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Prisma Postgres vs ScaleGrid

SEPT 2026 audit

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

Reviewed by Palash BagchiUpdated 30 criteria comparedSources last checked

The short answer

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

Choose ScaleGrid if…

Teams that already have a favored database engine and cloud provider but want someone else operating it — the BYOC model bills infrastructure at cost and adds management on top, worth it if the operational burden is the actual problem.

Editorial · Palash Bagchi · approved

Consider something else if…

  • 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.
  • ScaleGrid: The workload fits a single-engine specialist with its own scale-to-zero or branching model — ScaleGrid's value is operating an engine you already chose, not offering a distinctive one.

Neither quite fits? Every other option, ranked by iScore: Prisma Postgres alternatives · ScaleGrid alternatives

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

Visit Prisma Postgres documentationVisit ScaleGrid 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.

CriterionPrisma PostgresScaleGrid
Pricing
Free tier
Yes
No
Kind of free offerAlways freeFree trial
What the free plan includes1 million requests, 360 GB-hours of memory and 4 active vCPU-hours a month, with 500 MB of storage, free forever and no credit card.A full week of access with no credit card. There is no ongoing free plan.
Credit card to startNoNo
When the free offer endsNever — the free tier has no time limit.7 days.
Entry paid plan
$10/month for Starter. Pro is $49 and Business $129, each including a larger request allowance.
Dedicated Hosting starts at $10/month for Redis; $13/month PostgreSQL, $18/month MongoDB, $23/month MySQL, all-inclusive of machine, disk and network costs. From the Dedicated Hosting Plans doc; the live /pricing/ calculator quotes higher figures (see notes).
Pricing modelA 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.Two models: Dedicated Hosting, an all-inclusive plan covering machine, disk and network cost; or Bring Your Own Cloud (BYOC), management-only pricing where the cloud provider is billed separately.
Startup credit programPrisma 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.Startup Saver: up to 50% discount on ScaleGrid hosting for 12 months. — A discount on the invoice, not a credit balance.
Limits
Storage (entry plan)500 MB on the free plan across 50 databases. Paid plans raise the database count to 1,000 and beyond.18 GB storage on NANO, the entry row of the pricing calculator for PostgreSQL on DigitalOcean (1 core, 1 GB RAM); IOPS listed as N/A. Calculator table; renders client-side, so the excerpt needs the render-fetch path.
Execution
Managed connection poolingSupportedSupported — PgBouncer for PostgreSQL, enabled at cluster creation or later, with pooling mode and pool size set by you.
Data
EnginePostgreSQL.MySQL, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Redis, RabbitMQ and SQL Server.
Connection limit100 pooled connections on Starter and 10 direct; 10 pooled on Free, 500 on Pro and 1,000 on Business.No platform cap published: max_connections (maximum permitted simultaneous client connections) is listed as a customer-editable MySQL server parameter in the ScaleGrid console.
When idleScales to zero when idle, and Prisma states an idle app costs nothing.Manual pause/resume on Bring Your Own Cloud clusters: a paused cluster's nodes are stopped and its cloud VM costs stop, but ScaleGrid management costs continue and the data is unreachable until resumed. Only standard clusters using persistent storage; high-performance local-SSD clusters cannot be paused.
Backup retentionDaily backups with 7-day retention on Starter and Pro, 30 days on Business. The free plan has none.Up to five backups per deployment on ScaleGrid's dedicated hosting plans.

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

Prisma Postgres
Yes
ScaleGrid
No
Sources (2) →
  • 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 · Report a correction

  • ScaleGrid Pricing ↗

    “Dive in for free Explore free for a full week-no credit card, no hassle.”

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

Kind of free offer

Prisma Postgres
Always free
ScaleGrid
Free trial
Sources (2) →
  • 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 · Report a correction

  • ScaleGrid Pricing ↗

    “Dive in for free Explore free for a full week-no credit card, no hassle.”

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

What the free plan includes

Prisma Postgres
1 million requests, 360 GB-hours of memory and 4 active vCPU-hours a month, with 500 MB of storage, free forever and no credit card.
ScaleGrid
A full week of access with no credit card. There is no ongoing free plan.
Sources (2) →
  • 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 2026-09-13 · official pricing · Report a correction

  • ScaleGrid Pricing ↗

    “Explore free for a full week-no credit card, no hassle.”

