Fastest Way to Deploy a Database

Robinson times the steps from a service’s home page through login and database deployment to having a usable database. He says the test is informal because providers use different sign-in methods and offer different database types, but treats onboarding speed as one indicator of developer experience.

The tests cover PlanetScale, Railway, Supabase, Firebase, Nhost, Heroku, DigitalOcean, Render, AWS, Google Cloud, Fauna, Upstash, and MongoDB Atlas. Some databases were ready quickly, while others required provisioning waits; Google Cloud’s setup ran into billing and project confusion, so Robinson marked it as disqualified.

Supabase asked Robinson to wait while it built the database, and DigitalOcean and Render showed provisioning in progress before completion. Heroku’s Postgres add-on flow was confusing, while AWS and MongoDB Atlas also required waiting; Robinson noted he needed to delete the AWS database to avoid charges.

PlanetScale took 10 seconds and won the comparison for time to database, using Vitess, its open-source SQL solution. Robinson cautions that the results compare unlike services and database types, so the experiment is mainly a look at onboarding experience rather than a scientific benchmark.