Open source Firebase alternative
Visit WebsiteThe Bottom Line
Entry price
Free plan available, paid tiers above
Biggest pro
Full PostgreSQL access
Biggest con
Projects pause on free tier
TL;DR - Supabase
- Open-source Firebase alternative
- PostgreSQL with real-time subscriptions
- Auth, storage, and edge functions
What is Supabase?
Available on: Web
Pros & Cons
Pros
- Full PostgreSQL access
- Generous free tier
- Open-source and self-hostable
- Great developer experience
Cons
- Projects pause on free tier
- Smaller ecosystem than Firebase
- Less mature than alternatives
Ratings Across the Web
What people say
“I use Supabase to implement logins and signups, and I really like that it includes a built-in database.”via G2
Ratings aggregated from independent review platforms. Learn more
Key Features
Pricing Plans
Pricing checked Jul 15, 2026
Free
Free
- Unlimited API requests
- 50,000 monthly active users
- 500 MB database size
- 5 GB egress
- 1 GB file storage
- Community support
- Max 2 active projects
Pro
$25/month
- 100,000 MAUs included
- 8 GB database
- 250 GB egress
- 100 GB file storage
- Email support
- 7-day automatic backups
- $10 compute credits
Team
$599/month
- Everything in Pro
- SOC2 certification
- HIPAA add-on available
- SSO for dashboard
- Priority email support
- 14-day backup retention
Enterprise
Custom
- Designated support manager
- Uptime SLAs
- BYO Cloud
- 24x7 support
- Custom security
Is Supabase worth the price?
Supabase is the open-source Firebase alternative that developers actually want to use, Postgres database, authentication, storage, edge functions, and real-time subscriptions in one platform.
The Free tier (2 projects, 500MB database, 50K MAUs) is enough to build and launch an MVP. Pro at $25/mo is where production starts: 8GB database, 100K MAUs, and usage-based overages that keep costs predictable for small-to-medium apps.
Most production apps pay $35-75/mo on Pro, genuinely cheap for a managed Postgres + auth + storage platform. The Team plan at $599/mo is steep but adds SOC 2 compliance, priority support, and daily backups.
The biggest gotcha: free projects pause after 7 days of inactivity, and egress charges ($0.09/GB) can surprise high-traffic apps.
Hidden Costs & Gotchas
Free projects pause after 7 days of inactivity
your app goes offline until someone visits it again. Not suitable for any production use, only for development and demos
Database egress at $0.09/GB adds up
an app serving 100GB/mo of database reads pays $9/mo in egress. Apps with heavy API traffic or large dataset queries can see $50-200/mo in egress alone
MAU pricing on Pro
100K MAUs included, then $0.00325/MAU. An app with 500K MAUs pays $25 (base) + $1,300 (400K overage MAUs) = $1,325/mo, not the $25 headline price
File storage egress
$0.09/GB on Pro. An app serving 500GB/mo of images or files pays $45/mo in storage egress on top of the base plan
Realtime connections are limited
Free gets 200 concurrent, Pro gets 500. High-traffic real-time apps (chat, collaboration) need Team ($599/mo) for higher connection limits
Edge Function invocations
Free gets 500K/mo, Pro gets 2M. Overages at $2/1M. An app making 10M edge function calls/mo pays $16/mo extra
Compute add-ons for larger database instances
the Pro plan includes a shared instance. Dedicated compute starts at $5/mo (small) to $1,200/mo (16XL). Production apps with heavy queries need dedicated compute
Branching (preview environments) costs $0.32/hour per branch with a Compute Add-On. Running 5 preview branches 8 hours/day: $256/mo extra
How Supabase Compares to Competitors
Firebase (Spark free, Blaze pay-as-you-go) is the direct competitor as a backend-as-a-service. Firebase uses NoSQL (Firestore) vs Supabase's Postgres, a fundamental architectural difference. Firebase's free tier is more generous for small apps, but costs escalate faster at scale. Supabase wins on: SQL (Postgres), open source, data portability, and self-hosting option. Firebase wins on: real-time sync, mobile SDKs, and Google ecosystem integration. PlanetScale ($0 free, $39/mo Scaler) is a managed MySQL alternative. Better for MySQL-native teams. PlanetScale's branching and schema change workflow is more mature. But PlanetScale is database-only, no auth, no storage, no edge functions. Supabase is a full backend platform.
Neon ($0 free, $19/mo Launch, $69/mo Scale) is the closest database-specific competitor, serverless Postgres with branching and auto-scaling. Neon is cheaper for database-only needs and has true scale-to-zero. But Neon doesn't include auth, storage, or edge functions. Choose Neon if you only need a database; Supabase if you need a full backend.
Appwrite (open source, free self-hosted, Cloud free tier) is another open-source BaaS alternative. Similar feature set (database, auth, storage, functions) but uses a document database instead of Postgres. Less mature but completely free when self-hosted.
How Supabase's pricing compares
At $25/mo, Supabase is mid-range of its 6 direct competitors ($0.01 to $240/mo across the set).
Entry paid plan, monthly. Pricing checked Jul 15, 2026.
Reviews
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Supabase FAQ
How does Supabase support real-time application development?
Which teams would benefit most from using Supabase?
How is Supabase priced?
Can Supabase be self-hosted?
What kind of limitations should users be aware of with Supabase?
How does Supabase compare to Firebase?
Source: supabase.com