PlanetScale vs Neon vs Turso 2026: How to Choose a Serverless Database
After PlanetScale eliminated its free tier, Neon and Turso have emerged as strong alternatives. Full comparison of free quotas, cold start latency, scaling capabilities, and real-world costs.
PlanetScale’s Free Tier Removal
In March 2024, PlanetScale killed its Hobby (free) plan, forcing users to upgrade to $39/mo Scaler or delete databases. This sparked a mass migration to Neon and Turso, fueling their growth. PlanetScale’s commercial database (MySQL‑compatible, no‑schema‑lock) is powerful but too expensive for individuals.
Free Tiers Comparison
- Neon: 10 projects, 10GB storage, 100 compute hours/mo, auto‑scale
- Turso: 500 DBs, 8GB storage, 1B row reads, 1M writes/mo
- PlanetScale: no free tier, starts at $39/mo (Scaler)
- Supabase: 500MB PostgreSQL (also serverless, more features)
Technical Differences
Neon: serverless PostgreSQL with separated storage/compute, 5ms cold start (fastest), ideal for Next.js edge. Turso: distributed libSQL (SQLite), 35 edge nodes, ultra‑low read latency, writes sync to primary. PlanetScale: Vitess (MySQL), excels at horizontal sharding for massive data.
For most indie devs and small SaaS, Neon is the most balanced serverless DB—generous free tier, mature PostgreSQL ecosystem, fastest cold start.
Neon integrated with Vercel Marketplace gives Hobby users extra: 0.5 CPU‑hours + 512MB storage. Cheapest when paired with Vercel.