PlanetScale vs Mintlify
Serverless MySQL (Vitess) and Postgres at scale
vs. Beautiful docs + AI search — used by Anthropic, Cursor, Perplexity
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
Mintlify
Hobby
$0. 1 editor. Unlimited pages. Mintlify subdomain. Community support.
Free
Pro
$150/mo. Custom domain, analytics, versioning, 10 editors. Commercial use.
$150/mo
Growth
$550/mo. API playground, OpenAPI, 25 editors, advanced analytics, SSO.
$550/mo
Enterprise
Custom. Dedicated support, HIPAA, SAML, custom integrations, large teams.
Custom
Free-tier quotas head-to-head
Comparing pg-ebs-nonha-starter on PlanetScale vs hobby on Mintlify.
| Metric | PlanetScale | Mintlify |
|---|---|---|
| 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.
Mintlify · 15 features
- AI Chat — User-facing AI assistant trained on your docs.
- AI Search — Semantic search across docs.
- Analytics — Page views, search queries, CTR.
- API Playground — Try API endpoints from docs (OpenAPI).
- Custom Domain — docs.yourco.com.
- Custom Theming — Logo, colors, fonts, branding.
- Git Sync — Build on push to GitHub/GitLab.
- i18n — Multi-language docs.
- MDX — Markdown + React components.
- Multi-version Docs — Support /v1, /v2, /v3 side-by-side.
- OpenAPI Generation — Auto-generate docs from spec.
- Pre-built Components — Cards, Callouts, Tabs, CodeGroups, Accordions.
- SEO Optimized — SSR + structured data.
- SSO — SAML + OIDC (Growth+).
- Syntax Highlighting — Shiki-based, 100+ languages.
Developer interfaces
| Kind | PlanetScale | Mintlify |
|---|---|---|
| CLI | PlanetScale CLI (pscale) | mintlify CLI |
| SDK | @planetscale/database | — |
| REST | Management API | — |
| MCP | PlanetScale MCP | — |
| OTHER | MySQL Wire Protocol, Postgres Wire Protocol | AI Chat Widget, Analytics Dashboard, API Playground, MDX + mint.json, Mintlify Dashboard |
Staxly is an independent catalog of developer platforms. Some links to PlanetScale and Mintlify 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.
Want this comparison in your AI agent's context? Install the free Staxly MCP server.