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Amazon RDS vs PlanetScale

SEPT 2026 audit

A comparison of Amazon RDS and PlanetScale built from values read directly from each provider's own documentation, with the source recorded against every figure.

Reviewed by Palash BagchiUpdated 31 criteria comparedSources last checked

The short answer

Choose Amazon RDS if…

Teams already inside AWS, where the database sitting in the same VPC as everything else is worth more than any single feature on this page. Six engines, up to 35 days of point-in-time recovery, and read replicas you create and delete yourself.

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 RDS: You want a database per pull request. RDS documents no branching, and replicas are manual — AWS states outright that it does not autoscale them.
  • PlanetScale: You are prototyping. Pricing starts at a node rather than at zero, and there is no free tier documented on the pricing page.

Neither quite fits? Every other option, ranked by iScore: Amazon RDS alternatives · PlanetScale alternatives

14 sourced criteria separate them — see where, with sources, below.

Visit Amazon RDS documentationVisit PlanetScale documentation

No affiliate links, sponsored placements or paid rankings appear on this site. Ordering follows the sourced data and the stated criteria.

01.

At a glance.

CriterionAmazon RDSPlanetScale
Pricing
Free tierNo — Free usage is time-boxed (6 months on the Free plan, 12 months legacy), not an ongoing free plan.No — $5/month is the cheapest SKU on PlanetScale's whole price list; the document prices no free plan.
Entry paid plan$0.016 per DB instance-hour on-demand for db.t4g.micro, the smallest DB instance class — RDS for MySQL, Single-AZ, US East (N. Virginia). No plan fee or minimum: instance-hours, storage and backups are billed separately. Cheapest of the 216 on-demand rates in this feed; db.t3.micro is next at $0.017.$5/month for a single-node Postgres database on network-attached storage; PlanetScale Metal with local NVMe starts at $50/month
Pricing modelOn-Demand DB instance hours billed per second with a 10-minute minimum, plus provisioned storage, backup storage and data transfer; Reserved Instances discount 1- or 3-year commitments.Priced by cluster shape rather than per query, and on two different bases: Vitess by cluster size, VTGate configuration and storage; Neki by shard size and count, router configuration, replicas, storage, backup storage and network usage.
Limits
Storage (entry plan)Minimum 20 GiB of General Purpose SSD storage per DB instance, selectable up to 64 TiB (RDS for MySQL, gp2 or gp3).First 10 GB free on network-attached storage, then per-GB pricing; storage is included for Metal databases
Execution
Managed connection poolingSupportedSupported
Infrastructure
Regions
39 geographic regions and 124 Availability Zones across the AWS Cloud — AWS-wide footprint; the RDS User Guide lists RDS Regions individually and publishes 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
EnginePostgreSQL, alongside MySQL, MariaDB, Oracle, SQL Server and Db2. Each engine is a separate RDS product with its own version list and its own feature support, so a capability documented for one is not a capability of RDS as a whole.PostgreSQL, and MySQL-compatible Vitess clusters with horizontal sharding
Point-in-time recoveryAny point inside the configured backup retention period, so up to 35 days. Transaction logs are uploaded to S3 every five minutes, which is what bounds how close to now the latest restorable time can be.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 replicasSupported — 15 per primary, raisable on requestSupported — Two replicas come with the High Availability shape, across three availability zones.
Backup retentionBetween 0 and 35 days, set per DB instance; 0 disables automated backups entirely. The default depends on how the instance was created — one day via the API or CLI, seven days via the console — so there is no single default to quote. Multi-AZ DB clusters cannot be set below 1 day.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
SOC 2Listed as SOC-compliant on AWS's own compliance scope page.SOC 1 Type 2 and SOC 2 Type 2 + HIPAA reports, available on all plans on request via PlanetScale's Trust Center.
HIPAAListed as a HIPAA-eligible service on AWS's own reference page. — SQL Server, MySQL, Oracle, PostgreSQL, Db2 and MariaDB engines only.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 residencyAWS 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.
PCI DSS
Listed as PCI DSS-compliant on AWS's own compliance scope page.
PlanetScale Managed — the single-tenant product deployed into the customer's own AWS/GCP account — holds a PCI DSS 4.0 Attestation of Compliance as a Level 1 Service Provider. Not documented for the shared multi-tenant product.
Encryption at restAES-256 encryption of the underlying storage, logs, automated backups, read replicas and snapshots for DB instances created as encrypted.AES encryption at rest on the storage media serving database branches and backups.
Private networking / VPCDB instances launch into an Amazon VPC with customer-chosen IP ranges, subnets and access control lists, at no additional cost.AWS PrivateLink or GCP Private Service Connect on all plans; PlanetScale Managed on AWS additionally offers fully private network isolation.
Dedicated infrastructure
A DB instance can run in a VPC whose instance tenancy is set to dedicated, restricted to approved EC2 dedicated instance types; a dedicated host is not guaranteed.
Two single-tenant options: Enterprise single-tenant, deployed into an AWS/GCP account owned by PlanetScale, or PlanetScale Managed, deployed inside the customer's own AWS or GCP account.

