PlanetScale

PlanetScale is a serverless database platform originally built on Vitess, the same technology YouTube uses to scale MySQL, giving startups access to horizontally scalable, highly available MySQL without having to operate Vitess's considerable operational complexity themselves, and it has since expanded to offer a serverless Postgres product alongside its original MySQL offering. Its most distinctive feature is non-blocking schema changes through a branching workflow: developers create a database branch, make schema changes against it safely, and then deploy those changes to production through a reviewed deploy request, similar to a pull request for code, which eliminates the risky, blocking schema migrations that have historically caused production outages on traditional database setups. This branching model lets teams treat database schema changes with the same rigor and review process as application code changes, rather than running migrations as a separate, higher-risk process disconnected from a team's usual code review workflow. PlanetScale automatically handles connection pooling, query insights, and automated backups, removing a substantial amount of the database administration work that would otherwise fall on a small engineering team without a dedicated database administrator. Its usage-based pricing scales with actual traffic rather than requiring a fixed-size server provisioned in advance, which suits startups with growing or unpredictable traffic patterns. PlanetScale is used by engineering teams that want a mature database engine combined with modern developer workflows around branching and safe schema evolution.