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PlanetScale Postgres supports versions 17 and 18 of Postgres. Specifically, the following versions are currently supported:
  • 17.9
  • 18.3
New databases will be created using the latest version by default and we recommend sticking to that default, but you can choose an older version if you need to.

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Major version upgrades

PlanetScale doesn’t currently offer in-place upgrades between major versions of Postgres. To upgrade from Postgres 17 to 18, create a new Postgres 18 database and perform an online migration from your existing PlanetScale Postgres 17 database using our import guides. The same import process also applies if you’re migrating from another provider such as RDS, Aurora, or a self-hosted Postgres instance. You can import into any supported major version regardless of where the source database is hosted.

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Benchmarking Postgres 17 vs 18

Our Benchmarking Postgres 17 vs 18 blog post covers sysbench oltp_read_only results across multiple EC2 instance types and I/O configurations.
  • Postgres 18’s new io_method=worker default delivers the best overall read performance, outperforming both io_uring and the legacy synchronous I/O in most scenarios.
  • Local NVMe disks dramatically outperform network-attached storage (gp3, io2) regardless of Postgres version or I/O setting.

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What’s new in Postgres 18

Postgres 18 builds on Postgres 17 with new features, changed defaults, and some deprecations. For full details, see the official Postgres 18 release notes.