Quick Answer
Last verified:
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PlanetScale costs $5 to $50 per month as of July 2026, with 4 plans available. Plans: postgres_single at $5/month, ps_5 at $15/month, and metal_ha at $50/month. Enterprise pricing is available on request. Pricing depends on your chosen tier, contract length, and negotiated discounts.

Use the interactive pricing calculator to estimate your exact cost based on team size and requirements.

  • Free tier: No free tier available

PlanetScale offers 4 pricing tiers: postgres_single, ps_5, metal_ha, enterprise. Paid plans include postgres_single at $5/month, ps_5 at $15/month, metal_ha at $50/month. The ps_5 plan is high-availability production workloads.

Last verified: | Sources: 2 pricing pages and reviews
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PlanetScale lists $5-$50/month, but hidden costs like implementation and support add to the total as of July 2026. Key hidden costs: high storage costs compared to competitors, confusing row-based pricing model. Verified from 2 sources by CostBench.

Hidden Costs Breakdown

1

High storage costs compared to competitors

medium addon

PlanetScale charges $2.50/GB for storage, which is significantly more expensive than alternatives like CockroachDB ($1/GB, 60% less) or Google Cloud SQL HA storage ($0.34/GB). For databases with large storage requirements, this premium can add up quickly.

hn

Given the expensive storage at $2.50/GB, how big things are seems to matter. Cockroach charges $1/GB (60% less), Google charges $0.34/GB for Cloud SQL HS storage

2

Confusing row-based pricing model

medium overage

PlanetScale's pricing is based on rows read and written rather than traditional CPU/RAM allocation. Read pricing is $1 per billion reads and write pricing is $1.50 per million writes. This model depends on query optimization and indexing strategy, making costs hard to predict compared to fixed-instance pricing from competitors.

hn

I looked at Planetscale thinking I might be willing to just take a risk with their confusing pricing

hn

I'm guessing the "difficult to understand and hard for you to predict" is around how the read pricing is based on how many rows MySQL needs to read in order to serve your query. That's going to depend on how the query optimizer executes your query (and what indexes you've made and such).

Frequently Asked Questions

01 What hidden costs should I budget for with PlanetScale?

Beyond the license fee, budget for: High storage costs compared to competitors ($2.50/GB storage (vs $0.34-$1/GB competitors)); Confusing row-based pricing model (10-30% of license costs). Exact totals depend on your deployment size and negotiated terms.

02 Does PlanetScale charge for implementation?

Implementation costs for PlanetScale vary by deployment size and customization. Contact the vendor or check our sourced hidden-cost breakdown above for verified figures.

03 How much does PlanetScale support cost?

Premium support pricing for PlanetScale depends on your tier and contract terms. See the sourced cost breakdown above for any verified figures we have.

04 Are there overage or storage costs with PlanetScale?

PlanetScale's pricing is based on rows read and written rather than traditional CPU/RAM allocation. Read pricing is $1 per billion reads and write pricing is $1. Estimated impact: 10-30% of license costs.

05 What add-ons cost extra with PlanetScale?

Add-on pricing for PlanetScale varies by feature. The sourced cost breakdown above lists any verified add-on costs we have.

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Prices and terms change; verify against the live pricing page.

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