# PlanetScale vs TiDB

**Leader by Vioscale score:** PlanetScale

| Attribute | PlanetScale | TiDB |
|---|---|---|
| **Vioscale score** | 67.3 (70% (medium)) | 59.5 (61% (medium)) |
| deployment.options | `{"cloud":true}` | `{"cloud":true,"self_hosted":true}` |
| description.long | A cloud database platform offering both Vitess (MySQL-compatible with horizontal sharding) and Postgres databases for high-performance, large-scale workloads. | An open-source distributed SQL database trusted by innovators to power transactional, AI, and other modern applications. |
| features.capabilities | `{"sql_model":"full_sql","deployment":"managed","extensibility":true,"license_class":"proprietary","horizontal_scale":"sharded"}` | `{"sql_model":"full_sql","license_class":"permissive","horizontal_scale":"distributed_native","acid_transactions":"full","wire_compatibility":"mysql"}` |
| integrations.count | 1 | 4 |
| integrations.list | `[{"name":"Vantage"}]` | `[{"name":"Cursor"},{"name":"JDBC"},{"name":"mysql-connector-python"},{"name":"MySQL"}]` |
| market.availability | `{"hqCountry":"US","primaryMarkets":[],"availabilityScope":"global","availableCountries":[],"notAvailableCountries":[]}` | - |
| platform.support | `{"cli":true,"web":true}` | `{"web":true}` |
| pricing | `{"type":"hybrid","plans":[{"free":false,"name":"Postgres Single Node","summary":"Starting at $5/month","components":[{"kind":"fixed","amount":5,"period":"month","currency":"USD"}],"description":"Development and low-traffic production workloads","contactSales":false},{"free":false,"name":"Postgres Metal","summary":"Starting at $50/month","components":[{"kind":"fixed","amount":50,"period":"month","currency":"USD"}],"description":"High-performance local NVMe storage with unlimited IOPS","contactSales":false},{"free":false,"name":"Postgres HA (PS-5 example)","summary":"$15/month for PS-5 tier (1/16 vCPU, 512MB RAM, 10GB storage, 3 nodes, 99.99% SLA)","components":[{"kind":"fixed","amount":15,"period":"month","currency":"USD"}],"description":"High availability with 1 primary + 2 replicas across 3 availability zones","contactSales":false,"includedLimits":{"egress":"100 GB/month"}},{"free":false,"name":"Vitess","summary":"Custom pricing based on cluster size, VTGate configuration, and storage","description":"MySQL-compatible with horizontal sharding for massive scale","contactSales":false},{"free":false,"name":"Enterprise","summary":"Custom pricing","description":"All features with upgraded support, migration assistance, and bring-your-own-cloud deployment","contactSales":true}],"addOns":[{"name":"Egress bandwidth","components":[{"per":{"qty":1,"unit":"GB"},"kind":"metered","amount":0.06,"currency":"USD"}]},{"name":"Storage (network-attached, beyond 10GB free)"},{"name":"Additional development branch hours"},{"name":"SSO"}],"summary":"From $5/month for Postgres Single Node. Resource-based pricing with pay-as-you-go for storage overage and egress.","currency":"USD","freeTier":false,"sourceUrl":"https://planetscale.com","retrievedAt":"2026-08-03T12:42:46.087Z","startingPrice":{"amount":5,"period":"month","currency":"USD"},"billingPeriods":["month"]}` | `{"type":"hybrid","plans":[{"free":true,"name":"TiDB Cloud Starter"},{"free":false,"name":"TiDB Cloud Dedicated","contactSales":true}],"freeTier":true,"sourceUrl":"https://www.pingcap.com","retrievedAt":"2026-08-13T16:48:29.248Z"}` |
| pricing.free_tier | no | yes |
| pricing.model | commercial | freemium |
| pricing.price_level | low | low |
| pricing.transparent | yes | no |
| reliability.sla_pct | 99.99 | 99.99 |
| reliability.status_page | yes | yes |
| security.disclosure_policy | yes | - |
| security.gdpr | yes | yes |
| security.hipaa | yes | - |
| security.pci | yes | yes |
| security.soc2 | yes | yes |

## Capabilities (Relational Databases)

| Capability | PlanetScale | TiDB |
|---|:--:|:--:|
| **Core** |  |  |
| SQL model | Full SQL | Full SQL |
| **Transactions** |  |  |
| ACID transactions | - | Full |
| Highest isolation level | - | - |
| **Consistency** |  |  |
| Consistency | - | - |
| **Scale** |  |  |
| Horizontal scale | Sharded | Natively distributed |
| **Replication** |  |  |
| Replication | - | - |
| **Availability** |  |  |
| Automatic failover / HA | - | - |
| **Deployment** |  |  |
| Deployment | Managed | - |
| Serverless / scale-to-zero | - | - |
| **Compatibility** |  |  |
| Wire compatibility | - | MySQL protocol |
| **Extensibility** |  |  |
| Extensions / plugins / UDFs | ✓ | - |
| **Licensing** |  |  |
| Licence class | Proprietary | Permissive OSS |
| **Data types** |  |  |
| JSON / document support | - | - |
| Geo / spatial | - | - |

*Source: Vioscale. Generated 2026-09-01T17:20:33.238Z. "-" = undocumented, not absent.*