Supabase
The open-source Firebase alternative. PostgreSQL, auth, storage, and real-time in one platform
Scorecard
overall 8.2/10The good
- 01One platform for database, auth, file storage, real-time subscriptions, and edge functions
- 02Built on real PostgreSQL, not a custom query language or proprietary database
- 03Row Level Security integrated with auth means fine-grained access control without a backend
- 04Free tier is one of the most generous in the category: 500 MB database, 50K auth MAUs
- 05Over 1 million databases running, with strong community and documentation
The not-so-good
- 01Free projects pause after 1 week of inactivity, so it is not suitable for always-on staging
- 02The platform does a lot, which means more surface area to learn and potential vendor lock-in
- 03Real-time subscriptions can become expensive at scale on the Pro tier
- 04Dashboard UX is good, but the platform surface area makes Supabase less simple than a pure database
- →Full-stack developers who want database, auth, and storage in one place without stitching services together
- →Prototyping and MVPs where speed of development matters more than infrastructure control
- →Applications that need real-time features (live updates, collaborative editing, notifications)
- →Teams that want to reduce their backend surface area to a single managed platform
- →Teams that want a pure database without bundled services
- →Projects with very high real-time subscription volume (costs scale steeply)
- →Developers who prefer full infrastructure control over managed platforms
Our take
Supabase is what Firebase should have been: a real database (PostgreSQL, not a document store) with auth, storage, and real-time built in a way that feels cohesive rather than cobbled together. The developer experience of going from zero to a working backend with authentication, file uploads, and live data updates in an afternoon is genuinely compelling.
The PostgreSQL foundation matters more than it might seem. Your data is in a standard relational database with full SQL support, Row Level Security for access control, and compatibility with every ORM and migration tool in the ecosystem. If you outgrow Supabase or want to self-host, you can take your database with you. That's not true of Firebase's Firestore.
The free tier is generous enough for real prototyping: 500 MB database, 1 GB file storage, 50,000 monthly active users for auth, and 500,000 edge function invocations. The catch is that free projects pause after a week of inactivity, which makes the free tier unsuitable for always-on staging environments.
The Pro plan at $25/month gives you 8 GB of database storage, 100K auth MAUs, daily backups, and no pausing. That's enough for most production applications. The jump to the Team plan ($599/month) is steep and exists primarily for organizations that need SOC 2 compliance and priority support.
Supabase's sweet spot is full-stack applications where you'd otherwise be stitching together a database, an auth provider, a file storage service, and a real-time layer separately. If you want that all-in-one experience on top of real PostgreSQL, nothing else on this list matches it.
Alternatives to Supabase
See all →
Firebase
Google's all-in-one backend platform with real-time database, auth, hosting, and cloud functions
Neon
Serverless Postgres with branching, autoscaling, edge drivers, and built-in auth. Now backed by Databricks
PlanetScale
Vitess-powered MySQL and now PostgreSQL, with branching, sharding, and enterprise-grade scaling