SingleStore vs PlanetScale
A detailed comparison to help you choose between SingleStore and PlanetScale.
Quick Verdict
3.8/5
SingleStore
0 reviews
4.2/5
PlanetScale
0 reviews
PlanetScale is rated higher (4.2 vs 3.8). SingleStore (formerly MemSQL) is a cloud-native database combining OLTP and OLAP in a single system. Handles real-time analytics and transactions without ETL. Used by financial services and gaming companies. 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.
SingleStore Real-time analytics and transactions in one database | PlanetScale Serverless MySQL with database branching | |
|---|---|---|
| Overview | ||
| Rating | 3.8 (0 reviews) | 4.2 (0 reviews)✓ |
| Pricing model | usage-based | paid |
| Starting price | Free tier available✓ | From $5/mo |
| Best for | Teams with genuinely mixed transactional and analytical workloads — fraud, risk, adtech, IoT, live gaming — that need sub-second freshness and want to retire a separate warehouse and sync pipeline. | 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 | — | 0 vCPU |
| RAM | — | 1 GB |
| Storage | — | 10 GB |
| Bandwidth | — | 0 TB/mo |
| SLA uptime | — | 99.99% |
| Data-center count | — | 19 |
| €/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 | — | 12 AWS + 7 GCP regions incl. US, EU, APAC (Tokyo, Mumbai, Singapore, Sydney, Seoul) and South America (Sao Paulo) |
| Tags | ||
| Tags | free tiermanaged optioneu datacenterus datacenterapi access | free tiermanaged optionbackups includedeu datacenterus datacenterapi access |
| Visit SingleStore → | Visit PlanetScale → | |
SingleStore
Pros
- + Transactions and analytics in one engine — no ETL pipeline between an operational database and a warehouse
- + Published, itemised rate card: workspace sizes, credit burn, storage tiers and every multiplier are public
- + Genuine free evaluation tier plus $500 of credits on Standard
- + MySQL-compatible wire protocol shortens migration from MySQL-based stacks
- + Documented compliance posture (ISO 27001, SOC 2 Type 2, HIPAA, CCPA, GDPR) and a BYOC option for data residency
Cons
- - Stacking multipliers (Enterprise 1.5x, Multi-AZ 1.3x, region tier, scaling) make real bills hard to predict from headline prices
- - Distributed-engine concepts (shard keys, distribution, reference tables) are overkill for simple CRUD applications
- - Free Shared tier is explicitly non-production and self-support only
- - Self-managed licensing and BYOC/Dedicated pricing require a sales conversation
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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