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

When the free offer ends

Prisma Postgres
Never — the free tier has no time limit.
ScaleGrid
7 days.
Sources (2) →

Entry paid plan

Prisma Postgres
$10/month for Starter. Pro is $49 and Business $129, each including a larger request allowance.
ScaleGrid
Dedicated Hosting starts at $10/month for Redis; $13/month PostgreSQL, $18/month MongoDB, $23/month MySQL, all-inclusive of machine, disk and network costs. From the Dedicated Hosting Plans doc; the live /pricing/ calculator quotes higher figures (see notes).
Sources (2) →

Pricing model

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.
ScaleGrid
Two models: Dedicated Hosting, an all-inclusive plan covering machine, disk and network cost; or Bring Your Own Cloud (BYOC), management-only pricing where the cloud provider is billed separately.
Sources (2) →
  • 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 · Report a correction

  • ScaleGrid Pricing ↗

    “Our Dedicated Hosting plans are all-inclusive and cover machine cost, as well as your disk and network costs and up to 5 free backups. The Bring Your Own Cloud plans are management-only and connect to your existing cloud account so you pay for those costs with your cloud provider.”

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

Startup credit program

Prisma 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.
ScaleGrid
Startup Saver: up to 50% discount on ScaleGrid hosting for 12 months. — A discount on the invoice, not a credit balance.
Sources (2) →
  • Prisma for Startups ↗

    “Get exclusive 1:1 guidance from Prisma’s database experts, and have your database bill covered for a year, up to $10,000. [...] Raised venture funding in the last 12 months. Founded in the last 5 years.”

    Read 2026-09-11 · official site · Report a correction

  • ScaleGrid Pricing ↗

    “Upto 50% Discount OVER 12 MONTHS Startup Saver Benefit from significant cost savings on our database management solutions, specifically tailored to support the dynamic needs of startups.”

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

Storage (entry plan)

Prisma Postgres
500 MB on the free plan across 50 databases. Paid plans raise the database count to 1,000 and beyond.
ScaleGrid
18 GB storage on NANO, the entry row of the pricing calculator for PostgreSQL on DigitalOcean (1 core, 1 GB RAM); IOPS listed as N/A. Calculator table; renders client-side, so the excerpt needs the render-fetch path.
Sources (2) →

Engine

Prisma Postgres
PostgreSQL.
ScaleGrid
MySQL, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Redis, RabbitMQ and SQL Server.
Sources (2) →

Connection limit

Prisma Postgres
100 pooled connections on Starter and 10 direct; 10 pooled on Free, 500 on Pro and 1,000 on Business.
ScaleGrid
No platform cap published: max_connections (maximum permitted simultaneous client connections) is listed as a customer-editable MySQL server parameter in the ScaleGrid console.
Sources (2) →

When idle

Prisma Postgres
Scales to zero when idle, and Prisma states an idle app costs nothing.
ScaleGrid
Manual pause/resume on Bring Your Own Cloud clusters: a paused cluster's nodes are stopped and its cloud VM costs stop, but ScaleGrid management costs continue and the data is unreachable until resumed. Only standard clusters using persistent storage; high-performance local-SSD clusters cannot be paused.
Sources (2) →
  • Pricing — Prisma ↗

    “Scale to zero when idle [...] An idle app scales to zero and costs nothing.”

    Read 2026-09-06 · official pricing · Report a correction

  • New Feature for BYOC - Pausing and Resuming Clusters ↗

    “you will be able to pause a running cluster, putting it in a “Paused” state. The “Paused” state means that all cluster nodes are in a stopped state. While a cluster is “Paused” you will no longer get charged for your cloud provider’s VM costs [...] you will still get charged for the ScaleGrid management cost [...] This feature is only available on standard clusters using persistent storage”

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

Backup retention

Prisma Postgres
Daily backups with 7-day retention on Starter and Pro, 30 days on Business. The free plan has none.
ScaleGrid
Up to five backups per deployment on ScaleGrid's dedicated hosting plans.
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.

