PlanetScale vs Xata
Pricing
PlanetScale: Postgres from $5/mo, Vitess (MySQL) from $39/mo, no free tier
Xata: Free (open source, self-hosted), Cloud from about $9/mo plus storage
Description
PlanetScale: Managed Postgres and Vitess (MySQL) databases with git-like branching for safe schema changes
Xata: Postgres platform for instant copy-on-write database branches that scale to zero, open source or hosted
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
- Branch a Postgres database in seconds: branches share storage with the parent and store only their changes
- Idle branches scale to zero and wake on the first query, so preview and test databases cost little
- Runs upstream Postgres, so standard extensions, drivers and tools work
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
- No free cloud tier: Xata Cloud has a 14-day trial, then hourly billing
- Built around branching for teams and coding agents, more than a simple side project needs
- Smaller community and ecosystem compared to Supabase or Neon
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.
Xata is a Postgres platform built around branching. You can start a fresh database or branch an existing one in seconds. Each branch gets its own schema, compute and data, but shares storage with its parent through copy-on-write, so you pay only for what changes. Idle branches hibernate and use no compute until the next query. Xata also maintains two open-source Postgres tools: pgroll for zero-downtime schema migrations and pgstream for anonymizing personal data.
The open-source edition is free to self-host. Xata Cloud starts with a 14-day trial, then bills by the hour: the smallest instance costs $0.012 an hour, about $9 a month, plus $0.28 per GB of storage. For a solo founder who needs one database, Supabase or Neon are simpler starting points with free tiers. Xata makes more sense once you want a separate database branch for every pull request, preview environment or coding agent.
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