PlanetScale vs MongoDB Atlas Pricing (2026)
How do these two stack up on price? Here's what each one costs, what you get, and where the value sits.
| PlanetScale | MongoDB Atlas | |
|---|---|---|
| Starts at | $5/mo | $0/mo |
| Number of plans | 2 | 4 |
| Free plan | — | |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Pricing model | usage-based | usage-based |
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
Enterprise
- Database expertise
- Migration assistance
- Slack-based support
- More deployment options
- Business support included
- Architecture consultation
- Custom pricing
- Additional regions
- Bring your own cloud
- Upgraded support
Free
Flex
Dedicated
PopularEnterprise Advanced
- MongoDB Enterprise Server
- Ops Manager and Cloud Manager
- Kubernetes Operator
- Enterprise security features
- Business intelligence integration and visualization
- Commercial license
- Self-serve training content
- Consultative support
- Fast initial response goals
- Rich onboarding and regular check-ins
PlanetScale vs MongoDB Atlas FAQ
- Which one is cheaper?
- MongoDB Atlas is the cheaper option, starting at $0/mo vs $5/mo for PlanetScale.
- 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. PlanetScale: PlanetScale sits at the premium end of the managed MySQL/database space — pricier than raw RDS or a self-hosted Vitess cluster, but selling the promise of zero-downtime schema changes and horizontal scaling without an ops team. They're chasing teams who've outgrown vanilla Postgres/MySQL hosting and are willing to pay for database infrastructure that just works at scale. MongoDB Atlas: MongoDB sits mid-to-premium in the database-as-a-service space — pricier than raw self-hosted Postgres or DynamoDB's pay-per-request model, but justified by the managed ops layer and document-model flexibility. They're clearly hunting teams who've outgrown free-tier NoSQL options and need something that won't fall over at scale.
Still deciding? See the best PlanetScale alternatives or the best MongoDB Atlas alternatives, ranked with verified pricing.
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