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PlanetScale HTTP API¶

What it is¶

PlanetScale HTTP API is a publicly-accessible gRPC-compatible HTTP interface in front of PlanetScale's MySQL-protocol database, built so that clients which cannot speak the MySQL binary wire protocol — principally serverless / FaaS runtimes and browser contexts — can still run queries. Implemented server-side on connect-go (a gRPC-compatible RPC framework); clients can use HTTP/2 or HTTP/3 as the transport (Source: sources/2026-04-21-planetscale-faster-mysql-with-http3).

Why it exists¶

Serverless runtimes cannot open raw TCP sockets to databases. "In serverless compute contexts, your code is fundamentally not able to open up a TCP socket and speak the MySQL binary protocol to us. The platforms require communication through HTTP(S), so this ended up being a nice fit." The HTTP API was built to serve this constraint; benchmark results (see source) show it also wins on cold-start cost in all network shapes and on large payloads over unreliable networks.

Public consumers¶

PlanetScale Serverless driver for JavaScript — the first production consumer; targets Vercel Edge / Cloudflare Workers / AWS Lambda class runtimes.
PlanetScale Connect — the ELT/CDC feature uses the HTTP API as one of its integration surfaces.
PlanetScale web console — the in-product UI speaks the HTTP API transparently; connections use HTTP/3 when the browser supports it.
Experimental Go database/sql driver — the benchmark proof-of-concept from the 2023-01-04 post; not shipped as a public driver.

Wire format¶

RPC framework: connect-go (gRPC- compatible).
Encoding: protobuf.
Compression: Snappy (client-side; the wire is pre-compressed before being sent).
Transports: HTTP/2 (stdlib clients) or HTTP/3 (via quic-go or equivalent QUIC library).

Architectural properties¶

Multiplexes many logical MySQL sessions over one HTTP connection — removing per-session connection-pool pressure in serverless runtimes that can't afford to maintain a pool.
TLS 1.3 required (HTTP/3 mandatory; HTTP/2 practical) — [[concepts/tls-1-3-zero-rtt-handshake|0-RTT handshake resumption]] saves a full round trip on every new connection vs TLS 1.2.
Client-side query compression possible — unlike the MySQL binary protocol, where the server must decompress what the client sends; Snappy-on-the-wire lets INSERT-heavy workloads save bandwidth before the bytes hit the PlanetScale fabric.

Status¶

Experimental / not publicly documented for direct use at the time of the 2023-01-04 post: "This API is not documented for public consumption just yet (it will be, I promise), but it is gRPC compatible." Consumer access is through the published JavaScript driver + Connect + web console — not by hand-rolled gRPC clients.
Production runtime is deployed; the benchmark post measures this running system, not a staging build.

Why it shows up on this wiki¶

First canonical wiki example of a production database vendor shipping an HTTP API alongside the native binary protocol, explicitly positioned for serverless / browser consumers. Sister shape to CDN-fronted object stores and BigQuery-class SQL-over-HTTP endpoints, but the first wiki instance in the OLTP-database family.

Seen in¶

sources/2026-04-21-planetscale-faster-mysql-with-http3 — canonical disclosure. Benchmark of Go client against this API over HTTP/2 + HTTP/3 vs direct MySQL binary protocol. Production-deployed behind the PlanetScale web console + JS driver + Connect; experimental for public consumption.