FaunavsPlanetScale
Score Comparison
Signals Comparison
Fauna
- SERVICE SHUT DOWN - May 30, 2025(10/10)
- Open source release promised but no timeline(7/10)
PlanetScale
- Connection issues with Next.js and Prisma(7/10)
- October 2025 AWS us-east-1 outage affected dashboard(5/10)
Fauna
- Costs did not scale to $0 like truly serverless(7/10)
- Dashboard usage consumed operations(4/10)
PlanetScale
- Free Hobby tier removed - $39/month minimum now(10/10)
- Row-read billing causes surprise costs(8/10)
- Much more expensive than alternatives(8/10)
Fauna
- FQL query language had steep learning curve(6/10)
- Type system difficult to debug(4/10)
PlanetScale
- Branching workflow has steep learning curve(6/10)
- No GUI or DBMS - just SQL console(5/10)
- Index optimization required to avoid high row reads(6/10)
Fauna
- Documentation gaps for new product(5/10)
PlanetScale
- Limited documentation and support for edge cases(5/10)
Fauna
- No transactions spanning multiple requests(6/10)
- Company pivoted focus from developers to enterprise(6/10)
PlanetScale
No signals
Fauna
- Lacked full-text search capability(5/10)
PlanetScale
- No foreign key support due to Vitess architecture(7/10)
- Firebase and social login integration issues(6/10)
- MySQL-only limits use cases (Postgres preference growing)(5/10)
Pricing Comparison
Fauna
Users: N/A
Storage: N/A
Limits: Cannot sign up or use - service terminated
Users: N/A
Storage: 5GB (was)
Limits: Historical reference only - service shut down
Users: N/A
Storage: Pay per GB
Limits: Historical reference only - service shut down
PlanetScale
Users: Unlimited
Storage: Included in base
Limits: Not recommended for production, No high availability, Single region only
Users: Unlimited
Storage: 10 GB included
Limits: 5 development branches max, Enterprise features locked, No dedicated support
Users: Unlimited
Storage: 25 GB included
Limits: 5 development branches max, Enterprise features locked
Users: Unlimited
Storage: Custom
Limits: Must negotiate with sales, Long procurement process
Feature Comparison
| Feature | Fauna | PlanetScale |
|---|---|---|
| Database | ||
| Document + Relational Was unique | ||
| ACID Transactions Historical | ||
| Foreign Key Constraints Limited support, not in sharded mode | ||
| PostgreSQL Support Added late 2024, less mature than MySQL | ||
| SQL Queries FQL only | ||
| Core | ||
| Database Branching Git-like branching for schema changes | ||
| Zero-Downtime Migrations Non-blocking schema changes via Online DDL | ||
| Deploy Requests Safe schema migration workflow | ||
| Infrastructure | ||
| Global Distribution Historical | ||
| Serverless Historical | ||
| Scaling | ||
| Horizontal Sharding Via Vitess, automatic data distribution | ||
| Read Replicas $39/month each additional | ||
| Multi-Region Deployment Read-only regions for latency | ||
| API | ||
| GraphQL Support Historical | ||
| Monitoring | ||
| Query Insights Query analysis and index recommendations | ||
| Performance | ||
| Connection Pooling Built-in for serverless environments | ||
| Status | ||
| Active Service SHUT DOWN | ||
| Licensing | ||
| Open Source Promised, no timeline | ||
| Search | ||
| Full-Text Search Never had | ||
| Pricing | ||
| Free Tier Removed March 2024 | ||
| Deployment | ||
| Self-Hosted Option Was cloud-only | ||
| Usability | ||
| GUI/Visual Editor SQL console only, no rich GUI | ||
| Developer | ||
| CLI Tool (pscale) Full-featured command line interface | ||
| Reliability | ||
| Automatic Backups Point-in-time recovery available | ||
| Security | ||
| SSO/SAML Enterprise plan only | ||
| Audit Logs Enterprise plan only | ||