Method: Official documentation and pricing checked September 28, 2026. No benchmarks were run. Recommendations are based on documented features and billing, not hands-on results.
PlanetScale is no longer accurately summarized as only a MySQL choice. Its current catalog includes PostgreSQL products as well as Vitess. Compare the actual database product and topology you intend to buy with Neon’s PostgreSQL service.
Current products and starting prices
PlanetScale pricing lists Vitess for MySQL-compatible workloads, Neki for sharded PostgreSQL and PlanetScale Postgres. Single-node Postgres starts at $5/month; Metal starts at $50/month. The high-availability configuration is listed as a primary plus two replicas across three availability zones. The $5 single-node starting point is not that configuration.
Neon pricing lists Free, Launch and Scale. Free includes 100 CU-hours and 0.5 GB database storage per project, with compute suspending after five inactive minutes. Launch bills compute at $0.106/CU-hour and database storage at $0.35/GB-month, with no monthly minimum. Paid storage, restore history and other services remain separate meters.
A transparent Neon example
A continuously running 0.25-CU compute over a 30-day month uses 180 CU-hours. At the checked Launch rate, that is $19.08 for compute. Five GB of storage adds $1.75, giving $20.83 before restore history, snapshots, network overages and other services.
This is arithmetic for a selected configuration, not an observed bill. If compute can suspend, billed hours decrease. If it scales up or replicas run, compute usage increases. Do not compare this example with PlanetScale’s $5 entry point as though capacity and redundancy were identical.
What to decide before choosing
| Requirement | Comparison to make |
|---|---|
| Existing MySQL workload | PlanetScale Vitess is the relevant product; moving to PostgreSQL is a separate migration |
| PostgreSQL with intermittent activity | Evaluate Neon’s suspension behavior and usage model |
| Always-on PostgreSQL | Compare the exact instance size, storage and topology on both services |
| Availability requirements | Price redundancy and recovery explicitly; ignore headline entry prices |
PlanetScale lists compute, topology, storage, network and additional branch hours among pricing factors. Neon meters branch and recovery features too. A database budget should include the nonproduction environments retained alongside production.
Recommendation
Use the existing database engine and operating requirements to narrow the choice. Then verify extensions, connection behavior, backups and restoration with the selected plan. Run a representative workload before making any latency or throughput claim. This article offers no evidence that either database is faster, requires no migration work or will cut a bill by a fixed percentage.
Sources, checked September 28, 2026: PlanetScale pricing, Neon pricing.