Hi,
I’m evaluating Fly Postgres for a production application and have some questions about pricing
and feature parity. I want to be clear that I’m not trying to create a flame war or compare
uncomparable things - I’m genuinely trying to understand the value proposition.
Pricing Concerns
When comparing Fly Postgres to alternatives like PlanetScale, I’m finding it difficult to
justify the costs, especially for production workloads. Here are some direct comparisons at
similar resource levels:
Entry-level tier (~1-2GB RAM):
- Fly Postgres “Basic” (Shared-2x, 1GB): $38/month (1 replica)
- Fly Postgres “Starter” (Shared-2x, 2GB): $72/month (1 replica)
- PlanetScale PS-10 (1/8 CPU, 1GB): $39/month (2 replicas included)
- PlanetScale PS-20 (1/4 CPU, 2GB): $59/month (2 replicas included)
Mid-tier (~8GB RAM):
- Fly Postgres “Launch” (Performance-2x, 8GB): $282/month (1 replica)
- PlanetScale PS-80 (1 CPU, 8GB): $179/month (Only 1 CPU but 2 replicas included)
High-tier (~32GB RAM):
- Fly Postgres “Scale” (Performance-4x, 32GB): $962/month (1 replica)
- PlanetScale PS-320 (4 CPU, 32GB): $699/month (2 replicas included)
Feature Completeness
I noticed that Fly Postgres is still under development, with several critical features not yet
available:
- Security patches and version upgrades
- Customer-facing alerting
- Database migration tools
While I understand these are being worked on, it makes me hesitant to commit to Fly Postgres
for production workloads right now, especially at a premium price point.
Request: Reservation Pricing for Databases?
I see that Fly Apps offer a 40% discount through compute reservations:
“You’ll get a 40% discount when you reserve a block of compute time, either for performance
Machines or shared Machines, in a specific region.”
Is there any similar reservation or commitment-based pricing available for Fly Postgres? If I
could commit to 1-year or longer-term usage with discounted rates, that would significantly
improve the cost comparison and make Fly Postgres more competitive with alternatives.
Thanks for any insights you can provide!