Best PlanetScale Alternatives in 2026 (Free and Paid)

The most common PlanetScale alternatives in 2026 are Neon (serverless Postgres with a free tier and branching), StitchDB (Postgres plus Auth, APIs and Storage, from $0), Supabase (Postgres-based backend), Aiven (managed MySQL or Postgres on many clouds) and AWS RDS or Aurora if you already live in AWS. If you left PlanetScale because the free Hobby plan was retired, the real choice is whether to stay on MySQL or move to Postgres.

PlanetScale is still a strong database. This article is for people who need something it doesn't offer: a free tier, a full backend, or a different price shape. All prices are as of November 2026.

#What PlanetScale offers today

A quick baseline so the comparison is fair. From PlanetScale's pricing and plans documentation:

• No free plan. The Hobby plan stopped accepting new databases on March 6, 2024 and was retired on April 8, 2024.
• Postgres starts at $5 a month for a single-node PS-5 (1/16 vCPU, 512 MiB) and $15 a month for the HA version with a primary and two replicas, in AWS us-east-1.
• Vitess (MySQL-compatible) starts at $39 a month for a three-node PS-10.
• Metal plans with local NVMe start at $50 a month (M-10, Postgres, HA).
• Clouds: AWS, GCP and Azure.
• Branching: data branching is included for Vitess. Postgres development branches cost $5 per branch per month.
• Backups run every 12 hours.

So "PlanetScale is expensive" is no longer quite true at the low end for Postgres. What it is not, is free, and it is not a backend: no Auth, no file storage, no generated API.

#Summary table

#Stay on MySQL or move to Postgres?

This is the first decision, because it decides how much work the move is.

Staying on MySQL keeps your schema and queries. Options include Aiven for MySQL, AWS RDS or Aurora MySQL, and DigitalOcean managed MySQL. You give up PlanetScale's Vitess-specific features (non-blocking schema changes through deploy requests, sharding) unless you run Vitess yourself.

Moving to Postgres is more work up front: different types, different quoting, AUTO_INCREMENT becomes generated always as identity, and some functions differ. In return you get a much larger set of hosts with free tiers, Row Level Security, jsonb, extensions such as pgvector and PostGIS, and backends that generate an API from your schema. PlanetScale itself now sells Postgres alongside Vitess. The detailed path is in Migrate from PlanetScale (MySQL) to Postgres.

#Neon

Neon is the closest match to PlanetScale's developer workflow: branches are the core feature. A branch is a separate copy of your database that you can create from the dashboard, CLI or API, which suits preview environments.

• Free (as of November 2026): 100 projects, 100 CU-hours per project per month, 1 GB storage per project, 10 branches per project, 6 hours of restore history.
• Launch: $0.106 per CU-hour, $0.35 per GB-month, no minimum. Restore history up to 7 days.
• Scale: $0.222 per CU-hour, restore history up to 30 days, IP allow rules, private networking.
• Regions: AWS only for new projects, including Frankfurt and London in Europe.

Choose Neon if you want branching like PlanetScale's but on Postgres, and your workloads have idle periods where scale-to-zero saves money. Watch out for cold starts after the 5-minute suspend and usage-based bills that move with traffic. See Neon's pricing.

#StitchDB

StitchDB gives every project a dedicated Postgres database plus the services PlanetScale leaves to you: Auth, a REST API generated from your tables, GraphQL, Realtime, Storage with image resizing and an S3 endpoint, and Edge Functions.

• Free: 2 projects, 500 MB database, 1 GB files, 50,000 MAU, 24 hours of point-in-time recovery.
• Pro: $15.99 a month, 10 GB database, 7 days of PITR, daily backups, 3 preview branches, 1 TB egress.
• Connections: session mode on port 5432 and transaction pooling on port 6543 through a pooler, TLS required (Connect).
• Serverless: an HTTP and WebSocket SQL driver for Workers and edge runtimes (serverless driver).

Branching is migration-based: a preview branch is a separate database built from your migrations, optionally with production data copied and personal data masked. That is closer to "a fresh environment per pull request" than to PlanetScale's deploy requests.

Choose StitchDB if you are moving to Postgres anyway and don't want to assemble auth, storage and an API layer yourself. Watch out for EU-only regions (Germany and Finland), so it suits European users or apps that need EU data residency more than US-centric apps. It is also a younger platform. Compare in detail: StitchDB vs PlanetScale.

#Supabase

Supabase is the best-known Postgres backend: database, Auth, Storage, Realtime and Edge Functions, with a large community.

• Free (as of November 2026): 500 MB database, 1 GB files, 50,000 MAU, 2 active projects, paused after a week of inactivity.
• Pro: from $25 a month, 8 GB disk per project, $10 of compute credits that cover a Micro instance (1 GB RAM).
• Add-ons: PITR at $100 a month per 7 days of retention; branches at $0.01344 per branch-hour.

Choose Supabase if you want a full backend with many regions (including several in the EU and US). Watch out for the add-on pricing for PITR and branches.

#Aiven

Aiven runs open-source data services on AWS, GCP, Azure, DigitalOcean, OVH and UpCloud. It is a good fit if you want to stay on MySQL with a managed host that is not tied to one cloud.

• Free (as of November 2026): 1 VM, 1 GB RAM, 1 GB storage, no choice of cloud or region, no connection pooling.
• Developer: $5 a month, 8 GB storage.
• Business: from $180 a month with high availability and 14 days of PITR.

Choose Aiven if you need a specific cloud, MySQL, or other services like Kafka next to your database. Its small plans have no point-in-time recovery, so check the plan ladder on aiven.io/pricing.

#AWS RDS and Aurora

If your app already runs on AWS, RDS is the low-friction choice. db.t4g.micro for Postgres costs $0.016 an hour in us-east-1 (about $11.70 a month), and gp3 storage is $0.115 per GB-month, both as of November 2026 per the AWS price list. Multi-AZ roughly doubles both.

Choose RDS if you need VPC networking, IAM integration and compliance programs from one cloud. Watch out for the extra pieces you assemble yourself: connection pooling, the API layer, auth and file storage, plus line items for storage, backups and data transfer.

#When PlanetScale is still the right choice

Be honest with yourself before you move:

• You run large MySQL workloads and depend on Vitess sharding or non-blocking schema changes.
• You need HA by default with replicas in three availability zones, on AWS, GCP or Azure, in US or Asian regions.
• You want local NVMe performance (Metal) and have the budget for it.

In those cases, a $5 single-node Postgres or a Metal cluster on PlanetScale may be the best deal on this list.

#FAQ

#Does PlanetScale have a free tier in 2026?

No. The Hobby plan was retired on April 8, 2024. The cheapest option as of November 2026 is a single-node Postgres database at $5 a month.

#What is the best free PlanetScale alternative?

For Postgres with branching, Neon's free tier. For Postgres plus Auth, APIs and Storage, StitchDB or Supabase. For MySQL, Aiven has a small free plan. Our free Postgres hosting guide compares the limits.

#Can I move from PlanetScale MySQL to Postgres without downtime?

Yes, with a tool that copies the initial data and then streams changes (for example pgloader for the bulk load plus a change-data-capture step), then a short write pause to switch. Plan type changes and query fixes first.

#Is there a PlanetScale alternative with an HTTP driver?

Yes. Neon has a serverless driver, and StitchDB has an HTTP and WebSocket SQL driver in stitchdb-js/sql for edge runtimes that cannot open TCP connections.

Want Postgres with the backend included? Start on the StitchDB Free plan.