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PlanetScale vs Prisma Postgres

SEPT 2026 audit

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

Updated 22 criteria comparedSources last checked

The short answer

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

Choose Prisma Postgres if…

Prisma ORM users who want the database and the client from one vendor, with a pooled connection limit stated per plan rather than left to be discovered.

Editorial · Palash Bagchi · approved

Consider something else if…

  • PlanetScale: You are prototyping. Pricing starts at a node rather than at zero, and there is no free tier documented on the pricing page.
  • Prisma Postgres: Four separate meters — requests, memory, vCPU and bandwidth — sit on top of the plan fee, so the monthly number is a floor rather than a bill.

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

Visit PlanetScale documentationVisit Prisma Postgres 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.

CriterionPlanetScalePrisma Postgres
Pricing
Free tier
No
Yes
Entry paid plan
$5/month for a single-node Postgres database on network-attached storage; PlanetScale Metal with local NVMe starts at $50/month
$10/month for Starter. Pro is $49 and Business $129, each including a larger request allowance.
Pricing modelPriced by node size and storage rather than usage, with high-availability clusters sold as a primary plus two replicasA plan fee plus usage: requests, memory GB-hours, active vCPU-hours and outbound bandwidth are each metered — $1 per million requests beyond the allowance, $0.006 per GB-hour, $0.064 per vCPU-hour, $0.025 per GB out.
Limits
Storage (entry plan)
First 10 GB free on network-attached storage, then per-GB pricing; storage is included for Metal databases
500 MB on the free plan across 50 databases. Paid plans raise the database count to 1,000 and beyond.
Execution
Managed connection poolingSupportedSupported
Data
EnginePostgreSQL, and MySQL-compatible Vitess clusters with horizontal shardingPostgreSQL.
Backup retention
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.
Daily backups with 7-day retention on Starter and Pro, 30 days on Business. The free plan has none.

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.

Free tier

PlanetScale
No
Prisma Postgres
Yes
Sources (2) →
  • 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 — Prisma ↗

    “Free $0 / month Free forever. No credit card required. Prisma Compute 1M requests / month 360 GB-hours memory / month 4 active vCPU-hours / month [...] 500 MB storage 50 databases”

    Read 2026-09-06 · official pricing

Entry paid plan

PlanetScale
$5/month for a single-node Postgres database on network-attached storage; PlanetScale Metal with local NVMe starts at $50/month
Prisma Postgres
$10/month for Starter. Pro is $49 and Business $129, each including a larger request allowance.
Sources (2) →
  • Pricing — PlanetScale ↗

    “PlanetScale Postgres [...] Single node — Starting at $5/month for development and low-traffic workloads Metal — Starting at $50/month with local NVMe storage for high-performance needs High Availability — 1 primary + 2 replicas across 3 availability zones”

    Read 2026-09-05 · official pricing

  • Pricing — Prisma ↗

    “Starter $10 / month Prisma Compute 5M requests / month, then $1 per million [...] Pro $49 / month [...] Business $129 / month”

    Read 2026-09-06 · official pricing

Pricing model

PlanetScale
Priced by node size and storage rather than usage, with high-availability clusters sold as a primary plus two replicas
Prisma Postgres
A plan fee plus usage: requests, memory GB-hours, active vCPU-hours and outbound bandwidth are each metered — $1 per million requests beyond the allowance, $0.006 per GB-hour, $0.064 per vCPU-hour, $0.025 per GB out.
Sources (2) →
  • Pricing — PlanetScale ↗

    “A primary and two included replica nodes ideal for high-availability workloads. 99.99% SLA.”

    Read 2026-09-05 · official pricing

  • Pricing — Prisma ↗

    “5M requests / month, then $1 per million $0.006 per GB-hour memory $0.064 per active vCPU-hours $0.025 per GB outbound bandwidth”

    Read 2026-09-06 · official pricing

Storage (entry plan)

PlanetScale

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

Prisma Postgres

500 MB on the free plan across 50 databases. Paid plans raise the database count to 1,000 and beyond.

Sources (2) →
  • 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

  • Pricing — Prisma ↗

    “500 MB storage 50 databases [...] 1,000 databases 7-day daily backups”

    Read 2026-09-06 · official pricing

Engine

PlanetScale
PostgreSQL, and MySQL-compatible Vitess clusters with horizontal sharding
Prisma Postgres
PostgreSQL.
Sources (2) →
  • Pricing — PlanetScale ↗

    “MySQL-compatible with horizontal sharding for massive scale. Runs on network-attached storage or PlanetScale Metal.”

    Read 2026-09-05 · official site

  • Pricing — Prisma ↗

    “Prisma Postgres [...] Managed connection pool Connection limit (pooled)”

    Read 2026-09-06 · official site

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.

Prisma Postgres

Daily backups with 7-day retention on Starter and Pro, 30 days on Business. The free plan has none.

Sources (2) →
  • 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

  • Pricing — Prisma ↗

    “Backups Free — Starter Daily, 7-day retention Pro Daily, 7-day retention Business Daily, 30-day retention”

    Read 2026-09-06 · official pricing

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.

Egress over allowancePlanetScale: 100 GB of egress included, then $0.06/GB
Startup credit programPrisma Postgres: Prisma for Startups: database bill covered up to $10,000 for one year, plus 1:1 guidance. Venture-funded track requires pre-seed/seed/Series-A funding raised in the last 12 months and founded in the last 5 years; bootstrapped track requires ≥5k MRR for 6 months and 2 full-time team members.
RegionsPlanetScale: 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 limitPrisma Postgres: 100 pooled connections on Starter and 10 direct; 10 pooled on Free, 500 on Pro and 1,000 on Business.
When idlePrisma Postgres: Scales to zero when idle, and Prisma states an idle app costs nothing.
Database branchingPlanetScale: Supported
Point-in-time recoveryPlanetScale: 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 replicasPlanetScale: Supported
SOC 2PlanetScale: SOC 1 Type 2 and SOC 2 Type 2 + HIPAA reports, available on all plans on request via PlanetScale's Trust Center.
HIPAAPlanetScale: 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 residencyPlanetScale: 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 DSSPlanetScale: 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 restPlanetScale: AES encryption at rest on the storage media serving database branches and backups.
Private networking / VPCPlanetScale: AWS PrivateLink or GCP Private Service Connect on all plans; PlanetScale Managed on AWS additionally offers fully private network isolation.
Dedicated infrastructurePlanetScale: 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.
04.

Questions this comparison answers.

Entry paid plan: PlanetScale or Prisma Postgres?

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

Prisma Postgres: $10/month for Starter. Pro is $49 and Business $129, each including a larger request allowance.

Free tier: PlanetScale or Prisma Postgres?

PlanetScale: No

Prisma Postgres: Yes

Storage (entry plan): PlanetScale or Prisma Postgres?

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

Prisma Postgres: 500 MB on the free plan across 50 databases. Paid plans raise the database count to 1,000 and beyond.

Should I choose PlanetScale or Prisma 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.

Pick Prisma Postgres if Prisma ORM users who want the database and the client from one vendor, with a pooled connection limit stated per plan rather than left to be discovered.

Provider pages

PlanetScaleManaged Postgres and MySQL-compatible Vitess clusters, sold by node size with replicas across availability zones.Prisma PostgresServerless Postgres from the Prisma ORM team, billed on requests and compute with a pooled connection limit per plan.

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Every page here is sourced and dated.