Amazon Aurora vs PlanetScale
SEPT 2026 auditA comparison of Amazon Aurora and PlanetScale built from values read directly from each provider's own documentation, with the source recorded against every figure.
The short answer
Choose Amazon Aurora if…
Teams on AWS who want a Postgres or MySQL cluster that can throw off a copy-on-write clone of production in minutes, keep up to fifteen readers behind it, and pause to nothing between bursts in serverless mode.
Editorial · Palash Bagchi · approved
Choose PlanetScale if…
Production workloads that want replicas across availability zones as the default shape rather than an upgrade, and teams who need MySQL-compatible sharding that the Postgres-only services do not offer.
Editorial · Palash Bagchi · approved
Consider something else if…
- Amazon Aurora: You want the upstream database rather than a compatible one, or a branch workflow rather than a clone. AWS documents cloning as a way to build a test environment, not as something you do per pull request.
- PlanetScale: You are prototyping. Pricing starts at a node rather than at zero, and there is no free tier documented on the pricing page.
9 sourced criteria separate them — see where, with sources, below.
Pick the criteria you care about. The chart counts how many of them lean toward each provider — the same read as scanning the bars below, just totalled for the ones you chose.
Amazon Aurora 0
PlanetScale 0
At a glance.
| Criterion | Amazon Aurora | PlanetScale |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | ||
| Free tier | Yes — capped Free plan plus time-limited credits | No |
| Pricing model | Pay per use with no plan fee: instances plus storage plus I/O, or ACU-hours in serverless mode. AWS's own worked example prices serverless compute at $0.12 per ACU-hour on Aurora Standard and $0.156 on Aurora I/O-Optimized in US East (N. Virginia) — the difference being whether I/O is metered separately or folded into a higher compute and storage rate. Provisioned instances also offer Reserved Instance pricing, and usage may qualify for Database Savings Plans against a committed hourly spend. | Priced by node size and storage rather than usage, with high-availability clusters sold as a primary plus two replicas |
| Infrastructure | ||
| Regions | 34 AWS regions, the same list for the MySQL- and PostgreSQL-compatible editions. Counted from the two availability tables in Aurora's own docs, which publish the regions and no total. | 19 regions — 12 on AWS (Tokyo, Mumbai, Singapore, Sydney, Montreal, Frankfurt, Dublin, London, São Paulo, N. Virginia, Ohio, Oregon) and 7 on GCP. A branch's region is fixed at creation and changing it means migrating. |
| Data | ||
| Engine | MySQL- and PostgreSQL-compatible. Aurora is AWS's own engine rather than a hosted build of either, so compatibility is the claim being made — existing code, tools and applications are stated to work, which is not the same as being the upstream database. | PostgreSQL, and MySQL-compatible Vitess clusters with horizontal sharding |
| Database branching | Limited — clones, not a branch workflow | Supported |
| Point-in-time recovery | Any point inside the backup retention period, so up to 35 days. Aurora's backups are continuous and incremental against the cluster volume rather than periodic snapshots plus log replay, which is why AWS states no performance impact while they are taken. | Point-in-time recovery through write-ahead log archiving. WAL is kept for as long as the oldest backup, so the default schedule gives a 2-day window and a longer retention extends it. |
| Read replicas | Supported — 15 per cluster, a quota AWS will not raise | Supported |
| Backup retention | 1 to 35 days. Unlike an RDS DB instance it cannot be set to 0 — Aurora backs the cluster volume up continuously and there is no way to turn that off. | Automatic backups every 12 hours on production and development branches, retained 2 days by default. Custom schedules and manual backups can set a longer period, and are charged for it. |
| Compliance | ||
| HIPAA | Listed as a HIPAA-eligible service on AWS's own reference page. | HIPAA-eligible via a Business Associate Agreement for qualifying customers; PlanetScale notes HHS does not recognize a formal HIPAA certification, so compliance is a shared responsibility rather than a badge. |
| GDPR / data residency | AWS customers can process personal data on all AWS services in compliance with GDPR, and choose the storage type and geographic region for their data. | Complies with GDPR; data locality follows the AWS/GCP region a database is created in, and EU-region databases keep data in-region unless a read-only replica is added elsewhere. |
Where they differ.
Free tier
- Amazon Aurora
- Yes — capped Free plan plus time-limited credits
- PlanetScale
- No
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Amazon Aurora pricing — Amazon Web Services ↗
“New AWS customers can get started with Aurora PostgreSQL serverless at no cost with the AWS Free Tier. You get $100 in AWS credits at sign-up to be used across eligible AWS services, including Aurora, for up to 12 months, in both Free and Paid plans, and you can earn an additional $100 in credits, for a total of $200. Free plan gives you access to Aurora PostgreSQL serverless instances with up to 4 ACUs and 1 GiB of storage per cluster.”
