PlanetScale Vitess vs CockroachDB
A detailed comparison to help you choose between PlanetScale Vitess and CockroachDB.
Quick Verdict
3.8/5
PlanetScale Vitess
0 reviews
4.2/5
CockroachDB
0 reviews
CockroachDB is rated higher (4.2 vs 3.8). Vitess is the CNCF-graduated, MySQL-compatible database system created at YouTube in 2010. It adds transparent horizontal sharding, online schema changes and automatic failure repair around MySQL; PlanetScale is its largest commercial contributor and managed offering. 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.
PlanetScale Vitess CNCF-graduated MySQL-compatible sharding system, born at YouTube | CockroachDB Distributed SQL database that survives failures | |
|---|---|---|
| Overview | ||
| Rating | 3.8 (0 reviews) | 4.2 (0 reviews)✓ |
| Pricing model | free | freemium |
| Starting price | Free | Free tier available |
| Best for | Teams whose MySQL-compatible dataset no longer fits one node and who want sharding without rewriting the application — self-hosting Vitess with Kubernetes experience, or buying it managed through PlanetScale. | 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 |
| Specifications (entry plan) | ||
| CPU cores | — | 2 vCPU |
| RAM | — | — |
| Storage | — | — |
| Bandwidth | — | — |
| SLA uptime | — | 99.99% |
| Data-center count | — | — |
| €/vCPU/mo | — | €0.00 |
| 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) |
| Tags | ||
| Tags | free tieropen sourceself hostableapi access | free tiermanaged optionbackups includedeu datacenterus datacenterapac datacenterapi access |
| Visit PlanetScale Vitess → | Visit CockroachDB → | |
PlanetScale Vitess
Pros
- + Free, foundation-governed software with YouTube-scale production provenance since 2011
- + Horizontal sharding transparent to the application, with live resharding and near-zero-downtime migrations
- + Online, non-blocking schema changes across shards with monitoring and fine-grained controls
- + Automatic primary failure detection and repair; point-in-time recovery without a binlog server since v18
- + Active, healthy project — 2,159 contributors tracked by CNCF, with public nightly benchmarks
Cons
- - Real operational burden: VTGates, VTTablets, topology store and a Kubernetes operator footprint to run yourself
- - Foreign keys are shard-scoped only (managed mode since v18); cross-shard constraints are still future work
- - Compatibility gaps under managed foreign keys — REPLACE INTO and INSERT ... ON DUPLICATE KEY UPDATE restricted, cyclic FKs rejected
- - No support contract or SLA on the free software; PlanetScale is the primary paid route
- - Massive overkill below the scale where a single MySQL node stops being enough
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
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