PlanetScale for Postgres pricing

August 25, 2025 (Updated August 27, 2025)

Overview

PlanetScale for Postgres databases are billed based on their configuration and usage. Understanding the relationship between databases, branches, and clusters is key to understanding your billing:

• Database: Your overall project (e.g., "my-ecommerce-app")
• Branch: A copy of your database for different environments (e.g., "production", "development", "staging") - learn more about branching
• Cluster: The underlying compute and storage infrastructure that powers each branch

Each branch runs on its own dedicated cluster and is billed separately based on its configuration and usage.

• You are billed for the compute and storage resources (cluster) that power each branch (prorated to the millisecond each month)

• Every database branch you launch has default included amounts of:

  • Cluster disk storage
  • Backup storage
  • Network egress data transfer
  • Replicas

• Usage beyond the included defaults is charged based on the costs for that resource, this includes:

  • Cluster disk storage used beyond the included amount (for network-attached storage)
  • Backup storage used beyond the included amount
  • Network egress beyond the included amount
  • Additional replicas

There are no upfront commitments and as you adjust your configuration or usage changes, pricing will automatically adjust from that point.

Cluster instance size

Each database branch runs on its own dedicated cluster infrastructure. Clusters are billed based on the selected instance size and prorated to the millisecond. Each instance size includes defined amounts of vCPU cores and memory, as well as storage based on the storage type selected (network-attached storage or PlanetScale Metal). See cluster pricing for more information.

You can increase or decrease your cluster size at any time. Pricing is prorated to the millisecond, so if you temporarily increase, you will only be charged for the larger cluster size for the time that it was running. Billing for a modified cluster size begins as soon as you begin the resize. You can also spin up additional production branches at any time for additional cost. The pricing for these is also prorated.

Cluster disk storage

Storage types explained

PlanetScale offers two storage options with different pricing models:

Network-attached storage billing

For network-attached storage clusters, pricing varies by region and cloud provider:

• Base storage: scales automatically if autoscaling is enabled
• Additional IOPS: you manually configure this in cluster settings (AWS only)
• Additional Throughput: you manually configure this in cluster settings (AWS only)

What are IOPS and Throughput?

• IOPS (Input/Output Operations Per Second): How many read/write operations your database can handle per second. Higher IOPS = faster response for many small database queries.
• Throughput: How much data can be transferred per second (MiB/s). Higher throughput = faster for large data operations like bulk imports.

For more information on changing your cluster's storage, see the Cluster storage configuration documentation.

Backups

Included backup storage

PlanetScale automatically includes backup storage with every database branch at no extra cost. Each branch gets backup storage equal to 2x your disk size.

Examples:

When your backup and WAL storage exceeds the included amount, additional storage is billed at $0.023 per GB per month.

Storage overage examples:

How backup billing works

Storage calculation: Both database data backups and WAL files are automatically compressed before being sent to backup storage. You're billed only on the compressed size, which is typically much smaller than your active database size.

Backup storage usage billing data is updated hourly.

For more details on backup functionality, see Back up and restore.

What affects storage costs:

Network data transfer

Outgoing network traffic (egress) is billed based on the amount of data transferred out of PlanetScale for Postgres instances to any other host or destination. This includes data transfer for purposes such as replication and backups. Each branch has a default amount of included network egress that is aggregated for all cluster instances in the entire branch.

Incoming network traffic (ingress) is free.

Additional replicas

Each production cluster includes 2 replicas to provide high availability and additional read capacity alongside the primary. Certain read-heavy workloads may demand additional read replicas. If you need additional replicas beyond what is included, you can add them for an additional cost based on the branch's instance size and the current storage (for network-attached disk configurations). The cost of an additional replica instance is ~1/3 the cost of the original 3-node cluster.

Examples:

*Note: Replicas with network-attached storage do not include the default included cluster storage disk amount of 10GB. You pay for the entire configured disk size. Figures shown here are for AWS based instances with additional storage amounts and no additional IOPS/Throughput configured.

Development branches do not support replicas. For more information on replicas, see Replicas.

Cluster pricing

Cluster instance pricing is based on the cloud provider's own pricing for the compute resources, and varies per region. See the below links for the current region's pricing.

Amazon Web Services

• ap-northeast-1 (Tokyo)
• ap-south-1 (Mumbai)
• ap-southeast-1 (Singapore)
• ap-southeast-2 (Sydney)
• eu-central-1 (Frankfurt)
• eu-west-1 (Dublin)
• eu-west-2 (London)
• sa-east-1 (Sao Paulo)
• us-east-1 (N. Virginia)
• us-east-2 (Ohio)
• us-west-2 (Oregon)

Google Cloud

• asia-northeast3 (Seoul, South Korea)
• northamerica-northeast1 (Montréal, Québec)
• us-central1 (Council Bluffs, Iowa)
• us-east4 (Ashburn, Virginia)

Storage pricing

Network-attached storage pricing varies by region and includes three billable components:

• Storage: The cost per GB of data stored per month (can auto-scale with usage if enabled)
• Additional IOPS: Cost when you manually configure more input/output operations per second beyond the included baseline
• Additional Throughput: Cost when you manually configure more data transfer throughput (MiB/s) beyond the included baseline

The table below shows the pricing for all three components across different AWS regions. Your total storage cost will depend on your configuration of each component.

AWS Storage Pricing

GCP Storage Pricing

The table below shows the storage pricing for Google Cloud Platform regions. GCP storage pricing includes only base storage costs, with IOPS and throughput that scale with disk size.

Need help?

Get help from the PlanetScale Support team, or join our GitHub discussion board to see how others are using PlanetScale.