Read 2026-09-09 · official pricing
- PlanetScale pricing (machine-readable) ↗
“Postgres EBS non-HA (single node) | PS-5 | x86-64 | 1/16 | 512 MiB | $5 |”
Read 2026-09-07 · official pricing
Pricing model
- Amazon Aurora
- Pay per use with no plan fee: instances plus storage plus I/O, or ACU-hours in serverless mode. AWS's own worked example prices serverless compute at $0.12 per ACU-hour on Aurora Standard and $0.156 on Aurora I/O-Optimized in US East (N. Virginia) — the difference being whether I/O is metered separately or folded into a higher compute and storage rate. Provisioned instances also offer Reserved Instance pricing, and usage may qualify for Database Savings Plans against a committed hourly spend.
- PlanetScale
- Priced by node size and storage rather than usage, with high-availability clusters sold as a primary plus two replicas
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Amazon Aurora pricing — Amazon Web Services ↗
“Aurora charges for database instances and storage, along with any optional features you choose to enable. Aurora PostgreSQL and Aurora MySQL offer On-Demand and Reserved Instance pricing. [...] We want to calculate the compute costs of running this workload on Aurora serverless with the database cluster configured as Aurora Standard and Aurora I/O-Optimized in US East (N. Virginia). [...] 5 ACUs * $0.12 per ACU-hour * 30/60 hour $0.30 [...] 5 ACUs * $0.156 per ACU-hour * 30/60 hour $0.39”
Read 2026-09-09 · official pricing
- Pricing — PlanetScale ↗
“A primary and two included replica nodes ideal for high-availability workloads. 99.99% SLA.”
Read 2026-09-05 · official pricing
Regions
34 AWS regions, the same list for the MySQL- and PostgreSQL-compatible editions. Counted from the two availability tables in Aurora's own docs, which publish the regions and no total.
19 regions — 12 on AWS (Tokyo, Mumbai, Singapore, Sydney, Montreal, Frankfurt, Dublin, London, São Paulo, N. Virginia, Ohio, Oregon) and 7 on GCP. A branch's region is fixed at creation and changing it means migrating.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Regions and Availability Zones — Amazon Aurora User Guide ↗
“Aurora MySQL Region availability The following table shows the AWS Regions where Aurora MySQL is currently available and the endpoint for each Region. Region Name Region Endpoint Protocol US East (Ohio) us-east-2 rds.us-east-2.amazonaws.com HTTPS US East (N. Virginia) us-east-1 rds.us-east-1.amazonaws.com HTTPS [...] Aurora PostgreSQL Region availability”
Read 2026-09-09 · official docs
- Selecting a region — PlanetScale Docs ↗
“Currently, the following regions are supported, with their respective PlanetScale slugs: AWS ap-northeast-1 (Tokyo) [...] AWS us-west-2 (Oregon) [...] GCP us-central1 (Council Bluffs, Iowa) [...] GCP europe-west4 (Eemshaven, Netherlands) [...] Once you select a region for your default branch, it cannot be changed directly, but you can migrate to a new region if needed.”
Read 2026-09-05 · official docs
Engine
- Amazon Aurora
- MySQL- and PostgreSQL-compatible. Aurora is AWS's own engine rather than a hosted build of either, so compatibility is the claim being made — existing code, tools and applications are stated to work, which is not the same as being the upstream database.
- PlanetScale
- PostgreSQL, and MySQL-compatible Vitess clusters with horizontal sharding
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- What is Amazon Aurora? — Amazon Aurora User Guide ↗
“Amazon Aurora (Aurora) is a fully managed relational database engine that's compatible with MySQL and PostgreSQL. [...] The code, tools, and applications you use today with your existing MySQL and PostgreSQL databases can be used with Aurora.”
Read 2026-09-09 · official docs
- Pricing — PlanetScale ↗
“MySQL-compatible with horizontal sharding for massive scale. Runs on network-attached storage or PlanetScale Metal.”
Read 2026-09-05 · official site
Database branching
- Amazon Aurora
- Limited — clones, not a branch workflow
- PlanetScale
- Supported
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Cloning a volume for an Amazon Aurora DB cluster — Amazon Aurora User Guide ↗
“Aurora uses a copy-on-write protocol to create a clone. This mechanism uses minimal additional space to create an initial clone. [...] Aurora cloning is especially useful for quickly setting up test environments using your production data, without risking data corruption.”
Read 2026-09-09 · official docs
- Branching — PlanetScale Docs ↗
“PlanetScale Postgres provides two types of database branches: Development branches — Development branches run on PS-DEV instances that have limited performance capabilities, different egress rates, and no replicas. [...] Production branches — Production branches are intended for production traffic and include optional replicas for high availability.”
