Summary
On September 10, 2026, PlanetScale opened a platform preview of Neki, horizontally sharded Postgres built by the team behind Vitess. Every shard is real Postgres behind a single connection string, with PlanetScale handling routing, resharding, online schema changes, and version upgrades. Organization admins can opt in from the dashboard under Platform Preview.
What changed
PlanetScale released Neki in platform preview: sharded Postgres with a primary plus replicas per shard, full Postgres wire-protocol support, and managed routing, resharding, and schema changes through one connection string.
Why it matters
It brings Vitess-style horizontal scale to Postgres, the default database for many AI and agent backends, giving data-heavy workloads a managed path past single-primary limits without leaving the Postgres ecosystem. It sharpens PlanetScale competition with other serverless and distributed Postgres providers.
Evidence excerpt
Neki is horizontally sharded Postgres; every shard is real Postgres, and Neki handles routing, resharding, online schema changes, and version upgrades, all with a single connection string.