# Nile vs PlanetScale

Canonical: https://inetgeek.com/compare/nile-vs-planetscale/

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

## At a glance

| Criterion | Nile | PlanetScale |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Entry paid plan | $15/month for Pro, which carries a production SLA. Scale is $350/month. | $5/month for a single-node Postgres database on network-attached storage; PlanetScale Metal with local NVMe starts at $50/month |
| Pricing model | Priced on queries rather than instances, with a $15 base for Pro. Nile's own framing is "Pay for queries, not for instances", and additional tokens are $0.05 per million. | Priced by node size and storage rather than usage, with high-availability clusters sold as a primary plus two replicas |
| Storage (entry plan) | 5 GB on Pro, then $1.00 per additional GB. | First 10 GB free on network-attached storage, then per-GB pricing; storage is included for Metal databases |
| Managed connection pooling | Supported | Supported |
| Engine | PostgreSQL, with tenant isolation as a first-class concept — databases, tenant databases and vector embeddings are all described as unlimited. | PostgreSQL, and MySQL-compatible Vitess clusters with horizontal sharding |

## Where they differ

### Entry paid plan

- Nile: $15/month for Pro, which carries a production SLA. Scale is $350/month. ([source](https://www.thenile.dev/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

- Nile: Priced on queries rather than instances, with a $15 base for Pro. Nile's own framing is "Pay for queries, not for instances", and additional tokens are $0.05 per million. ([source](https://www.thenile.dev/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))

### Storage (entry plan)

- Nile: 5 GB on Pro, then $1.00 per additional GB. ([source](https://www.thenile.dev/pricing))
- PlanetScale: First 10 GB free on network-attached storage, then per-GB pricing; storage is included for Metal databases ([source](https://planetscale.com/pricing))

### Engine

- Nile: PostgreSQL, with tenant isolation as a first-class concept — databases, tenant databases and vector embeddings are all described as unlimited. ([source](https://www.thenile.dev/pricing))
- PlanetScale: PostgreSQL, and MySQL-compatible Vitess clusters with horizontal sharding ([source](https://planetscale.com/pricing))

## Which should you choose?

Pick Nile if Multi-tenant SaaS where every customer wants isolation — Nile makes a database per tenant the default shape rather than something you build on top of Postgres.

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: Nile — Several of the features on its own pricing table are marked Coming soon, including branching, backups and provisioned compute, so what is bought today is narrower than the table suggests.

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
- Regions: 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.
- Connection limit: Nile: 10,000 connections on Pro, with connection pooling included.
- When idle: Nile: No cold start on Pro — Nile lists it as a plan feature rather than a behaviour to configure.
- Database branching: PlanetScale: Supported
- Point-in-time recovery: 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.
- Read replicas: PlanetScale: Supported
- Backup retention: 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.
- 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: Nile or PlanetScale?**

Nile: $15/month for Pro, which carries a production SLA. Scale is $350/month.
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): Nile or PlanetScale?**

Nile: 5 GB on Pro, then $1.00 per additional GB.
PlanetScale: First 10 GB free on network-attached storage, then per-GB pricing; storage is included for Metal databases

**Should I choose Nile or PlanetScale?**

Pick Nile if Multi-tenant SaaS where every customer wants isolation — Nile makes a database per tenant the default shape rather than something you build on top of Postgres.
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.