PlanetScale vs Render’s managed PostgreSQL?

what'd you end up going with? i have the same question :) going to migrate to render to try it out (currently on Vercel but cold starts take too damn long)

MySQL and PostgreSQL has its own advantages and disadvantages and visible different in syntax too. Just in case, if you watching out, here is a quick start guide to compare the syntax between the two: https://tipseason.com/postgres-vs-mysql-syntax-comparision/

I've used both MySQL and PostgreSQL and in my opinion PostgreSQL wins my vote. I think it's the more serious contender of the two.

You need to consider that your tech stack will need to play nicely with the database. Most programming languages have database drivers already written. MySQL always seems get lumped with PHP stacks. Go and Node.js seem to favor Postgres.

A contentious point, but from my personal observation there is a lot of legacy and crap code and backend by MySQL. That's not the say that MySQL isn't a good database, but I just find when I'm looking through posts and articles there seems to be a ton of incorrect advice and information. I believe Postgres has more professional clout than MySQL, but that's my opinion and I'm not here to start a flame war. I also find Postgres documentation and community really good and helpful - tons of help on Stack overflow.

One thing you might want to consider is the number of concurrent connections allowed on the hosted services. I've noticed MySQL seems to offer more, probably because Postgres uses a processes, not threads for its concurrency model. Whichever you pick if you stick to mostly standard SQL, you'l have no problem porting your application is you needed to migrate later in the future.

You'll find it easy to get a managed database server on most cloud providers AWS, GCP and Azure. You can get one up and running for about 6 bucks a month.

If you don't want to host it try looking at CockroachDB serverless hosted (in beta) as a Postgres compatible database. They offer a free tier.