Read 2026-09-05 · official docs
Point-in-time recovery
Any point inside the backup retention period, so up to 35 days. Aurora's backups are continuous and incremental against the cluster volume rather than periodic snapshots plus log replay, which is why AWS states no performance impact while they are taken.
Point-in-time recovery through write-ahead log archiving. WAL is kept for as long as the oldest backup, so the default schedule gives a 2-day window and a longer retention extends it.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Backing up and restoring an Aurora DB cluster — Amazon Aurora User Guide ↗
“Aurora automated backups are continuous and incremental, so you can quickly restore to any point within the backup retention period. No performance impact or interruption of database service occurs as backup data is being written.”
Read 2026-09-09 · official docs
- Back up and restore — PlanetScale Docs ↗
“PlanetScale Postgres databases include comprehensive backup and restore capabilities to protect your data. The backup system provides both automated scheduled backups and manual on-demand backups, as well as point-in-time recovery (PITR) support through Write-Ahead Log (WAL) archiving. [...] WAL logs are retained for the same period as your oldest backup.”
Read 2026-09-05 · official docs
Backup retention
- Amazon Aurora
- 1 to 35 days. Unlike an RDS DB instance it cannot be set to 0 — Aurora backs the cluster volume up continuously and there is no way to turn that off.
- PlanetScale
- Automatic backups every 12 hours on production and development branches, retained 2 days by default. Custom schedules and manual backups can set a longer period, and are charged for it.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Backing up and restoring an Aurora DB cluster — Amazon Aurora User Guide ↗
“Aurora backs up your cluster volume automatically and retains restore data for the length of the backup retention period. [...] You can specify a backup retention period from 1–35 days when you create or modify a DB cluster.”
Read 2026-09-09 · official docs
- Back up and restore — PlanetScale Docs ↗
“All PlanetScale Postgres databases include automatic scheduled backups that run every 12 hours for production and development branches. Default backups are created automatically and don't require any setup. There are no additional charges for these backups. [...] The default, included backup schedule retains backups for 2 days. You can set a custom retention period for custom backup schedules and manual one-off backups.”
Read 2026-09-05 · official docs
HIPAA
- Amazon Aurora
- Listed as a HIPAA-eligible service on AWS's own reference page.
- PlanetScale
- HIPAA-eligible via a Business Associate Agreement for qualifying customers; PlanetScale notes HHS does not recognize a formal HIPAA certification, so compliance is a shared responsibility rather than a badge.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- AWS HIPAA Eligible Services Reference ↗
“Amazon Aurora listed on the HIPAA-eligible services reference page.”
Read 2026-09-12 · official site
- Security and compliance — PlanetScale Docs ↗
“PlanetScale can enter into Business Associate Agreements (BAAs) with customers who meet qualifying criteria. [...] The Department of Health and Human Services does not recognize any formal certification for HIPAA.”
Read 2026-09-12 · official docs
GDPR / data residency
- Amazon Aurora
- AWS customers can process personal data on all AWS services in compliance with GDPR, and choose the storage type and geographic region for their data.
- PlanetScale
- Complies with GDPR; data locality follows the AWS/GCP region a database is created in, and EU-region databases keep data in-region unless a read-only replica is added elsewhere.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- GDPR — Amazon Web Services ↗
“AWS customers can use all AWS services to process personal data [...] in compliance with the GDPR. [...] Customers have control of their customer data. With AWS, customers can: Determine where their customer data will be stored, including the type of storage and geographic region of that storage.”
Read 2026-09-12 · official site
- Security and compliance — PlanetScale Docs ↗
“PlanetScale complies with the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and other global privacy regulations, where applicable. [...] If you create a database in a Europe-based region, your data does not leave the region the database was created in, unless you create a read-only region in another region.”
Read 2026-09-12 · official docs
When these numbers change, hear about it. Sources are re-checked monthly; a repricing goes out as a short note.
Documented by only one.
These criteria are published by one provider and not the other. An absence here means we have not found a source, not that the feature is missing.
Questions this comparison answers.
Free tier: Amazon Aurora or PlanetScale?
Amazon Aurora: Yes — capped Free plan plus time-limited credits
PlanetScale: No
Should I choose Amazon Aurora or PlanetScale?
Pick Amazon Aurora if Teams on AWS who want a Postgres or MySQL cluster that can throw off a copy-on-write clone of production in minutes, keep up to fifteen readers behind it, and pause to nothing between bursts in serverless mode.
Pick PlanetScale if Production workloads that want replicas across availability zones as the default shape rather than an upgrade, and teams who need MySQL-compatible sharding that the Postgres-only services do not offer.