PlanetScale vs Algolia
Serverless MySQL (Vitess) and Postgres at scale
vs. AI search & discovery — keyword + neural + personalization
Pricing tiers
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
Algolia
Build (Free)
10K search requests/mo, 1M records. Full features for dev/testing.
Free
Grow (PAYG)
Free up to 10K searches/mo + 100K records. $0.50 per 1K additional searches + $0.40 per 1K additional records.
$0 base (usage-based)
Grow Plus (PAYG)
Adds AI Ranking, Advanced Personalization, AI Synonyms, 10k rules/index. $1.75 per 1K searches.
$0 base (usage-based)
Elevate
Annual. NeuralSearch + AI Collections + Smart Groups + real-time personalization. 99.999% SLA, SSO.
Custom
Free-tier quotas head-to-head
Comparing pg-ebs-nonha-starter on PlanetScale vs build on Algolia.
| Metric | PlanetScale | Algolia |
|---|---|---|
| ha | 0 nodes | — |
| ram mib | 512 MiB | — |
Features
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.
Algolia · 16 features
- A/B Testing — Compare two index configurations on live traffic.
- AI Ranking — Dynamic re-ranking based on clicks + conversions.
- Algolia Crawler — Hosted crawler to index websites.
- Autocomplete — JavaScript autocomplete UI library.
- Insights API — Send click + conversion events to train AI Ranking.
- InstantSearch UI — UI libraries: React, Vue, Angular, iOS, Android — prebuilt search components.
- Keyword Search — Fast prefix + typo-tolerant full-text search.
- MCP Tools — Algolia MCP server for agent integrations.
- Merchandising Studio — No-code UI for merchants to pin/bury/boost products.
- NeuralSearch — Hybrid vector + keyword search.
- Personalization — Per-user ranking based on click history.
- Query Suggestions — AI-generated suggestion index from past searches.
- Recommend — Product recommendations: Related, Frequently Bought Together, Trending.
- Rules — Conditional overrides: pin results, banners, redirects, boost/bury.
- Search Analytics — Top searches, no-result searches, click-through rates.
- Synonyms — Equivalent term groups + typo-tolerance tuning.
Developer interfaces
| Kind | PlanetScale | Algolia |
|---|---|---|
| CLI | PlanetScale CLI (pscale) | Algolia CLI |
| SDK | @planetscale/database | algoliasearch-client-go, algoliasearch-client-kotlin, algoliasearch-client-swift, algoliasearch-java, algoliasearch (JS), algoliasearch-php, algoliasearch-python, algoliasearch-rails, react-instantsearch |
| REST | Management API | Algolia Admin API, Algolia Search API |
| MCP | PlanetScale MCP | — |
| OTHER | MySQL Wire Protocol, Postgres Wire Protocol | — |
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