PlanetScale
Ranked 5 of 15 managed databases by recommenders
Recommended for fast managed database hosting with good uptime and low-cost plans, though critics note the small plans run on shared servers.
Recommended for fast managed database hosting with good uptime and low-cost plans, though critics note the small plans run on shared servers.
61 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 33
- criticize it
- 28
- approval share
- 54%
Recommended in 10 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 33 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 1.1 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 10 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Faster and more reliable than RDS or Aurora
“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.”
Comment from 15 Dec 2025 in “$50 PlanetScale Metal Is GA for Postgres” “It will be faster and a lot easier to use than Aurora.”
Comment from 15 Dec 2025 in “$50 PlanetScale Metal Is GA for Postgres” “Planetscale has better performance and uptime.”
Comment from 20 Apr 2026 in “What if database branching was easy?” - Comment from 11 Sep 2026 in “Neki – Sharded Postgres”
Cheap high-throughput Postgres for indie projects
“It's likely impossible to find cheaper hosted Postgres with comparable features.”
Comment from 3 Nov 2025 in “$50 PlanetScale Metal” “this pricing makes high-throughput Postgres accessible for indie projects”
Comment from 15 Dec 2025 in “$50 PlanetScale Metal Is GA for Postgres” “Incredible deal for indiehackers.”
Comment from 15 Dec 2025 in “$50 PlanetScale Metal Is GA for Postgres” Strong support, docs and blog posts
“the tech and blog posts you guys put out are amazing”
Comment from 10 Sep 2026 in “Neki – Sharded Postgres” “Planetscale support has been top-notch to work with”
Comment from 15 Dec 2025 in “$50 PlanetScale Metal Is GA for Postgres” “Their blog posts and docs are generally quite good.”
Comment from 14 Jun 2026 in “The only scalable delete in Postgres is DROP TABLE” Useful schema and usage insights
“Love how easy it is to visually correlate schema changes to performance improvements in Insights.”
Comment from 22 Nov 2025 in “Using PlanetScale to reduce the impact of thundering herd” “we always display it in the app and we start emailing database owners at 60% full”
Comment from 15 Dec 2025 in “$50 PlanetScale Metal Is GA for Postgres”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Hard-to-read website and layout
“I struggle reading white text on black backgrounds, so I don't even try to read their product pages”
Comment from 15 Dec 2025 in “$50 PlanetScale Metal Is GA for Postgres” “I have a hard time understanding the layout of the website on mobile”
Comment from 15 Dec 2025 in “$50 PlanetScale Metal Is GA for Postgres” “not a fan of the fake hacker "we don't do CSS or styling"”
Comment from 15 Dec 2025 in “$50 PlanetScale Metal Is GA for Postgres” Shared servers, not dedicated hardware
“this is a shared server, not a truly dedicated one like you’d get with bare-metal providers”
Comment from 15 Dec 2025 in “$50 PlanetScale Metal Is GA for Postgres” “You're still sharing nvme IO, cpu, memory bandwidth, etc.”
Comment from 15 Dec 2025 in “$50 PlanetScale Metal Is GA for Postgres” “but at least you get a fraction of CPU and 1GB memory.”
Comment from 15 Dec 2025 in “$50 PlanetScale Metal Is GA for Postgres” Trust lost after pricing change
“I got hit by this with PlanetScale and had to move my stuff to a self-hosted postgres.”
Comment from 5 Aug 2026 in “Oracle Just Halved Its Always Free ARM Limits” “the only thing I remember now about PlanetScale is the CEO telling HN readers to f off”
Comment from 1 Nov 2025 on Hacker News “the pain of that rug pull made me swear I'd never use them again”
Comment from 13 Nov 2025 on Hacker News - Comment from 16 Jul 2026 in “Making 768 servers look like 1”
Low specs for the $5 plan
“those specs are just way too low to be worth it for $5/mo”
Comment from 16 Nov 2025 in “$5 PlanetScale is live” “but at least you get a fraction of CPU and 1GB memory.”
Comment from 15 Dec 2025 in “$50 PlanetScale Metal Is GA for Postgres”
Other managed databases people recommend
The four most recommended other managed databases, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Amazon RDS | 50 | 43 | 54% | 11 | — | — |
| Neon Postgres | 48 | 10 | 83% | 12 | — | Approved |
| DynamoDB | 46 | 31 | 60% | 11 | — | — |
| Cloudflare D1 | 36 | 30 | 55% | 10 | — | — |
| PlanetScaleThis page | 33 | 28 | 54% | 10 | — | — |
What people said
40 of the 71 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“They claim to provide unlimited IOPS (I/O operations Per Second).”
“it handles much larger DBs”
“the tech and blog posts you guys put out are amazing”
“The largest database to ever run on Aurora MySQL runs on PlanetScale”
“so many good orgs where the product is the result of engineering passion”
“I got hit by this with PlanetScale and had to move my stuff to a self-hosted postgres.”
“those VMs have to run pretty complex software such as PlanetScale”
“The conceptual relationship to PlanetScale seems somewhat dubious to me”
“I wouldn't be willing to benchmark under their new rules”
“We have demand for bigger machines and we also sell them.”
“Their blog posts and docs are generally quite good.”
“Planetscale has better performance and uptime.”
“Just go super reductionist like planetscale did and have partially rendered markdown”
“Very impressive and a reminder that you're strongly differentiated against some of the recent database upstarts”
“I still use a ton of SaaS services for things that I could probably do just fine myself.”
“PS did a great job and provoked good business impact too.”
“it's also clear, direct, and has no hidden information”
“In typical PlanetScale style, we like to beat our estimates.”
“but at least you get a fraction of CPU and 1GB memory.”
“I love their new website and much prefer it to the old one.”
“Planetscale support has been top-notch to work with”
“I struggle reading white text on black backgrounds, so I don't even try to read their product pages”
“not a fan of the fake hacker "we don't do CSS or styling"”
“I've been able to coax more than 10,000 IOPS from an M-10.”
“this is a shared server, not a truly dedicated one like you’d get with bare-metal providers”
“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.”
“You're still sharing nvme IO, cpu, memory bandwidth, etc.”
“no bandwidth charge penalty. As leaving AWS isn't inexpensive.”
“It will be faster and a lot easier to use than Aurora.”
“There's no network latency penalty for choosing PlanetScale if you're hosting your app in one of those cloud providers”
“we always display it in the app and we start emailing database owners at 60% full”
“I have a hard time understanding the layout of the website on mobile”
“this pricing makes high-throughput Postgres accessible for indie projects”
“Incredible deal for indiehackers.”
“Love how easy it is to visually correlate schema changes to performance improvements in Insights.”
“I think in fairness it's an apples to oranges comparison.”
“those specs are just way too low to be worth it for $5/mo”
“the pain of that rug pull made me swear I'd never use them again”
“It's likely impossible to find cheaper hosted Postgres with comparable features.”
“the only thing I remember now about PlanetScale is the CEO telling HN readers to f off”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.