Only criteria both providers publish appear here; a tinted cell marks a real difference. Criteria only one of them documents are listed below, and an absence there means we found no source — not that the feature is missing. How we source this.

The small bar above a value is inetGeek's own lean toward that side — computed from the same facts shown, never a number the provider published. See the picker below "The short answer" to weigh only the criteria you care about.

02.

Where they differ.

Entry paid plan

Amazon RDS
$0.016 per DB instance-hour on-demand for db.t4g.micro, the smallest DB instance class — RDS for MySQL, Single-AZ, US East (N. Virginia). No plan fee or minimum: instance-hours, storage and backups are billed separately. Cheapest of the 216 on-demand rates in this feed; db.t3.micro is next at $0.017.
PlanetScale
$5/month for a single-node Postgres database on network-attached storage; PlanetScale Metal with local NVMe starts at $50/month
Sources (2) →

Pricing model

Amazon RDS
On-Demand DB instance hours billed per second with a 10-minute minimum, plus provisioned storage, backup storage and data transfer; Reserved Instances discount 1- or 3-year commitments.
PlanetScale
Priced by cluster shape rather than per query, and on two different bases: Vitess by cluster size, VTGate configuration and storage; Neki by shard size and count, router configuration, replicas, storage, backup storage and network usage.
Sources (2) →
  • Amazon RDS for MySQL pricing ↗

    “Option to pay as you go with no upfront fees or minimum commitments with On-Demand or Reserved Instances at a discounted rate. Pay only for what you use. [...] On-Demand database (DB) Instances let you pay for compute capacity by the hour your DB instance runs. [...] Amazon RDS for MySQL supports per-second billing in which partial DB instance hours consumed are billed in one-second increments with a 10-minute minimum.”

    Read 2026-09-13 · official pricing · Report a correction

  • Pricing — PlanetScale ↗

    “Vitess MySQL-compatible databases with horizontal sharding. Pricing based on cluster size, VTGate configuration, and storage. Metal also available. Neki Postgres databases with horizontal sharding. Pricing is based on shard size and count, router configuration, replicas, storage, backup storage, and network usage.”

    Read 2026-09-14 · official pricing · Report a correction

Storage (entry plan)

Amazon RDS
Minimum 20 GiB of General Purpose SSD storage per DB instance, selectable up to 64 TiB (RDS for MySQL, gp2 or gp3).
PlanetScale
First 10 GB free on network-attached storage, then per-GB pricing; storage is included for Metal databases
Sources (2) →
  • Amazon RDS for MySQL pricing ↗

    “Amazon RDS provides you the ability to select from 20 GiB to 64 TiB of associated General Purpose SSD storage capacity for your primary data set. [...] gp3 volumes have a baseline performance of 3,000 IOPS and 125 MB/s throughput.”

    Read 2026-09-13 · official pricing · Report a correction

  • Pricing — PlanetScale ↗

    “Storage amount — Included for Metal databases. For network-attached storage databases, the first 10 GB is free, with per-GB pricing beyond that.”

    Read 2026-09-05 · official pricing · Report a correction

Regions

Amazon RDS

39 geographic regions and 124 Availability Zones across the AWS Cloud

PlanetScale

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) →
  • Global Infrastructure - AWS ↗

    “The AWS Cloud spans 124 Availability Zones within 39 Geographic Regions”

    Read 2026-09-13 · official site · Report a correction

  • 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 · Report a correction

Engine

Amazon RDS
PostgreSQL, alongside MySQL, MariaDB, Oracle, SQL Server and Db2. Each engine is a separate RDS product with its own version list and its own feature support, so a capability documented for one is not a capability of RDS as a whole.
PlanetScale
PostgreSQL, and MySQL-compatible Vitess clusters with horizontal sharding
Sources (2) →

Point-in-time recovery

Amazon RDS
Any point inside the configured backup retention period, so up to 35 days. Transaction logs are uploaded to S3 every five minutes, which is what bounds how close to now the latest restorable time can be.
PlanetScale
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) →
  • Restoring a DB instance to a specified time for Amazon RDS — Amazon Relational Database Service User Guide ↗

    “RDS uploads transaction logs for DB instances to Amazon S3 every five minutes. To see the latest restorable time for a DB instance, use the AWS CLI describe-db-instances command and look at the value returned in the LatestRestorableTime field for the DB instance. [...] You can restore to any point in time within your backup retention period.”

