PlanetScale vs Turso
Pricing
PlanetScale: Postgres from $5/mo, Vitess (MySQL) from $39/mo, no free tier
Turso: Free tier (5 GB storage, 100 databases), paid from $4.99/mo billed yearly
Description
PlanetScale: Managed Postgres and Vitess (MySQL) databases with git-like branching for safe schema changes
Turso: SQLite-compatible cloud database built for one database per user, agent or tenant, with sync to devices
Pros
- Database branching lets you test schema changes without touching production
- Non-blocking schema migrations on Vitess: no downtime during changes
- Postgres starts at $5/mo for a single node, or $15/mo with high availability
- Cheap to run many databases: idle databases cost only storage
- Free tier includes 5 GB storage, 100 databases and 500 million row reads a month
- Open-source, SQLite-compatible engine that also runs locally for free
Cons
- No free tier, and Vitess (MySQL) databases start at $39/mo
- The $5 Postgres node is tiny (1/16 vCPU, 512 MiB of memory), so production apps usually need more
- Foreign keys on Vitess must be turned on per database and work only on unsharded databases
- Edge replicas are no longer offered to new users: fast local reads now come from replicas or sync inside your app
- Ecosystem is young: fewer ORMs and tools have native Turso support compared to Postgres
- Not suited for heavy relational workloads that need JOINs across large tables
Details
PlanetScale brings git workflows to your database. Create a branch, change your schema, test it, then merge it into production with zero downtime. No more scary migration scripts run against your live database at 2 AM.
The big hit was losing the free tier in 2024, which pushed many indie developers to alternatives like Neon and Supabase. PlanetScale now sells managed Postgres as well as Vitess, its MySQL-compatible option built on the technology that powers YouTube. A single-node Postgres database starts at $5 a month and a three-node high-availability cluster at $15, while Vitess starts at $39. That brings a small database within reach of side projects, but Neon (Postgres, free tier) and Supabase (Postgres plus extras, free tier) are still the cheaper places to start.
Turso takes SQLite and makes it work as a cloud database. Its design goal is many small databases rather than one big one: you can give every user, workspace or AI agent its own isolated database, and idle ones cost only storage. Embedded replication lets the same database run inside your app or on a user’s device, reading and writing locally and syncing with the cloud. Turso no longer offers edge replicas in multiple regions to new users.
The free tier gives you 5 GB of storage, 100 databases, 500 million row reads and 10 million row writes a month. Paid plans start with Developer at $4.99 a month billed yearly ($5.99 monthly) and Scaler at $24.92 billed yearly ($29 monthly). On 2 October 2026 Turso announced that it is being acquired by Supabase. It says the service keeps running as before and the open-source engine stays in active development; the announcement does not mention plan or price changes. If your app is read-heavy or naturally split per tenant, Turso is fast and cheap. If you need complex relational queries or heavy write throughput, Postgres on Neon or Supabase is a better foundation.
Verified
