by PlanetScaleManaged Postgres
Postgres on a cluster size you choose: from $5 a month on a single node or $15 with two replicas across three zones, with SOC 2 Type 2 and BAAs on the self-serve plan.
Production Postgres at a fixed monthly price per cluster, from $10 for 1 GiB, with SOC 2 Type 2 reports and BAAs on the self-serve plan.
PlanetScale prices each Postgres branch by the cluster size you choose, with 10 GB of storage and backups every 12 hours included. A single node starts at $5 a month and a highly available cluster, a primary and two replicas across three availability zones, at $15. The self-serve Base plan lists SOC 2 Type 2 reports and BAAs, which Supabase and Neon list on higher plans.
Against 3 other products we reviewed in Managed Postgres: what you pay for with each, the five access facts, the plan limits we recorded and each review's bottom line. The note under the table says how each one was checked.
| Metric | PlanetScale | Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL | Neon | Supabase |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| What you're paying for | Worth the priceProduction Postgres at a fixed monthly price per cluster, from $10 for 1 GiB, with SOC 2 Type 2 reports and BAAs on the self-serve plan. | Compliance includedManaged Postgres in your own AWS account from $0.016 an hour, with point-in-time restore up to 35 days and a self-serve HIPAA BAA. | Worth the pricePostgres you pay for by the compute hour, with scale to zero, branches that start with your data, and a free plan of 100 projects. | Saves engineering timeA Postgres database with auth, storage and APIs in one project for $25 a month, with daily backups and a choice of 17 AWS regions. |
| Overall score | 6.7 | 6.9Best | 6.5 | 6.0 |
| Free option | Paid only | Free trial | Free plan | Free plan |
| Card to start | –Not measured | –Not measured | No card needed | –Not measured |
| Getting access | Self-serve | Self-serve | Self-serve | Self-serve |
| Starter priceCheapest paid plan | $5/mo | $0.016/hour | $0.106/CU-hour | $25/mo |
| Pricing model | Usage-based | Usage-based | Usage-based | Seat + usage |
| Pricing page | Public prices | Public prices | Public prices | Public prices |
| Billing units | Cluster size per month, storage above 10 GB, backups above 2× disk | Instance hours, storage (GB-month), backup storage above the free amount, CPU credits | Compute-unit hours, storage and restore history (GB-month) | Plan fee, compute hours, disk (GB) |
| Free plan | None; single node from $5/mo | None; AWS Free Tier credits for new accounts | 1 GB per project, 100 projects, 100 CU-hours each; no card | 500 MB per project, 2 projects; paused after 1 week inactive |
| 10 GB app with staging, per month | $15 on Base, computed | $19.10 on db.t4g.micro, computed | $28.06 on Launch, computed | $35.06 on Pro, computed |
| Point-in-time recovery | 2 days by default; longer with custom backup schedules | Up to 35 days, no add-on; extra backup storage $0.095/GB-month | Up to 7 days on Launch at $0.20/GB-month; 30 on Scale | $100/mo add-on per 7 days; needs Small compute |
| Automatic backups at no extra charge | Every 12 hours, kept 2 days | 7 days by default (console); free up to provisioned storage | None; history and snapshots billed per GB | Daily, kept 7 days (Pro) |
| SOC 2 Type II report | Base plan (ISO 27001 not stated) | AWS reports in AWS Artifact, any account | Scale plan | Team plan ($599/mo) |
| HIPAA BAA | Base plan, on request | Self-serve in AWS Artifact | Scale plan, self-serve | Team plan, paid add-on |
| EU regions | Frankfurt, Dublin (AWS); Belgium, Netherlands (GCP) | Frankfurt, Ireland, Paris, Stockholm, Milan, Spain | Frankfurt, London | Ireland, Paris, Frankfurt, Stockholm |
| SAML SSO for the dashboard | $199/mo add-on on Base | IAM Identity Center, no extra charge | Not listed | Listed on Team; table says Contact Us |
| Branch with production data | Yes, by restoring a backup to a branch | Yes, by restoring a snapshot or point in time to a new instance | Yes, every branch starts as a copy | Needs the PITR add-on |
| Bottom line | From its public pages, PlanetScale lists the lowest price for our scenario and the most compliance on its entry plan, with backups and PITR included. There is no free plan, and its Postgres branches are separate databases rather than copies. | From its public pages, RDS for PostgreSQL includes the most recovery and compliance here at a low listed price, all self-serve. The bill has more lines to estimate than the others, and there is no permanent free plan. | From its public pages, Neon has the most generous free plan and the most flexible branches here, and usage billing suits databases that are often idle. Compliance and longer restore windows move you to Scale, at about twice the compute rate. | From its public pages, Supabase gives the most around the database: auth, storage and APIs with daily backups for $25. For a database alone, PITR as a flat add-on and per-hour branches make it the highest-priced of the three in our scenario. |
Evidence: PlanetScale: facts checked 2026-10-15 from its public sign-up and pricing pages, no completed hands-on run; Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL: facts checked 2026-10-15 from its public sign-up and pricing pages, no completed hands-on run; Neon: facts checked 2026-10-15 from its public sign-up and pricing pages, no completed hands-on run; Supabase: facts checked 2026-10-15 from its public sign-up and pricing pages, no completed hands-on run. Prices in USD as listed, excluding tax. "–" means not recorded.
Review from public pages
Written from PlanetScale's public pages (pricing, security or privacy, and docs) as read on Oct 15, 2026. We did not sign up, and no hands-on run is published yet.
