that need standard MySQL compatibility across multiple clouds, plus other managed data infrastructure, under one vendor. | 3.9/5 |
Neon
- Pricing
- 9.0/10
- Functionality
- 8.8/10
- Ease of use
- 9.1/10
- Support
- 8.2/10
What I like
Instant copy-on-write branching that costs almost nothing, plus a free tier that actually persists.
Best for
Teams that want PlanetScale's branching workflow but built for Postgres instead of MySQL.
Neon is effectively the Postgres-native answer to what PlanetScale pioneered for MySQL branching, offering instant copy-on-write branches and scale-to-zero compute for idle databases. Unlike PlanetScale, Neon still has a genuinely usable free plan, and its per-branch pricing is far cheaper than running separate staging clusters.
Supabase
- Pricing
- 8.0/10
- Functionality
- 8.9/10
- Ease of use
- 8.5/10
- Support
- 8.0/10
What I like
A full backend-as-a-service — auth, storage, realtime, edge functions — built around Postgres.
Best for
Teams that want a complete app backend, not just a database, replacing PlanetScale plus several other services.
Where PlanetScale focuses narrowly on the database layer, Supabase bundles Postgres with authentication, file storage, and realtime subscriptions in one platform. It offers a free tier PlanetScale no longer has, though its own branching feature bills separately by the hour rather than being included.
Turso
- Pricing
- 9.2/10
- Functionality
- 7.5/10
- Ease of use
- 8.6/10
- Support
- 7.2/10
What I like
Database-per-tenant architecture at near-zero marginal cost, with sub-millisecond edge reads.
Best for
Edge-first apps and multi-tenant SaaS that want one lightweight database per user or customer.
Where PlanetScale scales a single large MySQL cluster through sharding, Turso takes the opposite approach: cheap, embeddable SQLite-compatible (libSQL) databases replicated across edge locations. It suits many small databases rather than one big one, which makes it a poor fit if you specifically need PlanetScale's relational scale, but a strong one for edge and multi-tenant workloads.
Railway
- Pricing
- 7.8/10
- Functionality
- 7.2/10
- Ease of use
- 8.8/10
- Support
- 7.4/10
What I like
One-click Postgres or MySQL provisioning inside the same platform that hosts your app.
Best for
Small teams and indie developers who want a database and app hosting in one dashboard without PlanetScale's pricing floor.
Railway trades PlanetScale's serverless sharding and schema-branching workflow for simplicity: a standard managed MySQL or Postgres instance billed by actual resource usage, deployed alongside your application in the same project. It has no Vitess-style sharding or deploy-request branching, but its usage-based pricing is friendlier to small workloads than PlanetScale's paid-only tiers.
CockroachDB
- Pricing
- 7.3/10
- Functionality
- 9.0/10
- Ease of use
- 7.1/10
- Support
- 8.5/10
What I like
Automatic multi-region distribution and strong consistency without manually managing shard keys.
Best for
Large-scale, multi-region applications that need PlanetScale-style horizontal scaling on a Postgres-compatible engine.
CockroachDB addresses the same problem PlanetScale's Vitess sharding solves — a single database outgrowing one machine — but does it natively for Postgres-wire-compatible SQL, distributing data across nodes and regions automatically rather than requiring PlanetScale's manual shard-key setup. It has a steeper operational learning curve and its enterprise compliance features sit behind a pricier tier.
Aiven
- Pricing
- 6.4/10
- Functionality
- 8.4/10
- Ease of use
- 7.4/10
- Support
- 8.8/10
What I like
Multi-cloud managed MySQL (plus Postgres, Kafka, and more) that runs on AWS, GCP, or Azure without lock-in.
Best for
Enterprises that need standard MySQL compatibility across multiple clouds, plus other managed data infrastructure, under one vendor.
Aiven offers unforked, standard managed MySQL rather than PlanetScale's Vitess-based sharded MySQL, so it lacks PlanetScale's built-in horizontal scaling story. In exchange it adds genuine multi-cloud portability and bundles other managed services — Kafka, OpenSearch, Postgres — that PlanetScale doesn't provide, at a price that climbs quickly on higher tiers.
The verdict
Neon and CockroachDB replace PlanetScale's Postgres and horizontal-scaling ambitions respectively, Supabase and Railway suit teams that want a broader platform around the database, and Turso and Aiven cover the edge-SQLite and multi-cloud-MySQL extremes.
Whatever you shortlist, run your real work through it for a week before committing — the right tool is the one that quietly disappears and lets you get back to it. And if you build software like this yourself, you can list it on Tolodora free.
Frequently asked questions
Why did PlanetScale remove its free tier?
PlanetScale discontinued its free Hobby plan in April 2024, and it has not reintroduced a free option for either its MySQL (Vitess) or newer Postgres product. Its plans now start at a paid tier, which is why many hobbyists and early-stage projects moved to alternatives like Neon, Supabase, or Turso that still offer a persistent free plan.
Which PlanetScale alternative is closest to standard MySQL?
Aiven and Railway both offer conventional, unforked managed MySQL, which is a more direct swap if your priority is plain MySQL compatibility rather than PlanetScale's Vitess-based sharding layer. CockroachDB and Neon are Postgres-compatible instead, so they require a database engine change, not just a hosting change.
Is there a genuinely free alternative to PlanetScale?
Yes. Neon, Supabase, and Turso all maintain free tiers as of 2026, unlike PlanetScale. Neon and Supabase are Postgres-based with usage caps on compute and storage, while Turso's free plan is generous for SQLite-based, edge-distributed workloads specifically.
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