# PlanetScale

33 Hacker News commenters recommended PlanetScale and 28 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 10 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** Recommended for fast managed database hosting with good uptime and low-cost plans, though critics note the small plans run on shared servers.

## Why people recommend it

- Faster and more reliable than RDS or Aurora (4 comments): "This will be faster than an equivalent RDS instance and will handle more of the operational lifecycle around failover and high-availability with less downtime than RDS." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46277644)) "It will be faster and a lot easier to use than Aurora." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46277435)) "Planetscale has better performance and uptime." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47836037))
- Cheap high-throughput Postgres for indie projects (3 comments): "It's likely impossible to find cheaper hosted Postgres with comparable features." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45802854)) "this pricing makes high-throughput Postgres accessible for indie projects" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46276639)) "Incredible deal for indiehackers." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46276392))
- Strong support, docs and blog posts (3 comments): "the tech and blog posts you guys put out are amazing" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49648396)) "Planetscale support has been top-notch to work with" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46278606)) "Their blog posts and docs are generally quite good." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48528296))
- Useful schema and usage insights (2 comments): "Love how easy it is to visually correlate schema changes to performance improvements in Insights." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46018098)) "we always display it in the app and we start emailing database owners at 60% full" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46276973))

## What people warn about

- Hard-to-read website and layout (3 comments): "I struggle reading white text on black backgrounds, so I don't even try to read their product pages" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46278197)) "I have a hard time understanding the layout of the website on mobile" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46276936)) "not a fan of the fake hacker "we don't do CSS or styling"" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46278075))
- Shared servers, not dedicated hardware (3 comments): "this is a shared server, not a truly dedicated one like you’d get with bare-metal providers" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46277786)) "You're still sharing nvme IO, cpu, memory bandwidth, etc." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46277500)) "but at least you get a fraction of CPU and 1GB memory." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46278976))
- Trust lost after pricing change (4 comments): "I got hit by this with PlanetScale and had to move my stuff to a self-hosted postgres." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49184668)) "the only thing I remember now about PlanetScale is the CEO telling HN readers to f off" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45780282)) "the pain of that rug pull made me swear I'd never use them again" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45916143))
- Low specs for the $5 plan (2 comments): "those specs are just way too low to be worth it for $5/mo" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45943224)) "but at least you get a fraction of CPU and 1GB memory." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46278976))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Amazon RDS](https://hackerapproved.com/p/amazon-rds.md): 50 recommend
- [Neon Postgres](https://hackerapproved.com/p/neon.md): 48 recommend
- [DynamoDB](https://hackerapproved.com/p/amazon-dynamodb.md): 46 recommend
- [Cloudflare D1](https://hackerapproved.com/p/cloudflare-d1.md): 36 recommend
- [Amazon Aurora](https://hackerapproved.com/p/amazon-aurora.md): 23 recommend

## Where to get it

- [Visit the official site](https://planetscale.com/)

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "PlanetScale", https://hackerapproved.com/p/planetscale/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).