Neon vs PlanetScale Vitess
A detailed comparison to help you choose between Neon and PlanetScale Vitess.
Quick Verdict
4.6/5
Neon
305 reviews
4.8/5
PlanetScale Vitess
205 reviews
PlanetScale Vitess is rated higher (4.8 vs 4.6). Neon is serverless PostgreSQL with database branching, scale-to-zero, and connection pooling. Scales to zero when not in use — no idle charges. PlanetScale is built on Vitess, the database scaling technology developed at YouTube and used to serve billions of queries. Horizontal sharding, schema migrations via Pull Requests, and serverless scaling.
Neon Serverless Postgres with branching and scale-to-zero | PlanetScale Vitess MySQL-compatible serverless — Vitess under the hood | |
|---|---|---|
| Overview | ||
| Rating | 4.6 (305 reviews) | 4.8 (205 reviews)✓ |
| Pricing model | freemium | free |
| Starting price | Free tier available | Free |
| Best for | Developers using Next.js or serverless frameworks who want Postgres with branching at zero idle cost | Database engineers wanting to understand or self-host the Vitess technology underlying PlanetScale |
| Specifications (entry plan) | ||
| CPU cores | 0 vCPU | — |
| RAM | 0 GB | — |
| Storage | 0 GB | — |
| Bandwidth | 0 TB/mo | — |
| SLA uptime | 99.9% | — |
| Data-center count | 8 | — |
| Features | ||
| IPv6 | ||
| DDoS protection | ||
| Automated backups | ✓ | |
| Snapshots | ||
| Managed option | ||
| Bare metal | ||
| GPU available | ||
| S3-compatible | ||
| Hourly billing | ✓ | |
| Free tier | ✓ | |
| Data-center locations | ||
| Regions | United StatesEuropean Union | — |
| Tags | ||
| Tags | free tiermanaged optionbackups includedeu datacenterus datacenterapi accessopen source | free tieropen sourceself hostableapi access |
| Visit Neon → | Visit PlanetScale Vitess → | |
Neon
Pros
- + Scale-to-zero — no charges for idle databases
- + Database branching for preview environments
- + Generous free tier — 10 projects
Cons
- - Cold start latency when scaled to zero
- - Less mature than managed RDS for mission-critical
PlanetScale Vitess
Pros
- + Open-source Vitess powering PlanetScale
- + YouTube-scale tested
- + Horizontal sharding for MySQL
Cons
- - Complex to self-host
- - No foreign key support in Vitess
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