Doppler vs PlanetScale
The secrets management platform for dev teams — sync env vars everywhere
vs. Serverless MySQL (Vitess) and Postgres at scale
Pricing tiers
Doppler
Developer
$0. 5 users. Unlimited projects + secrets. Community support. For hobby/startups.
$0 base (usage-based)
Team
$18/user/mo. Unlimited projects, audit log, secret sharing, 14-day history.
$18/mo
Business
$36/user/mo. SSO (Google), advanced RBAC, 90-day audit + history, change requests.
$36/mo
Enterprise
Custom. SAML, SCIM, HIPAA, unlimited audit, dedicated support, SLA.
Custom
PlanetScale
Postgres EBS single-node — PS-5
Single-node EBS, 512 MiB RAM, arm64. Entry point for Postgres.
$5/mo
Postgres EBS HA — PS-5
3-node (primary + 2 replicas), 512 MiB, arm64.
$15/mo
Vitess (non-Metal) — PS-10
Vitess MySQL sharded cluster, 1 GiB RAM.
$39/mo
Postgres Metal — M-10
3-node Metal, 1 GiB RAM + 10 GiB local storage. Much higher IOPS.
$50/mo
Vitess Metal — M-160
Vitess Metal, 16 GiB RAM + 110 GiB storage.
$609/mo
Enterprise
Custom agreements, dedicated regions, 99.99% SLA.
Custom
Free-tier quotas head-to-head
Comparing developer on Doppler vs pg-ebs-nonha-starter on PlanetScale.
| Metric | Doppler | PlanetScale |
|---|---|---|
| ha | — | 0 nodes |
| ram mib | — | 512 MiB |
Features
Doppler · 15 features
- Audit Log — Who accessed what, when.
- Auto Rotation — Rotate cloud/API keys.
- Branch Configs — dev/staging/prod as branches.
- Change Requests — PR approvals for prod changes.
- Doppler CLI — Command-line access.
- E2E Encryption — Client-side encryption.
- Local Dev Injection — `doppler run` injects env vars.
- OIDC (CI/CD) — Short-lived tokens for GitHub Actions, etc.
- RBAC — Granular project + config roles.
- SCIM — User provisioning.
- Secret History — Full version history + restore.
- Secret References — Point to secrets from other projects.
- Secrets Sync — Auto-sync to 100+ destinations.
- SSO (Google, SAML) — Enterprise auth.
- Webhooks — Secret-change events.
PlanetScale · 12 features
- Backups — Automated daily backups with retention.
- Database Branching — Git-like branches of your DB schema (not data). Create, diff, merge via deploy r…
- Deploy Requests — Schema changes in a feature branch get reviewed + auto-applied to main with zero…
- HIPAA — HIPAA-compliant deployments (Enterprise).
- Metal (NVMe) — Dedicated NVMe local storage. 10x IOPS vs EBS, latency-critical workloads.
- PgBouncer Pooler — Managed PgBouncer for Postgres clusters. Optional dedicated pooler.
- PlanetScale Boost — Query result cache with sub-ms reads.
- Point-in-Time Recovery — Restore cluster to any point within retention window.
- Postgres on PlanetScale — PostgreSQL 15+ with the same branching + deploy-request flow. Launched 2024.
- Query Insights — Per-query performance analytics, slow query tracking, explain plans.
- Read-only Regions — Route reads to the nearest region for lower latency.
- Vitess (MySQL at scale) — Horizontally-sharded MySQL (YouTube-scale) — original PlanetScale offering.
Developer interfaces
| Kind | Doppler | PlanetScale |
|---|---|---|
| CLI | doppler CLI | PlanetScale CLI (pscale) |
| SDK | @dopplerhq/node-sdk, doppler-sdk (Python) | @planetscale/database |
| REST | Doppler REST API | Management API |
| MCP | Doppler MCP | PlanetScale MCP |
| OTHER | Doppler Dashboard, Doppler Webhooks, GitHub Actions OIDC | MySQL Wire Protocol, Postgres Wire Protocol |
Staxly is an independent catalog of developer platforms. Some links to Doppler and PlanetScale may be affiliate links — Staxly may earn a commission if you sign up through them, at no extra cost to you. Pricing is verified against vendor pages at publication time — reconfirm before buying.
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