    Read 2026-09-09 · official docs · Report a correction

  • 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 · Report a correction

Backup retention

Amazon RDS
Between 0 and 35 days, set per DB instance; 0 disables automated backups entirely. The default depends on how the instance was created — one day via the API or CLI, seven days via the console — so there is no single default to quote. Multi-AZ DB clusters cannot be set below 1 day.
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) →
  • Backup retention period — Amazon Relational Database Service User Guide ↗

    “If you create a DB instance using the Amazon RDS API or the AWS CLI and if you don't set the backup retention period, the default backup retention period is one day. If you create a DB instance using the console, the default backup retention period is seven days. [...] You can set the backup retention period of a DB instance to between 0 and 35 days. Setting the backup retention period to 0 disables automated backups. For a Multi-AZ DB cluster, you can set the backup retention period to between 1 and 35 days.”

    Read 2026-09-09 · official docs · Report a correction

  • 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 · Report a correction

SOC 2

Amazon RDS
Listed as SOC-compliant on AWS's own compliance scope page.
PlanetScale
SOC 1 Type 2 and SOC 2 Type 2 + HIPAA reports, available on all plans on request via PlanetScale's Trust Center.
Sources (2) →
  • AWS Services in Scope — SOC ↗

    “This webpage provides a list of AWS Services in Scope of AWS assurance programs. [...] Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) ✓ Amazon Route 53 ✓ Amazon S3 Glacier ✓ Amazon”

    Read 2026-09-13 · official site · Report a correction

  • Security and compliance — PlanetScale Docs ↗

    “PlanetScale continuously monitors and reports primarily using System and Organization Controls (SOC) 1 & 2 Type 2 paired with the HIPAA Security Rule. To request access to our latest reports, please visit PlanetScale's Trust Center.”

    Read 2026-09-12 · official docs · Report a correction

HIPAA

Amazon RDS
Listed as a HIPAA-eligible service on AWS's own reference page. — SQL Server, MySQL, Oracle, PostgreSQL, Db2 and MariaDB engines only.
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) →
  • HIPAA Eligible Services Reference — AWS ↗

    “The services listed below are eligible to create, receive, process, maintain, or transmit electronic protected health information (ePHI). [...] Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) [SQL Server, MySQL, Oracle, PostgreSQL, Db2”

    Read 2026-09-13 · official site · Report a correction

  • 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 · Report a correction

GDPR / data residency

Amazon RDS
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) →
  • 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 · Report a correction

  • 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 · Report a correction

PCI DSS

Amazon RDS
Listed as PCI DSS-compliant on AWS's own compliance scope page.
PlanetScale
PlanetScale Managed — the single-tenant product deployed into the customer's own AWS/GCP account — holds a PCI DSS 4.0 Attestation of Compliance as a Level 1 Service Provider. Not documented for the shared multi-tenant product.
Sources (2) →
  • AWS Services in Scope — PCI DSS ↗

    “This webpage provides a list of AWS Services in Scope of AWS assurance programs. [...] Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS ) ✓ ✓ Amazon Route 53 ✓ ✓ Amazon S3 Glacier ✓ ✓ Amazon”

    Read 2026-09-13 · official site · Report a correction

  • Security and compliance — PlanetScale Docs ↗

    “PlanetScale Managed, when deployed with the appropriate controls enabled via our Shared Responsibility Matrix, has been issued an Attestation of Compliance (AoC) and Report on Compliance (RoC), certifying our compliance with the PCI DSS 4.0 as a Level 1 Service Provider.”

    Read 2026-09-12 · official docs · Report a correction

Encryption at rest

Amazon RDS
AES-256 encryption of the underlying storage, logs, automated backups, read replicas and snapshots for DB instances created as encrypted.
PlanetScale
AES encryption at rest on the storage media serving database branches and backups.
Sources (2) →

Private networking / VPC

Amazon RDS
DB instances launch into an Amazon VPC with customer-chosen IP ranges, subnets and access control lists, at no additional cost.
PlanetScale
AWS PrivateLink or GCP Private Service Connect on all plans; PlanetScale Managed on AWS additionally offers fully private network isolation.
Sources (2) →

Dedicated infrastructure

Amazon RDS
A DB instance can run in a VPC whose instance tenancy is set to dedicated, restricted to approved EC2 dedicated instance types; a dedicated host is not guaranteed.
PlanetScale
Two single-tenant options: Enterprise single-tenant, deployed into an AWS/GCP account owned by PlanetScale, or PlanetScale Managed, deployed inside the customer's own AWS or GCP account.
Sources (2) →

When these numbers change, hear about it. Sources are re-checked monthly; a repricing goes out as a short note.

