Introduction

PlanetScale is a cloud-based serverless database platform built on the MYSQL database. It provides developers with relevant structures to enhance data availability, quality performance, global scaling and low-latency access while building applications.

Nonetheless, most tools come with their own setbacks and businesses do have the choice to consider alternative solutions with capabilities that better meet their needs. These alternatives address various business demands and distinguish themselves based on a number of factors, including scalability, latency, query support, ease of integration and implementation, and performance optimization.

In this article, I'll be considering five alternatives to PlanetScale, which include HarperDB, ScaleGrid, AstraDB, CockroachDB, and restDB.io.
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HarperDB

The first alternative that will be explored is HarperDB, a globally-distributed data platform that can be deployed anywhere from edge to cloud, enabling edge, hybrid and multi cloud environments. HarperDB consists of a distributed database, API Server, and real-time event streaming engine in one tool. The technology makes delivering enterprise applications faster, easier, and more cost effective.

While HarperDB can be deployed anywhere and easily scaled horizontally, HarperDB Cloud takes care of the complexities of managing the underlying infrastructure, database administration, and maintenance tasks. This relieves developers from the burdensome responsibilities of hardware setup, software installation, and configuration management.

Some of its key features include:

• Support for SQL and NoSQL - HarperDB has a hybrid functionality that makes it possible to query any data type. As a result, developers no longer need to choose a tool based on the structure of their data.

• High Speed and Scalability - it can handle substantial amounts of data while delivering rapid query response times, making it ideal for high-performance applications. Furthermore, it boasts of dynamic scalability capabilities, accommodating changes in varying workloads and traffic patterns.

• Data Consistency - as a distributed and multi-region database platform, HarperDB allows for multiple instances of databases to stay in real-time synchronization. This is to ensure that data stays consistent across various instances.

• Diverse Data Sources - HarperDB supports structured and unstructured data. HarperDB can easily ingest and query several data types, including relational, JSON, and CSV data, giving developers flexibility in their data modeling strategies.

• Seamless Deployment and Integration - HarperDB has simple integration and deployment options. It provides RESTful APIs, SDKs, WebSockets, and client libraries to enable simple database connectivity. Without the need for complex setup or configuration, developers can easily integrate and build with HarperDB within minutes.

• Custom Functions - Using Custom Functions gives you complete control over the accessible endpoints, how users are authenticated and authorized, what data is accessed from the database, and how it is aggregated and returned to users.

In terms of pricing, HarperDB has a freemium premium model with a super powerful free-forever tier. HarperDB is cost-effective to scale since you can do a lot more with less hardware/infrastructure. This method reduces the need for upfront infrastructure investments, allowing for greater flexibility and cost optimisation based on actual resource consumption. Overall, HarperDB is unique in its distributed nature, flexibility, and performance gains when compared to other similar tools.

ScaleGrid

Similarly, ScaleGrid presents itself as a robust database management platform that provides all-inclusive solutions for managing databases across several cloud providers. It streamlines database deployment, monitoring, and scaling by offering critical tools and capabilities to assure high availability.

Some core features and capabilities of ScaleGrid include:

• Multi-cloud compatibility: ScaleGrid is compatible with a variety of cloud providers, including Amazon Web Services (AWS), Azure, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), and DigitalOcean. This allows developers to deploy their databases across many cloud environments, giving them flexibility while avoiding vendor lock-in.

• Fully Managed Database Solution: as a database-as-a-service platform, ScaleGrid provides structures to fully manage commonly used database systems like PostgreSQL, MongoDB database, Redis, SQL server, MYSQL and Greenplum database.

• Performance optimization and reliability: ScaleGrid provides a variety of performance optimization capabilities, such as query monitoring, performance analytics, and indexing recommendations, to help you find and fix performance bottlenecks, thereby improving database performance. It also has a failover protection and little downtime that catalyzes application’s speed, power and availability.

Astra DB

Thirdly, Astra DB by DataStax emerges as another relevant alternative as a cloud-native, serverless database service built on Apache Cassandra. It provides a fully managed and scalable solution for real-time applications that require massive data volumes, low latency, and variable data models without the requirement for infrastructure management.

Below is an outline of some of Astra DB’s features:

• Serverless Architecture: Astra DB employs a serverless architecture, which scales petabytes of data based on demand without the need for database infrastructure deployment and management.

• Global distribution: built on Apache Cassandra, a database known for its scalability and distributed architecture, Astra DB conveniently provides seamless data replication and distribution across various regions by leveraging the powerful features of Cassandra. This enables developers to offer quick, low-latency access to vital data resources to their users and users of globally distributed applications.

• Multi-language support: Astra DB supports and allows developers to build data applications and create flexible query patterns using different languages and APIs that they are already familiar with like GraphQL, CQL (Cassandra Query Language), JSON, gRPC and REST APIs.

CockroachDB

Next is CockroachDB, an open-source cloud-based SQL database developed to deliver highly resilient, fault-tolerant database services for users.

Some of CockroachDB features include:

• Resilience: CockroachDB was designed to withstand lost nodes without affecting the availability of the data with a 3x real-time data replication and self-healing infrastructure. By doing this, the system can continue to operate at a high level even when a server fails or is unavailable.

• Flexible Scalability: by reducing complex database processes, CockroachDB excels at scalability, allowing applications to handle enormous workloads and scale up and down with ease.

• Unified Global Data Deployment: helps enterprises to reach a consistent and high-performing real-time database deployment that meets the demands of a global user base by carefully distributing their data across several regions.

CockroachDB might be a better fit for fintech use cases, while tools like HarperDB are a better fit for use cases in gaming, telco, and e-commerce, for example.

RestDB.io

Lastly, restdb.io is a NoSQL database-as-a-service that drastically cuts down on the time it takes to design and deliver database solutions and backends for serverless and web applications. It is unique in that it not only provides database solutions but also manages the backend infrastructure, including data storage, authentication, and scaling, relieving developers of the difficulties associated with database management.

Restdb.io key features include:

• Multiple data types: restdb.io reduces the complexity of data management by supporting multiple data types including string, integers, boolean, and dates, as well as media and document processing with built-in support, saving significant development time.

• Dynamic Schema Management: With a schema defined in the web browser, restdb.io dynamically generates REST and JavaScript APIs, while data security is ensured through API keys or external user authentication via Auth0. It also offers a seamless means of querying the database with URL parameters resembling MongoDB-like queries.

• Enhanced Integration Capabilities: restdb.io supports webhooks and codehooks, allowing for flexible integrations and server-side JavaScript capabilities within each collection.

Conclusion

Overall, PlanetScale is a well-known player in the real-time database as a service (DBaaS) market, but several other solutions provide attractive features and functionalities.

For instance, HarperDB is super easy to use, can be deployed on any machine with an operating system, and simplifies a lot of the effort surrounding app development. These options, which each cater to particular demands and offer cutting-edge solutions for real-time database administration, are available to companies looking for alternatives to PlanetScale.