MongoDB Atlas vs PlanetScale Pricing (2026)
How do these two stack up on price? Here's what each one costs, what you get, and where the value sits.
| MongoDB Atlas | PlanetScale | |
|---|---|---|
| Starts at | $0/mo | Custom |
| Number of plans | 3 | 2 |
| Free plan | — | |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Pricing model | usage-based | usage-based |
Free
- 512MB of storage
- Shared RAM
- Shared vCPU
Flex
- 5GB of storage
- Shared RAM
- Shared vCPU
Dedicated
Popular- 10GB to 4TB of storage
- 2GB to 768GB RAM
- 2vCPUs to 96vCPUs
Base Plan
- Single node — Starting at $5/month for development and low-traffic workloads
- Metal — Starting at $50/month with local NVMe storage for high-performance needs
- High Availability — 1 primary + 2 replicas across 3 availability zones
- MySQL-compatible databases with horizontal sharding (Vitess)
- Instance and VTGate sizes
- Storage amount — First 10 GB included, and then $0.50 per GB per instance
- Add-ons — Additional development branch hours, SSO, upgraded support
Enterprise
- Bring your own cloud
- Upgraded support
- Database expertise
- Migration assistance
- Slack-based support
- More deployment options
- Business support included
- Architecture consultation
- Custom pricing
- Additional regions
MongoDB Atlas vs PlanetScale FAQ
- Which one is cheaper?
- One or both use custom pricing, so it depends on your specific needs.
- Can I use either one for free?
- MongoDB Atlas has a free plan. PlanetScale doesn't — you'll need to pay from day one.
- How do they charge?
- Both use a usage-based model, so the comparison is straightforward — it comes down to features and limits at each price point.
- Which one is a better deal?
- Depends on what you need. MongoDB Atlas: Atlas sits in the premium tier of managed databases, competing directly with AWS DocumentDB and Azure Cosmos DB, but leans on MongoDB's native compatibility as a differentiator over cloud-vendor lock-in alternatives. They're not the cheapest option — they're pitching developer experience and ecosystem depth to teams that want to avoid the friction of self-managing MongoDB. PlanetScale: They're threading the needle between managed Postgres commodities (Neon, Supabase) and premium database-as-a-service players (Aurora, AlloyDB) — not the cheapest option, but positioning on performance and MySQL/Postgres flexibility for teams that have outgrown basic managed DBs. The AWS and GCP Marketplace availability signals they're going after cloud-native teams with existing marketplace spend commitments.
Keep tabs on both.
We'll monitor pricing changes for MongoDB Atlas and PlanetScale and let you know when something moves.