Our take
Pick CockroachDB if teams who will burn the 30-day / $400 trial on a first Statement Fingerprint, then Standard at $0.092 / vCPU-hr (example $203/mo) when the trial ends — not Mission Critical’s dedicated $0.162 / vCPU-hr unless they need 99.999% and HIPAA. Pick PlanetScale if app teams who will start Base at $5/month (single-node Postgres) or $30/month (PS-10 arm64 HA in us-east-1) while they open a first Cluster
branching database desk
Best for
CockroachDB A distributed SQL statement you bill per vCPU
PlanetScale A cluster you start at $5 / $30
Free plan
CockroachDB No free plan
PlanetScale No free plan
Lowest paid
CockroachDB Standard $0.092/mo
PlanetScale Storage overage $0.50
Next step up
CockroachDB Mission Critical $0.162/mo
PlanetScale Postgres single-node $5/mo
Runs where
CockroachDB Hosted
PlanetScale
Watch out
CockroachDB Idle still bills
PlanetScale There is no $0 Hobby card
Last checked
CockroachDB 2026-10-23 · cockroachlabs.com/pricing
PlanetScale 2026-10-23 · planetscale.com/pricing.md
teams who will burn the 30-day / $400 trial on a first Statement Fingerprint, then Standard at $0.092 / vCPU-hr (example $203/mo) when the trial ends — not Mission Critical’s dedicated $0.162 / vCPU-hr unless they need 99.999% and HIPAA.
Read the CockroachDB pageapp teams who will start Base at $5/month (single-node Postgres) or $30/month (PS-10 arm64 HA in us-east-1) while they open a first Cluster configuration screen, then add $5 PS-DEV branches or extra production SKUs when they need a deploy-request workflow.
Read the PlanetScale page