Supabase vs PlanetScale
A detailed comparison to help you choose between Supabase and PlanetScale.
Quick Verdict
4.0/5
Supabase
0 reviews
4.2/5
PlanetScale
0 reviews
PlanetScale is rated higher (4.2 vs 4.0). Supabase is a backend-as-a-service platform providing PostgreSQL databases, real-time subscriptions, authentication, and storage. Built for developers who want PostgreSQL's power without vendor lock-in. 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.
Supabase Open-source Firebase alternative with PostgreSQL | PlanetScale Serverless MySQL with database branching | |
|---|---|---|
| Overview | ||
| Rating | 4.0 (0 reviews) | 4.2 (0 reviews)✓ |
| Pricing model | freemium | paid |
| Starting price | Free tier available✓ | From $5/mo |
| Best for | Teams building web and mobile apps who want a relational backend — Postgres with auth, storage, realtime, and APIs — without operating infrastructure, and who value an open-source exit path. | 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 | 1 GB |
| Storage | 1 GB | 10 GB✓ |
| Bandwidth | — | 0 TB/mo |
| SLA uptime | 99.9% | 99.99%✓ |
| Data-center count | 17 | 19✓ |
| €/GB RAM/mo | €0.00✓ | €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 | United States, Canada, Ireland, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Switzerland, Sweden, Brazil, India, Singapore, Japan, South Korea, Australia | 12 AWS + 7 GCP regions incl. US, EU, APAC (Tokyo, Mumbai, Singapore, Sydney, Seoul) and South America (Sao Paulo) |
| Tags | ||
| Tags | free tiermanaged options3 compatibleeu datacenterus datacenterapac datacenterapi accessopen source | free tiermanaged optionbackups includedeu datacenterus datacenterapi access |
| Visit Supabase → | Visit PlanetScale → | |
Supabase
Pros
- + Real PostgreSQL with SQL, extensions, migrations, and row-level security — no schema lock-in
- + Generous free tier: 50,000 MAU, 500MB database, unlimited API requests
- + Bundled auth, realtime, S3-compatible storage, APIs, and edge functions on one platform
- + Open source with a documented self-host path — a genuine exit if the managed service stops fitting
- + Transparent, detailed pricing page and 17 AWS regions to place data close to users
Cons
- - Bills grow legs: per-project compute, usage overages, and add-ons (PITR $100/mo per 7 days) stack up
- - Uptime SLA (99.9%) is Enterprise-only; support SLAs need the $599/mo Team plan
- - Free projects pause after a week of inactivity and skip automatic backups
- - Auth, realtime, storage, and functions layers are Supabase-specific to migrate away from
- - Scaling to high concurrency means moving to dedicated compute instances with sharp price steps
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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