CockroachDB vs PlanetScale
A detailed comparison to help you choose between CockroachDB and PlanetScale.
Quick Verdict
4.2/5
CockroachDB
0 reviews
4.2/5
PlanetScale
0 reviews
Both CockroachDB and PlanetScale are equally rated at 4.2/5. CockroachDB is a distributed SQL database built to survive datacenter failures. Postgres-compatible, strong consistency, and automatic scaling across regions. Managed plans: Basic (usage-based, free tier), Standard and Advanced (provisioned), plus BYOC and the new Cockroach Continuum editions. Managed Postgres and MySQL (Vitess) databases with branching and zero-downtime schema changes. No free tier; Postgres starts at $5/month, Vitess at $39/month.
CockroachDB Distributed SQL database that survives failures | PlanetScale Serverless MySQL with database branching | |
|---|---|---|
| Overview | ||
| Rating | 4.2 (0 reviews) | 4.2 (0 reviews) |
| Pricing model | freemium | paid |
| Starting price | Free tier available✓ | From $5/mo |
| Best for | Applications where the database must survive region loss without losing transactions — payments, ledgers, identity, multi-region SaaS, global gaming backends — and teams ready for distributed-SQL trade-offs | Teams running MySQL (or Postgres) at scale who want Vitess-grade sharding and safe, reviewable schema migrations without operating the infrastructure themselves |
| Specifications (entry plan) | ||
| CPU cores | 2 vCPU✓ | 0 vCPU |
| RAM | — | 1 GB |
| Storage | — | 10 GB |
| Bandwidth | — | 0 TB/mo |
| SLA uptime | 99.99% | 99.99% |
| Data-center count | — | 19 |
| €/vCPU/mo | €0.00 | — |
| €/GB RAM/mo | — | €5.00 |
| Features | ||
| IPv6 | ||
| DDoS protection | ||
| Automated backups | ||
| Snapshots | ||
| Managed option | ||
| Bare metal | ||
| GPU available | ||
| S3-compatible | ||
| Hourly billing | ✓ | |
| Free tier | ||
| Data-center locations | ||
| Regions | AWS, GCP and Azure regions across North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific (multi-region clusters) | 12 AWS + 7 GCP regions incl. US, EU, APAC (Tokyo, Mumbai, Singapore, Sydney, Seoul) and South America (Sao Paulo) |
| Tags | ||
| Tags | free tiermanaged optionbackups includedeu datacenterus datacenterapac datacenterapi access | free tiermanaged optionbackups includedeu datacenterus datacenterapi access |
| Visit CockroachDB → | Visit PlanetScale → | |
CockroachDB
Pros
- + True multi-region survivability with serializable transactions and Postgres wire compatibility
- + Generous free tier: Basic at $0/month with 50M RUs and 10 GiB free monthly, $400 trial credits, no card required
- + Contractual SLAs: 99.99% availability, up to 99.999% multi-region on Advanced; P1 response targets published
- + Transparent per-component cost documentation and a public pricing calculator
- + Enterprise compliance path (CMEK, PCI DSS, HIPAA) and AWS/GCP/Azure coverage
Cons
- - Production costs climb fast: storage billed at 4.5x durability multiplier, plus backups, CDC and egress
- - September 2026 plan restructure (Cockroach Continuum) splits new and existing customers onto different rate cards
- - Distributed-SQL learning curve: RU model, planner differences from vanilla Postgres, cross-region latency
- - Overkill for single-region applications — managed Postgres is far cheaper for the same job
- - Proprietary managed plane; open-core self-hosting shifts the operational burden back to you
PlanetScale
Pros
- + Built by the Vitess maintainers — branching, deploy requests and online schema migrations are first-class
- + Three engines (Postgres, Vitess, sharded Neki) plus Metal local-NVMe tiers for I/O-heavy workloads
- + Unusually transparent pricing: published SKU tables and a SQL-queryable per-region pricing endpoint
- + Three-zone HA with automatic failover and a 99.99% SLA on HA configurations
- + 19 AWS/GCP regions plus a bring-your-own-cloud Managed option for data-residency needs
Cons
- - No free tier or trial — the Hobby plan was retired in April 2024
- - Metered extras (storage, egress, backups, branch hours) make the real bill higher than sticker prices
- - Vitess constraints: no foreign keys in the classic model and a real sharding learning curve
- - Single-node $5 entry is not highly available; production HA starts at $15/month before usage
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