PlanetScale removed the free Hobby tier - Vitess goodness now starts at $39/mo

Announced 28 March 2024, effective 8 April: the free Hobby plan was sunset entirely. New floor was the Scaler plan at $39/mo. PlanetScale framed it as focusing on 'production workloads.' Real reason was unit economics - branching and Vitess sharding are expensive to give away. Mass exodus to Neon (best Postgres free tier at the time), Turso (LibSQL/edge), and Supabase. If you were on Hobby, you had ten days to migrate. PlanetScale also introduced PlanetScale Metal later that year as a higher-tier offering, which made the gap from 'free' to 'paid' feel even sharper.