Quite a stretch to say similar. Neon does not support sharding, Boost, or scale to anywhere near PlanetScale as reliably.

Neon will stay true to Postgres. Our storage is sharded and bottomless. You can get a ton of TPS scale with large Postgres compute plus read replicas.

Shared nothing architectures are useless for 99% of the market and break compatibility with the single node databases.

> Our storage is sharded and bottomless.

Anyone can claim this and LVM together 20 64TiB EBS volumes and put them on one big node. That's not sharding or bottomless.

Sharding and a shared nothing have incredible benefits to anyone who has a requirement for uptime, scalability, and cost reduction. We’ve avoided supporting parts of MySQL that make scaling worse and are working to add them back in ways that work, like FKs. In return for not supporting all MySQL features we hand back an immense amount in return. This is something our customers have been happy with.

Neon doesn't use EBS volumes. That's why it has an inherent cost advantage over Planetscale.

As a user of PlanetScale I don’t know what distinction you are making here and why.

I’ve never had compatibility issues with single-node databases. It “just works” in the cloud and locally thanks to MySQL support in vitess.

Not to mention the 99.8% uptime at Neon, which is shocking. Look, if you are going to bring percentages, make sure they are the right ones.

https://www.planetscalestatus.com/

https://neonstatus.com/

FWIW, our uptime is definitely something we are prioritizing.

Of course... this is a Vitess/Planetscale post or I probably wouldn't have even brought it up. All of these products are constantly undergoing change. They embody the best intentions and dreams of very smart people, such as yourself.

I believe Neon will be one of the providers that sticks around to do this. Comparison is the thief of joy.

Our uptime will improve. We have been keeping up with the growth (2500 databases are created per day). And I insisted to be fully transparent on uptime.

There is a ton of work internally that will improve the uptime as we get to GA.

Very petrifying that Vercel say Neon is GA and the founder of Neon disagrees.

https://vercel.com/changelog/vercel-postgres-is-now-availabl...

Having tried Neon, it’s not really a replacement for Planetscale. PS’ in-cloud features are hard to replace. In my review, PS won on a feature and cost basis.

I think PlanetScale is the most mature option on the market right now by far

I agree that Planetscale is a very mature offering. Neon is technically in preview still, but we are actively working on the maturity of our offering every day. The success of Planetscale to date is definitely a position many database vendors want to attain.

I don't think _won_ is the right term. _In the lead_ would be a better phrase in my opinion. I think Planetscale being based on MySQL will hurt them in the long run. Tying themselves to Orcale is already hurting them, having to fork MySQL to add vector support for instance. Neon, on the other hand, gets to benefit from a larger and much more collaborative community in Postgres, as do other Postgres vendors like Supabase, Azure, AWS, Tembo, Nile, etc.

Please continue to use the vendor that you find works for you, however.

"Won" is a statement which is accurate for the moment in which I did my review. I think all of these database providers are great.

Postgres people need a solution just as much as MySQL people do. I think when it comes to Postgres, the name in my mind is Neon, even though I am a Planetscale customer. In my current job, I need MySQL, but to be clear I wouldn't be against Neon (even as a PS fan) if I had a direct need for it.

Neon has a reason to exist even if Planetscale is in the "lead." There is a huge community around Vitess, including, you know, YouTube, not to mention MySQL, which also has an enormous community.

Keep up the good work. Databases as a service are a good thing to be doing.

youtube migrated away from vitess several years ago

Mysql product is circling drain under oracles direction anymore. New 8.x “innovation” releases lack any important features. even Mariadb is out executing oracle despite being broke!

Mysql community is in bad shape too. Official slack channel is avalanche of lazy newbie questions. Official linkedin group is endless spew of “learn sql cheat sheet”

Sad. It’s done for. community may still be “enormous” but that is bad thing when its communication channels overrun by sub-bootcamp-level devs

Nobody cares. Millions of apps run on mysql despite your objections. Good luck with that one

I'll believe it when I see it. Millions of applications use MySQL, and Vitess has only matured and grown.

They said Java was done like five times. It's in the midst of another massive revival. I think the bet on MySQL is a solid one, and I think reasonable minds should be able to differ about this, so I can't bring myself to be as sure as you seem to be.

I can say this: Our app, built on Planetscale and MySQL's protocol, has been fantastic to work with. We run locally against MySQL and H2, and in prod against Planetscale. Everything works really well. Boost, replication, backups, branching, etc etc. We use all of them. Every feature works great, does exactly what it says on the tin. We have never had a single problem.

So, in theory, yes, these things are all on a timeline of some kind between life and death, but I find it very hard to believe MySQL or Vitess are near the end of theirs.

think of big features added to oracles Mysql in past two years. Thats ten releases: eight most recent 8.0.xx, and 8.1 and 8.2.

what are they? are you using any? does it really not worry you at all?

I don't really recall because I don't think our database has needed much on top of stock MySQL. Maybe JSON columns? I don't really care. Just being candid as a user; it has not worried me, no.

ok. json columns were put in eight years ago

Great sounds to me like a fine pace

Not accurate IMO. It's marketing a feature for giant users like YouTube and GitHub as important for everyone. Neon and sqlite are winning from my perspective. The BlueSky move to thousands of sqlite databases should inspire similar architectures in other apps. Vercel has stopped gushing about PlanetScale in particular and now offers never options including Neon.

??? Bluesky isn't at all a typical application architecture. The code is gross and insanely complex for a regular app. Vercel still gushes all the time about Planetscale, and so does Cloudflare. Neon is the provider du jour for postgres

Well, you are welcome to do your own review and share the results. At the time we were deciding between all the major DB as a Service providers. Not everyone has the same architecture as Bluesky, and from reading the code it seems pretty mechanical and complex.

I'm welcome to simply ignore PlanetScale unless I want to learn MySQL or need some performance characteristics that only make a difference in rare cases. Even if it is good enough I don't want to read the MySQL docs. If PlanetScale wants their product to be more welcoming, they'll have to distance it more from Oracle than it is.

? MySQL, in this case, is simply a protocol. Planetscale and Vitess are not affiliated with Oracle at all. I don't understand your point.

Furthermore, we use Planetscale from an ORM. I don't think I have "read the MySQL docs" in years.

I wish people would disclose their association with a product in this “my favorite is better than yours” sub thread

Me - Neon Nikita - Neon Sam Lambert - Planetscale

That is all that I am aware of in this subthread. FWIW, Nikita and Sam have their affiliations in their profiles.