We read PlanetScale's pricing page, its pricing.md catalog and its docs on plans, Postgres pricing, backups, point-in-time recovery, branching, security and SSO on Oct 15, 2026; we did not sign up for this review. PlanetScale sells three engines: Vitess (MySQL-compatible), Neki (sharded Postgres) and PlanetScale Postgres, which this review covers. The docs say there is no free plan; the self-serve Base plan prices each branch by the cluster size you pick, prorated to the millisecond.
The pricing page and pricing.md list every size for one region at a time, and the same catalog is published as a read-only Postgres table. In us-east-1, single-node Postgres runs from $5 a month (PS-5, 512 MiB) and a cluster with a primary and two replicas across three availability zones from $15. Each cluster includes 10 GB of storage; above that, a rates endpoint linked from the docs returned $0.125 per GB for us-east-1. Backups run every 12 hours at no charge up to twice the disk size, and point-in-time recovery reaches back 2 days by default, or to your oldest backup when you add a custom schedule.
Branches work differently from Neon's: a new development branch (PS-DEV, from $5 a month) starts with no schema or data, and a branch with data comes from restoring a backup. The docs say there is no automated way to merge schema changes between Postgres branches. The security docs list SOC 1 and SOC 2 Type 2+ HIPAA reports and BAAs on Base; ISO 27001 is not mentioned.
In us-east-1 a single node with 1 GiB is $10 a month with 10 GB of storage included; our scenario comes to $15 with a staging branch.
vs Supabase: The same scenario is $28.06 on Neon Launch and $35.06 on Supabase Pro, by our arithmetic.
Each HA cluster is a primary and two replicas across three availability zones, from $15 a month (PS-5) or $30 for 1 GiB (PS-10).
The security docs list SOC 1 and SOC 2 Type 2+ HIPAA reports and Business Associate Agreements on Base, requested from the dashboard.
vs Supabase: Supabase offers them from Team ($599/mo); Neon lists them on Scale.
Backups every 12 hours are included up to twice the disk size; PITR covers 2 days by default and reaches the oldest backup if you schedule more, at $0.023 per GB beyond the included amount.
vs Supabase: Supabase’s PITR is $100 a month per 7 days.
An audit log kept 6 months on Base, SAML SSO as a $199-a-month add-on, and a deployment in your own AWS, GCP or Azure account on Enterprise.
Every database is paid; the smallest is a $5-a-month single node with 512 MiB.
Workaround: Neon and Supabase both have permanent free plans.
A new development branch has no schema or data, and there is no automated way to merge schema changes between Postgres branches.
Workaround: Restoring a backup to a new branch includes schema and data, at the parent’s cluster size.
Storage above 10 GB varies by region and is published through a rates endpoint linked from the docs; Business support is priced by sales.
Cluster sizes are capped at PS-160 and M-320 until an invoice of at least $100 has been paid.
Workaround: The docs say to contact PlanetScale to unlock larger sizes sooner.
PlanetScale bills each branch by cluster size per month, prorated to the millisecond, plus storage above 10 GB, backup storage above twice the disk ($0.023 per GB), egress above the included amount (100 GB for production branches, 10 GB for a single-node PS-5 and for development branches), and optional dedicated PgBouncers and extra replicas. In us-east-1, a single node is $5 (PS-5) or $10 (PS-10, 1 GiB); HA with two replicas is $15 or $30. Development branches are from $5 a month; SSO is $199 a month.
For our scenario: PS-10 single node $10 + a PS-DEV staging branch $5 = $15 a month, our arithmetic, with storage and backups inside the included amounts. With a highly available PS-10, it is $35.
PlanetScale Postgres runs standard PostgreSQL 17 and 18; the compatibility docs list logical replication as source or target, and the branching docs use pg_dump and pg_restore to copy data. There is no SUPERUSER role, and extensions come from a curated list.
From its public pages, PlanetScale lists the lowest price for our scenario and the most compliance on its entry plan, with backups and PITR included. There is no free plan, and its Postgres branches are separate databases rather than copies.
| Limit | As recorded |
|---|---|
| Billing units | Cluster size per month, storage above 10 GB, backups above 2× disk |
| Free plan | None; single node from $5/mo |
| 10 GB app with staging, per month | $15 on Base, computed |
| Point-in-time recovery | 2 days by default; longer with custom backup schedules |
| Automatic backups at no extra charge | Every 12 hours, kept 2 days |
| SOC 2 Type II report | Base plan (ISO 27001 not stated) |
| HIPAA BAA | Base plan, on request |
| EU regions | Frankfurt, Dublin (AWS); Belgium, Netherlands (GCP) |
| SAML SSO for the dashboard | $199/mo add-on on Base |
| Branch with production data | Yes, by restoring a backup to a branch |
Read from the vendor's public pages on Oct 15, 2026. No hands-on run is published yet. How we check
We have not published a sign-up run for PlanetScale yet. The access facts above were read from its sign-up and pricing pages on Oct 15, 2026.
We have not published API calls for PlanetScale yet.
PlanetScale lists 5 plans. The cheapest paid plan, Base (single node PS-5), costs $5/mo.
Prices as listed, USD, excluding tax; observed 2026-10-15.
Source: planetscale.com pricing page. Prices change; the observed date above is when our agent read them.
We read the pricing, security and docs pages of three managed Postgres services on the same day and scored them on the same six indicators. How each one bills, what a 10 GB app with staging costs, and who should pick which.
