Tigris vs PlanetScale
A detailed comparison to help you choose between Tigris and PlanetScale.
Quick Verdict
4.1/5
Tigris
0 reviews
4.2/5
PlanetScale
0 reviews
PlanetScale is rated higher (4.2 vs 4.1). Tigris is a globally distributed, S3-compatible object storage service with zero egress fees on every tier. Standing free tier (5 GB storage, 10k/100k requests monthly). Built by ex-Uber storage engineers; backs Fly.io storage and AI platforms. 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.
Tigris Globally distributed S3-compatible object storage with zero egress fees | PlanetScale Serverless MySQL with database branching | |
|---|---|---|
| Overview | ||
| Rating | 4.1 (0 reviews) | 4.2 (0 reviews)✓ |
| Pricing model | freemium | paid |
| Starting price | Free tier available✓ | From $5/mo |
| Best for | AI/ML teams and developers whose data is read from many regions and clouds — especially where egress fees dominate — who want S3 compatibility without hyperscaler lock-in | 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 | 5 GB | 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 tiers3 compatibleeu datacenterus datacenterapac datacenterapi access | free tiermanaged optionbackups includedeu datacenterus datacenterapi access |
| Visit Tigris → | Visit PlanetScale → | |
Tigris
Pros
- + Zero egress fees on every tier and every direction — regional, cross-region, and internet
- + Full published rate card (plus a machine-readable pricing page) with identical pricing across geographies
- + Standing free tier with no card: 5 GB Standard storage, 10,000 Class A and 100,000 Class B requests monthly
- + S3-compatible API (>90% coverage) with a zero-downtime migration path — low switching cost
- + Fork, snapshot, soft delete and object events at no separate enablement cost; SOC 2 Type II and HIPAA BAA available
Cons
- - Young vendor (founded 2022, Series A stage) holding the durability of your data layer
- - No public uptime SLA outside Enterprise contracts
- - Single product line — no compute, CDN, or identity integration beyond S3-style access keys
- - Cold-tier minimum retention billing (30/90 days) can surprise lifecycle-driven workloads
- - Object notification events cost from the first event ($0.01 per 1,000)
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
Stay in the loop
Get weekly updates on the best new hosting and infrastructure providers, deals, and comparisons.
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.