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03.

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 — except where we say we read the other provider's own page on a given date and it does not state it. Those rows lean, and the provider can correct them with a link.

Kind of free offerAmazon RDS: Introductory free tier
When the free offer endsAmazon RDS: 6 months from account creation.
Egress over allowancePlanetScale: 100 GB of egress included, then $0.06/GB
Memory (entry plan)Amazon RDS: 1 GiB of memory and 2 vCPU on the db.t4g.micro DB instance class, the smallest burstable class listed in the RDS hardware specifications.
Uptime SLAAmazon RDS: 99.95% for a Multi-AZ DB instance or cluster; 99.5% for a single DB instance, which is what you get without enabling Multi-AZ. Both are service-credit thresholds.
Connection limitAmazon RDS: Not a fixed number: RDS for PostgreSQL sets max_connections by formula from the instance's memory — LEAST({DBInstanceClassMemory/9531392}, 5000) — so a bigger instance class gets more connections and the ceiling is 5,000 however large it is. The parameter can be set by hand anywhere from 6 to 262,143, which is a limit on what you may configure rather than what an instance will serve. Other engines use different divisors: MySQL is memory/12582880 with no cap.
When idleAmazon RDS: A DB instance can be stopped for at most 7 consecutive days, with no instance-hour charges while stopped but provisioned storage and backups still billed; RDS then starts it automatically.
Database branchingPlanetScale: Supported
Rewind in placeAmazon RDS: Not supported — Point-in-time restore creates a new DB instance without modifying the source; no in-place rewind.
Audit logsPlanetScale: In addition to the audit log feature available to all PlanetScale plans, Enterprise plans can use our EventBridge configuration to send logs to your AWS account.
Support on entry paid planPlanetScale: Enterprise lists Slack-based support with a private shared channel, and business support with enhanced response times from support engineers. The self-serve plans have no support level named on the page.
ISO 27001Amazon RDS: Covered under AWS's account-wide ISO/IEC 27001:2022 certification — not scoped per-service the way SOC, HIPAA and PCI DSS are on AWS's own site.PlanetScale: not stated on its own page when read on 2026-09-21 — corrections welcome · every such claim about PlanetScale.
Customer-managed keysAmazon RDS: An encrypted DB instance can use a customer managed AWS KMS key instead of the AWS managed key, with key policies and CloudTrail auditing in AWS KMS.PlanetScale: not stated on its own page when read on 2026-09-21 — corrections welcome · every such claim about PlanetScale.
Role-based access controlAmazon RDS: AWS IAM identity-based policies, roles and managed policies control access to RDS resources; IAM database authentication is available for MariaDB, MySQL and PostgreSQL.
04.

Questions this comparison answers.

Entry paid plan: Amazon RDS or PlanetScale?

Amazon RDS: $0.016 per DB instance-hour on-demand for db.t4g.micro, the smallest DB instance class — RDS for MySQL, Single-AZ, US East (N. Virginia). No plan fee or minimum: instance-hours, storage and backups are billed separately. Cheapest of the 216 on-demand rates in this feed; db.t3.micro is next at $0.017.

PlanetScale: $5/month for a single-node Postgres database on network-attached storage; PlanetScale Metal with local NVMe starts at $50/month

Storage (entry plan): Amazon RDS or PlanetScale?

Amazon RDS: Minimum 20 GiB of General Purpose SSD storage per DB instance, selectable up to 64 TiB (RDS for MySQL, gp2 or gp3).

PlanetScale: First 10 GB free on network-attached storage, then per-GB pricing; storage is included for Metal databases

Should I choose Amazon RDS or PlanetScale?

Pick Amazon RDS if Teams already inside AWS, where the database sitting in the same VPC as everything else is worth more than any single feature on this page. Six engines, up to 35 days of point-in-time recovery, and read replicas you create and delete yourself.

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.

Provider pages

Amazon RDSAWS managed relational database service running PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB, Oracle, SQL Server and Db2 on provisioned DB instances.PlanetScaleManaged Postgres and MySQL-compatible Vitess clusters, sold by node size with replicas across availability zones.

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Comments

Every page here is sourced and dated.