FaunavsPlanetScale

Saas0

Developer Tool

Score Comparison

Overall

Pricing

Usability

Performance

Support

Reliability

Onboarding

Security

Integrations

FaunaPlanetScale

Signals Comparison

Reliability

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)

Pricing

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)

Usability

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)

Support

Fauna

Documentation gaps for new product(5/10)

PlanetScale

Limited documentation and support for edge cases(5/10)

Customization

Fauna

No transactions spanning multiple requests(6/10)
Company pivoted focus from developers to enterprise(6/10)

PlanetScale

No signals

Integrations

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

SERVICE DISCONTINUED

Free

Users: N/A

Storage: N/A

Limits: Cannot sign up or use - service terminated

Service no longer available - migrate to alternatives

Free Tier (Historical)

Free

Users: N/A

Storage: 5GB (was)

Limits: Historical reference only - service shut down

Service terminated - no longer applicable

Pay-Go (Historical)

$25/mo

Users: N/A

Storage: Pay per GB

Limits: Historical reference only - service shut down

Flat monthly fee + overages regardless of usage

PlanetScale

Postgres PS-5

$5/mo

Users: Unlimited

Storage: Included in base

Limits: Not recommended for production, No high availability, Single region only

Non-HA (no failover), Development/testing only recommended, Compute charged separately

Scaler Pro (PS-10)

Popular

$39/mo

Users: Unlimited

Storage: 10 GB included

Limits: 5 development branches max, Enterprise features locked, No dedicated support

Storage overage $1.50/GB, Read replicas $39/month each, Higher compute tiers significantly more expensive

Scaler Pro (PS-20)

$99/mo

Users: Unlimited

Storage: 25 GB included

Limits: 5 development branches max, Enterprise features locked

Read replicas additional, Storage overages apply, Still no dedicated support

Enterprise

Free

Users: Unlimited

Storage: Custom

Limits: Must negotiate with sales, Long procurement process

Contact sales required, Minimum annual commitment expected, Pricing not transparent

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

Signals Comparison

Reliability

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)

Pricing

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)

Usability

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)

Support

Fauna

Documentation gaps for new product(5/10)

PlanetScale

Limited documentation and support for edge cases(5/10)

Customization

Fauna

No transactions spanning multiple requests(6/10)
Company pivoted focus from developers to enterprise(6/10)

PlanetScale

No signals

Integrations

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

SERVICE DISCONTINUED

Free

Users: N/A

Storage: N/A

Limits: Cannot sign up or use - service terminated

Service no longer available - migrate to alternatives

Free Tier (Historical)

Free

Users: N/A

Storage: 5GB (was)

Limits: Historical reference only - service shut down

Service terminated - no longer applicable

Pay-Go (Historical)

$25/mo

Users: N/A

Storage: Pay per GB

Limits: Historical reference only - service shut down

Flat monthly fee + overages regardless of usage

PlanetScale

Postgres PS-5

$5/mo

Users: Unlimited

Storage: Included in base

Limits: Not recommended for production, No high availability, Single region only

Non-HA (no failover), Development/testing only recommended, Compute charged separately

Scaler Pro (PS-10)

Popular

$39/mo

Users: Unlimited

Storage: 10 GB included

Limits: 5 development branches max, Enterprise features locked, No dedicated support

Storage overage $1.50/GB, Read replicas $39/month each, Higher compute tiers significantly more expensive

Scaler Pro (PS-20)

$99/mo

Users: Unlimited

Storage: 25 GB included

Limits: 5 development branches max, Enterprise features locked

Read replicas additional, Storage overages apply, Still no dedicated support

Enterprise

Free

Users: Unlimited

Storage: Custom

Limits: Must negotiate with sales, Long procurement process

Contact sales required, Minimum annual commitment expected, Pricing not transparent

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