PlanetScale vs AssemblyAI
Serverless MySQL (Vitess) and Postgres at scale
vs. Best-in-class speech-to-text API — Universal models, 99 languages, low-latency streaming
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
AssemblyAI
Free Credits
$50 in free credits on signup. Full API access.
Free
Pay-as-you-go
Per-hour billing by model. No minimum.
$0 base (usage-based)
Enterprise
Custom contracts. SLA, private deployments, BAA.
Custom
Free-tier quotas head-to-head
Comparing pg-ebs-nonha-starter on PlanetScale vs free-trial on AssemblyAI.
| Metric | PlanetScale | AssemblyAI |
|---|---|---|
| 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.
AssemblyAI · 11 features
- Advanced Prompting — Streaming with disfluency + code-switching + realtime diarization.
- Audio Intelligence — Sentiment, topic detection, summarization, entity detection, content safety, IAB…
- Auto Punctuation — Smart capitalization + punctuation.
- Keyterm Prompting — Boost accuracy for domain vocabulary.
- LeMUR (LLM framework) — Run LLMs over transcripts: Q&A, summary, action items.
- Medical Mode — Specialized for clinical + medical vocabulary.
- PII Redaction — Auto-redact credit cards, SSNs, addresses, emails.
- Pre-recorded Transcription — Upload audio/video URL or file → transcript.
- Realtime Streaming — WebSocket-based low-latency STT.
- Speaker Diarization — Identify who spoke when.
- Webhooks — Auto-notify when transcription finishes.
Developer interfaces
| Kind | PlanetScale | AssemblyAI |
|---|---|---|
| CLI | PlanetScale CLI (pscale) | — |
| SDK | @planetscale/database | assemblyai-go, assemblyai (Node), assemblyai (Python), assemblyai (Ruby) |
| REST | Management API | AssemblyAI REST API |
| MCP | PlanetScale MCP | — |
| OTHER | MySQL Wire Protocol, Postgres Wire Protocol | Streaming WebSocket, Webhooks |
Staxly is an independent catalog of developer platforms. Outbound links to PlanetScale and AssemblyAI are plain references to their official websites. Pricing is verified against vendor pages at publication time — reconfirm before buying.
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