PlanetScale

MySQL platform built on Vitess for serious scale

planetscale.com · Scaler Pro from ~$39/mo (no free tier)

PlanetScale is Vitess-backed MySQL: horizontal sharding, non-blocking schema changes, and the engine that ran YouTube — for products that will actually see heavy traffic.

Capabilities

Capabilities

  • Vitess sharding: proven at YouTube/Slack scale
  • Non-blocking schema migrations, deploy requests (git-like DB workflow)
  • Postgres support added in 2025; Metal for dedicated NVMe performance

Best for

  • Serious undertakings where the data layer must survive real growth
  • Teams that need safe schema changes on hot tables

Not for

  • Personal $0 clones — no free tier since 2024, starts ~$39/mo; pick Neon or Turso instead