Side-by-side comparison · Databases & Backend
Clerk vs PlanetScale vs Railway
Everything that matters when choosing between them, in one place: our rating, what each can do, what they cost, and the trade-offs.
Comparing 3 tools, the maximum.
At a glance
Pick it if: Anyone building a web or mobile app who needs user accounts and logins without writing them from scratch.
Pick it if: Teams running a real product who need their database to stay fast and never go missing.
Pick it if: Builders and small teams who need to host an app, API, bot or database without managing servers.
Overview
| Attribute | Clerk | PlanetScale | Railway |
|---|---|---|---|
| In one line | Ready-made sign-up, login and user accounts you can add to an app in minutes. | Fast, serious databases for apps that have outgrown the free tiers. | Hosts your app and its database in a few clicks, and charges only for what it uses. |
| Pricing model | Freemium | Paid | Freemium |
| Starting price | $20/mo | From $5/mo | $0 |
| Free plan | Yes | No | Yes |
| Works with Claude Code | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Rating breakdown
Our scores out of 5. The higher bar in each row is highlighted.
| Attribute | Clerk | PlanetScale | Railway |
|---|---|---|---|
| Overall rating | 4.4Winner | 4.1 | 4.0 |
| Ease of useHow quickly someone non-technical gets value from it. | 4.5 | 3.0 | 4.0 |
| FeaturesHow completely it covers its own job, and how well the pieces fit together. | 4.5 | 4.5 | 4.0 |
| Output qualityHow good the results are before you fix them. | 4.5 | 5.0 | 4.0 |
| Value for moneyWhat you get for the price, including the free plan. | 4.0 | 3.0 | 4.0 |
| Speed & reliabilityHow fast it is and how often it falls over. | 4.5 | 5.0 | 4.0 |
Feature comparison
A tick means it does this today. A dash means we haven't checked.
| Attribute | Clerk | PlanetScale | Railway |
|---|---|---|---|
| Access & platform | |||
| Free plan | Yes | No | Yes |
| Mobile app | No | No | No |
| Desktop app | No | No | No |
| Browser extension | No | No | No |
| API access | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Teams & business | |||
| Team workspace | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Enterprise plan or SSO | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Connects to other apps | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Open source or self-hosted | No | No | No |
| AI abilities | |||
| Works with your files | No | No | Yes |
| Understands images | – | No | – |
| Makes images | No | No | No |
| Makes video | No | No | No |
| Writes code | No | No | No |
| Runs agents or automations | – | No | Yes |
| Learns your brand or style | – | No | – |
| Works in many languages | Yes | – | – |
| Capabilities score | 6/ 17 | 4/ 17 | 7/ 17 |
Pricing
Plans as listed on each vendor's site when we last checked. Confirm before you buy.
| Attribute | Clerk | PlanetScale | Railway |
|---|---|---|---|
| Plans | Hobby Free New apps and side projects. | Postgres, single node From $5/mo Staging and small apps that can tolerate a restart. | Free $0, after a 30-day trial with $5 credit Trying it out. |
ProOur pick $20/mo billed yearly, or $25 monthly Apps with paying customers. | Postgres, high availabilityOur pick From $15/mo Production apps with paying users. | HobbyOur pick $5/mo, includes $5 of usage Side projects and small business tools. | |
Business $250/mo billed yearly, or $300 monthly Growing companies that need compliance paperwork. | Metal From $50/mo Apps where database speed is the bottleneck. | Pro $20/mo, includes $20 of usage Production apps and teams. | |
Enterprise Custom Large companies with strict security needs. | Vitess (MySQL) From $39/mo MySQL apps that need to shard as they grow. | Enterprise Custom Companies with compliance needs. | |
Enterprise Custom Single-tenant or fully managed setups. | |||
| Which plan to pick | Build on Hobby. It's enough until you have customers who care about the Clerk branding or need multi-factor login, then move to Pro. Business only matters when a customer asks for a SOC 2 report. | Don't start here for a weekend project; Neon or Supabase are free. When a product has paying customers, the $15 high-availability Postgres is the sensible entry point. Only go to Metal once Insights shows the disk is the slow part. | Use the trial to get your app running, then move to Hobby. Many small apps stay within its included $5. Switch to Pro when a team works on it or it needs more power, and set a usage limit either way. |
Key features
| Attribute | Clerk | PlanetScale | Railway |
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Pros and cons
| Attribute | Clerk | PlanetScale | Railway |
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Who each one is for
| Attribute | Clerk | PlanetScale | Railway |
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Questions people ask
Which is better, Clerk, PlanetScale or Railway?
Clerk scores highest overall in our ratings (Clerk 4.4/5, PlanetScale 4.1/5 and Railway 4.0/5). Clerk is best for adding sign-up and login to an app and Google, Apple and passwordless sign-in. PlanetScale is best for production apps with paying users and predictable database performance. Railway is best for hosting an app with a database in one place and self-hosting tools like n8n from a template.
Which is cheaper, Clerk, PlanetScale or Railway?
Clerk: There's a free plan, and paid plans start at $20/mo. PlanetScale: There's no free plan. Paid plans start at From $5/mo. Railway: There's a free plan, and paid plans start at $0.
Which is easier to use, Clerk, PlanetScale or Railway?
Clerk rates highest for ease of use in our scores. Anyone building a web or mobile app who needs user accounts and logins without writing them from scratch.
How we compare
Ratings are our own, from using each tool, across ease of use, features, output quality, value for money, speed & reliability.
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