PlanetScale Vitess vs PlanetScale
A detailed comparison to help you choose between PlanetScale Vitess and PlanetScale.
Quick Verdict
4.8/5
PlanetScale Vitess
205 reviews
4.4/5
PlanetScale
357 reviews
PlanetScale Vitess is rated higher (4.8 vs 4.4). 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. PlanetScale is serverless MySQL-compatible database with git-like branching, non-blocking schema changes, and auto-scaling. Used by companies serving billions of queries.
PlanetScale Vitess MySQL-compatible serverless — Vitess under the hood | PlanetScale Serverless MySQL with database branching | |
|---|---|---|
| Overview | ||
| Rating | 4.8 (205 reviews)✓ | 4.4 (357 reviews) |
| Pricing model | free | freemium |
| Starting price | Free | Free tier available |
| Best for | Database engineers wanting to understand or self-host the Vitess technology underlying PlanetScale | Teams running MySQL at scale who need schema migrations without downtime |
| Specifications (entry plan) | ||
| CPU cores | — | 0 vCPU |
| RAM | — | 0 GB |
| Storage | — | 0 GB |
| Bandwidth | — | 0 TB/mo |
| SLA uptime | — | 99.99% |
| Data-center count | — | 6 |
| 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 tieropen sourceself hostableapi access | free tiermanaged optionbackups includedeu datacenterus datacenterapi access |
| Visit PlanetScale Vitess → | Visit PlanetScale → | |
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
PlanetScale
Pros
- + Non-blocking schema changes — no downtime migrations
- + Database branching like git
- + Auto-scales to handle traffic spikes
Cons
- - No foreign keys (Vitess architecture limitation)
- - Read replicas only on higher plans
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