Memory (entry plan)ScaleGrid: 1 GB RAM on NANO, the entry row of the pricing calculator for PostgreSQL on DigitalOcean (1 core, 18 GB storage). Calculator table; renders client-side, so the excerpt needs the render-fetch path.
RegionsScaleGrid: AWS, Azure, GCP, OCI, Akamai and DigitalOcean are named as examples, not as a list; the site footer names Oracle and Zadara instead of Akamai. No region list is published.
Database branchingScaleGrid: Limited — Clone copies a backup's config and contents into a new, separately billed cluster, not an in-place branch.
Point-in-time recoveryScaleGrid: PostgreSQL PITR: backups every 10 minutes by default, transaction logs retained 7 days; supported on Azure, DigitalOcean, EC2 and OCI only.
Read replicasScaleGrid: Supported — Converting a standalone deployment to a replica set: 2 + 1 quorum or 3 nodes, in datacenter regions you pick.
Rewind in placeScaleGrid: Not supported — PITR restores via Peek at Backup or Clone into a brand new cluster; the source deployment is not rewound.
Support on entry paid planPrisma Postgres: Community support on Free and Starter; standard support on Pro; premium on Business.
SOC 2ScaleGrid: SOC 2 Type II audited against the Security trust service criterion by Insight Assurance; report available on request through the Trust Center form.Prisma Postgres: not stated on its own page when read on 2026-09-21 — corrections welcome · every such claim about Prisma Postgres.
HIPAAScaleGrid: HIPAA compliance listed under Support for ScaleGrid Enterprise (on-premises / private cloud) deployments. Stated for the Enterprise plan only; the SOC 2 trust page does not mention HIPAA.Prisma Postgres: not stated on its own page when read on 2026-09-21 — corrections welcome · every such claim about Prisma Postgres.
GDPR / data residencyScaleGrid: GDPR DPA published with EU Standard Contractual Clauses (Module Two) for EEA transfers; ScaleGrid itself is located in the United States.Prisma Postgres: not stated on its own page when read on 2026-09-21 — corrections welcome · every such claim about Prisma Postgres.
PCI DSSScaleGrid: PCI compliance listed under Support for ScaleGrid Enterprise (on-premises / private cloud) deployments. Stated for the Enterprise plan only; no PCI DSS attestation or level is published.Prisma Postgres: not stated on its own page when read on 2026-09-21 — corrections welcome · every such claim about Prisma Postgres.
Encryption at restScaleGrid: Optional encryption at rest for data and backups; when enabled, backups are encrypted and can only be mounted on the database machines.Prisma Postgres: not stated on its own page when read on 2026-09-21 — corrections welcome · every such claim about Prisma Postgres.
Customer-managed keysScaleGrid: Bring Your Own Encryption Key lets customers control the OS encryption key used for their deployments, announced in the March 2026 platform updates. Listed under Other Relevant Updates in the platform's March 2026 product-update summary.Prisma Postgres: not stated on its own page when read on 2026-09-21 — corrections welcome · every such claim about Prisma Postgres.
Role-based access controlScaleGrid: Role-Based Access Control in the ScaleGrid console: roles and permissions can be assigned to the users on a team account.
Private networking / VPCScaleGrid: Bring Your Own Cloud plans can use VPCs (AWS VPC, GCP VPC, OCI VCN, Azure VNET) and Security Groups; Dedicated Hosting plans cannot.Prisma Postgres: not stated on its own page when read on 2026-09-21 — corrections welcome · every such claim about Prisma Postgres.
Dedicated infrastructureScaleGrid: Dedicated Hosting plans run on dedicated virtual machines hosted by ScaleGrid, exclusive to a single client or business.
04.

Questions this comparison answers.

Entry paid plan: Prisma Postgres or ScaleGrid?

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

ScaleGrid: Dedicated Hosting starts at $10/month for Redis; $13/month PostgreSQL, $18/month MongoDB, $23/month MySQL, all-inclusive of machine, disk and network costs. From the Dedicated Hosting Plans doc; the live /pricing/ calculator quotes higher figures (see notes).

Free tier: Prisma Postgres or ScaleGrid?

Prisma Postgres: Yes

ScaleGrid: No

Storage (entry plan): Prisma Postgres or ScaleGrid?

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

ScaleGrid: 18 GB storage on NANO, the entry row of the pricing calculator for PostgreSQL on DigitalOcean (1 core, 1 GB RAM); IOPS listed as N/A. Calculator table; renders client-side, so the excerpt needs the render-fetch path.

Should I choose Prisma Postgres or ScaleGrid?

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.

Pick ScaleGrid if Teams that already have a favored database engine and cloud provider but want someone else operating it — the BYOC model bills infrastructure at cost and adds management on top, worth it if the operational burden is the actual problem.

Provider pages

Prisma PostgresServerless Postgres from the Prisma ORM team, billed on requests and compute with a pooled connection limit per plan.ScaleGridManaged hosting for MySQL, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Redis and more, across six cloud providers via dedicated or bring-your-own-cloud plans.

Related comparisons

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Comments

Every page here is sourced and dated.