PlanetScale Has a Free API — Here's How to Build Scalable MySQL Apps with Branching

Why PlanetScale? PlanetScale is serverless MySQL powered by Vitess (the same technology that scales YouTube's database). What makes it special: database branching — create branches of your schema like git branches. Test migrations without touching production. Free tier: 5 GB storage, 1 billion row reads/month, 10M row writes/month. Getting Started 1. Create Free Account Sign up at planetscale.com — no credit card required. 2. Create Database & Branch # Install PlanetScale CLI brew install planetscale/tap/pscale # Login pscale auth login # Create database pscale database create my-app --region us-east # Create a dev branch pscale branch create my-app add-orders-table # Connect to branch pscale shell my-app add-orders-table 3. Schema on Branch CREATE TABLE users ( id BIGINT AUTO_INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY , email VARCHAR ( 255 ) UNIQUE NOT NULL , name VARCHAR ( 255 ) NOT NULL , plan ENUM ( 'free' , 'pro' , 'enterprise' ) DEFAULT 'free' , created_at TIMESTAMP DEFAULT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP ); CREAT