Head to head
PlanetScale vs Google Cloud SQL / AlloyDB
Both platforms are scored with the same methodology and the same category rubric. Nothing on this page is influenced by advertising.
56/100Higher score | 54/100 | |
|---|---|---|
| Category rank | #1 | #5 |
| Confidence | High confidence | High confidence |
| External Reputation | 69 | 82 |
| AI Authority | 52 | 50 |
| Web Authority | 25 | 9 |
| Expert Assessment | 75 | 68 |
| TOP10 User Score | — | — |
| Pricing | $5/month (Postgres PS-5 single node, EBS, us-east-1); $15/month for a 3-AZ HA PS-5 cluster · free tier: None — the vendor confirms the former Developer/Hobby free plan no longer exists and all databases require a paid subscription; there is no free evaluation path | Cloud SQL shared-core db-f1-micro $0.0105/hr (us-central1); no SLA coverage for shared-core machine types · free tier: Cloud SQL: $300 in free credits for new customers plus a separate Cloud SQL free trial with restrictions removed on upgrade; AlloyDB: 30-day free trial cluster with up to 1 TB data, an 8-vCPU primary and an 8-vCPU single-node read pool, in addition to the 90-day $300 Google Cloud free trial. |
| Pricing model | Subscription (per-cluster SKU) plus metered storage, egress and backups | Usage-based |
| Best for | Engineering teams that want branching-based schema workflows with predictable per-cluster pricing, MySQL shops needing Vitess horizontal sharding without operating it, IOPS-bound workloads suited to Metal NVMe, and enterprises needing the database inside their own AWS/GCP account with PCI via Managed. | Teams already standardised on Google Cloud running MySQL or PostgreSQL who want managed HA and PITR without DBAs, and have predictable enough capacity to commit to 1- or 3-year CUDs; for read-heavy PostgreSQL at scale, AlloyDB's shared-storage model and 288-vCPU nodes are the stronger fit. |
| Avoid if | You need a free tier or a zero-cost evaluation path, run many production environments (each is a full-price cluster), need Postgres horizontal sharding or read-only regions today, require PCI on a single-tenant deployment, or your procurement process demands a large verifiable review corpus. | You are a solo developer or small project needing a cheap SLA-backed instance, you hold existing SQL Server licences (no BYOL, $0.47/core-hr Enterprise with a four-core minimum), you need a firm forecastable monthly number before signing, you run an EOL major version, or your architecture is egress-heavy to clients outside Google Cloud at $0.19/GiB. |
| Markets | SMB, Startups, Enterprise, Engineering teams | SMB, Enterprise, Startups, Developers |
| Founded | — | — |
| Headquarters | — | — |
A higher TOP SCORE means more of the evidence favours that platform on this methodology — it is not a recommendation, and it does not account for your specific requirements. Advertisers are never declared the winner of a comparison.