# Crunchy Bridge vs PlanetScale

Canonical: https://inetgeek.com/compare/crunchy-bridge-vs-planetscale/

Every value below is read from Crunchy Bridge's and PlanetScale's own documentation. See https://inetgeek.com/methodology/ for how.

## At a glance

| Criterion | Crunchy Bridge | PlanetScale |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Entry paid plan | $9 a month for Hobby-0 — 2 cores, 512 MB, AWS only. Crunchy says the Hobby tier runs on lower-quality infrastructure, has no PgBouncer and is not intended for production; the first production tier is Standard-4 at $70 a month for 1 core and 4 GB. There is no free plan. | $5/month for a single-node Postgres database on network-attached storage; PlanetScale Metal with local NVMe starts at $50/month |
| Pricing model | Billed for the time a cluster is provisioned, prorated to the second, with the monthly figures on the plans page being what a full month costs. Price varies by instance size, region and storage. Three tiers — Hobby, Standard and Memory-optimized — where the tier decides IOPS, whether PgBouncer is included and what support you get, not just the size. | Priced by node size and storage rather than usage, with high-availability clusters sold as a primary plus two replicas |
| Managed connection pooling | Supported | Supported |
| Regions | 37 regions across three clouds — 16 on AWS, 14 on Google Cloud, 7 on Azure — counted from the region tables on Crunchy's own plans page, which lists them 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. |
| Engine | PostgreSQL only. Crunchy Bridge is a single-engine service — there is no MySQL or analytics product beside it in the same offering — and it runs on all three major clouds so the database can sit next to whatever else you already run. | PostgreSQL, and MySQL-compatible Vitess clusters with horizontal sharding |
| Database branching | Limited — a new cluster restored from backup, to any minute in 10 days | Supported |
| Point-in-time recovery | Any minute inside the 10 days of retained backups. The WAL is streamed every 60 seconds or 16 MB, whichever comes first, and a restore produces a fork of the cluster rather than replacing it. | 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 | Supported |
| Backup retention | 10 days, included in the cluster price rather than sold as a tier, and extendable by configuring additional daily, weekly, monthly and yearly backups to keep. | 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. |

## Where they differ

### Entry paid plan

- Crunchy Bridge: $9 a month for Hobby-0 — 2 cores, 512 MB, AWS only. Crunchy says the Hobby tier runs on lower-quality infrastructure, has no PgBouncer and is not intended for production; the first production tier is Standard-4 at $70 a month for 1 core and 4 GB. There is no free plan. ([source](https://docs.crunchybridge.com/concepts/plans-pricing))
- PlanetScale: $5/month for a single-node Postgres database on network-attached storage; PlanetScale Metal with local NVMe starts at $50/month ([source](https://planetscale.com/pricing))

### Pricing model

- Crunchy Bridge: Billed for the time a cluster is provisioned, prorated to the second, with the monthly figures on the plans page being what a full month costs. Price varies by instance size, region and storage. Three tiers — Hobby, Standard and Memory-optimized — where the tier decides IOPS, whether PgBouncer is included and what support you get, not just the size. ([source](https://docs.crunchybridge.com/concepts/plans-pricing))
- PlanetScale: Priced by node size and storage rather than usage, with high-availability clusters sold as a primary plus two replicas ([source](https://planetscale.com/pricing))

### Regions

- Crunchy Bridge: 37 regions across three clouds — 16 on AWS, 14 on Google Cloud, 7 on Azure — counted from the region tables on Crunchy's own plans page, which lists them and publishes no total. ([source](https://docs.crunchybridge.com/concepts/plans-pricing))
- 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. ([source](https://planetscale.com/docs/plans/regions))

### Engine

- Crunchy Bridge: PostgreSQL only. Crunchy Bridge is a single-engine service — there is no MySQL or analytics product beside it in the same offering — and it runs on all three major clouds so the database can sit next to whatever else you already run. ([source](https://docs.crunchybridge.com/))
- PlanetScale: PostgreSQL, and MySQL-compatible Vitess clusters with horizontal sharding ([source](https://planetscale.com/pricing))

### Database branching

- Crunchy Bridge: Limited — a new cluster restored from backup, to any minute in 10 days ([source](https://docs.crunchybridge.com/concepts/backups))
- PlanetScale: Supported ([source](https://planetscale.com/docs/postgres/branching))

### Point-in-time recovery

- Crunchy Bridge: Any minute inside the 10 days of retained backups. The WAL is streamed every 60 seconds or 16 MB, whichever comes first, and a restore produces a fork of the cluster rather than replacing it. ([source](https://docs.crunchybridge.com/concepts/backups))
- 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. ([source](https://planetscale.com/docs/postgres/backups))

### Backup retention

- Crunchy Bridge: 10 days, included in the cluster price rather than sold as a tier, and extendable by configuring additional daily, weekly, monthly and yearly backups to keep. ([source](https://docs.crunchybridge.com/concepts/backups))
- 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. ([source](https://planetscale.com/docs/postgres/backups))

## Which should you choose?

Pick Crunchy Bridge if Anyone who wants Postgres and nothing else, from people who work on Postgres. Ten days of per-minute recovery is included in the price of every cluster rather than sold as a tier, and replicas can sit in another region or another cloud.

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.

Consider something else: Crunchy Bridge — You need a free plan to start on, or a second database engine later. This is a single-engine paid service.

Consider something else: PlanetScale — You are prototyping. Pricing starts at a node rather than at zero, and there is no free tier documented on the pricing page.

## Documented by only one

- Free tier: PlanetScale: No
- Egress over allowance: PlanetScale: 100 GB of egress included, then $0.06/GB
- Storage (entry plan): PlanetScale: First 10 GB free on network-attached storage, then per-GB pricing; storage is included for Metal databases
- SOC 2: PlanetScale: SOC 1 Type 2 and SOC 2 Type 2 + HIPAA reports, available on all plans on request via PlanetScale's Trust Center.
- HIPAA: 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.
- GDPR / data residency: 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.
- PCI DSS: 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.
- Encryption at rest: PlanetScale: AES encryption at rest on the storage media serving database branches and backups.
- Private networking / VPC: PlanetScale: AWS PrivateLink or GCP Private Service Connect on all plans; PlanetScale Managed on AWS additionally offers fully private network isolation.
- Dedicated infrastructure: 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.

## Questions this comparison answers

**Entry paid plan: Crunchy Bridge or PlanetScale?**

Crunchy Bridge: $9 a month for Hobby-0 — 2 cores, 512 MB, AWS only. Crunchy says the Hobby tier runs on lower-quality infrastructure, has no PgBouncer and is not intended for production; the first production tier is Standard-4 at $70 a month for 1 core and 4 GB. There is no free plan.
PlanetScale: $5/month for a single-node Postgres database on network-attached storage; PlanetScale Metal with local NVMe starts at $50/month

**Should I choose Crunchy Bridge or PlanetScale?**

Pick Crunchy Bridge if Anyone who wants Postgres and nothing else, from people who work on Postgres. Ten days of per-minute recovery is included in the price of every cluster rather than sold as a tier, and replicas can sit in another region or another cloud.
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.