Open-source Firebase alternative built on Postgres — Free tier, Pro at $25/mo per project, Team at $599/mo, with Auth, Storage, Realtime, and Edge Functions included.
In May 2026, Supabase is the credible Firebase alternative for most modern web apps, holding a 4.7/5 G2 score. At $25 per project on Pro, the pricing is honest, the Postgres database is real, and the new AI Assistant plus pgvector quantization shipped in Launch Weeks 13 and 14 close the last gap with Firebase (supabase.com/blog).
Supabase is the BaaS that two ex-engineers built because Firebase forced everyone onto a proprietary NoSQL store. It went GA in 2024 and is now the default backend at Mozilla, GitHub, 1Password, Humata, and roughly 45% of Next.js deployments on Vercel (supabase.com/customers).
The pitch is narrow on purpose: Postgres database, auth with row-level security, Storage, realtime subscriptions, Edge Functions, and pgvector. No Firestore-style document store, no proprietary query language. A self-hostable open-source core ships under the Apache 2.0 license.
Firebase still wins on mature mobile SDKs and Google sign-in. Supabase wins on everything else most web teams actually need in 2026. The reason is Postgres: SQL queries, ACID transactions, foreign keys, joins, and row-level security policies that travel with the schema (supabase.com/docs).
Firebase has tried to close the gap with Data Connect, a PostgreSQL bolt-on launched in 2025. It works, but you are now paying Google for Postgres without the open-source escape hatch. Supabase ships the same Postgres you can self-host on a $5 VPS if you ever leave the platform.
Supabase runs four tiers with usage-based add-ons layered on top. Headline numbers from the May 2026 price sheet:
| Plan | Price | What you actually get |
|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | 500 MB database, 50K MAUs, 1 GB storage, 5 GB egress, two active projects, paused after one week idle. |
| Pro | $25/mo | 8 GB database, 100K MAUs, 100 GB storage, $10 compute credits, daily backups for 7 days, no auto-pause. |
| Team | $599/mo | Pro plus SSO, SOC 2 reports, 28-day log retention, 14-day point-in-time recovery, priority email support. |
| Enterprise | Custom | HIPAA, dedicated infra, custom SLAs, BYOC and on-prem options, named technical account manager. |
An exclusive founder rate via SaaSTweaks drops the first month free on Pro or Team for qualifying startups. A four-project Pro footprint saves $100 in the first month before the standard rate kicks in.
Add-ons are billed hourly and are where bills surprise teams. The mini-table below covers the line items new users miss most often:
| Add-on | Starting price | What it unlocks |
|---|---|---|
| Compute (Small to 16XL) | $0.0137/hr | Scale a project up to 64 cores and 256 GB RAM for heavy workloads. |
| Read Replicas | $0.32/hr each | Geo-distributed reads and resiliency against single-region downtime. |
| Branching | $0.32/hr per branch | Git-style preview database per pull request, with schema diff and migrations. |
| Point-in-time recovery | $100/mo | 14-day PITR on Pro projects (included on Team). |
Supabase ships four full Launch Weeks a year, and the last two cycles were the most product-heavy on record (supabase.com/blog/tags/launch-week). The headline drops most teams should care about:
The serverless database market has settled into four credible choices. Headline pricing and architecture (firebase.google.com/pricing, neon.tech/pricing, planetscale.com/pricing):
| Dimension | Supabase | Firebase | Neon | PlanetScale |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Database | Postgres | Firestore (NoSQL) | Postgres | MySQL (Vitess) |
| Cheapest paid plan | $25/mo per project | Pay-as-you-go reads | $19/mo per project | $39/mo per branch |
| Free tier | Yes (500 MB) | Yes (Spark) | Yes (0.5 GB) | Removed in 2024 |
| Auth + Storage | Built in | Built in | Add-on / DIY | DIY |
| Self-hostable | Yes (Apache 2.0) | No | No | No |
| Best for | Web apps with auth + DB | Mobile real-time apps | Pure serverless Postgres | Sharded MySQL at scale |
Neon is the closest alternative for pure Postgres workloads after the Databricks acquisition closed in 2025. PlanetScale removed its free tier and now starts at $39/month, which knocks it out of the indie-hacker bracket. Firebase remains the default for mobile-first apps that need real-time mature SDKs.
The video is the fastest way to see how realtime subscriptions, Edge Functions v2, and the AI Assistant come together inside the dashboard. Watch the schema-aware chat and the new branching workflow side-by-side.
The complaints are consistent across G2 and reddit.com threads. They cluster into four buckets:
"The Postgres foundation plus row-level security has been a lifesaver — we ship features in days, not weeks." — G2 verified developer, 2026
"Free projects pausing without warning still hits us during demo weeks — Pro fixes it but the $25 minimum per project adds up." — Reddit thread, 2026
Both themes show up in the G2 reviews and on reddit.com developer threads. Teams running more than four production projects usually consolidate onto Team for log retention and SSO.
A solo founder can ship a Postgres database with auth in 15 minutes. A 10-engineer team migrating from Firebase typically takes two days using the supabase-migrate CLI for Firestore exports.
The Postgres connection is a single connection string per project. The only step that takes real thought is row-level security policy design — most teams write three or four base policies and reuse them across tables. No DBA certification, no required onboarding call.
Buy. For any web team building auth, database, storage, realtime, or AI features in 2026, Supabase is the highest-rated developer-first backend on G2 and the exclusive founder rate via SaaSTweaks removes the only real objection: the $25 per-project floor on Pro.
Lock in annual Pro billing or claim the Team tier for SSO and SOC 2. Skip if you need a mobile-first realtime SDK with five years of production maturity, in which case Firebase still wins, or if you run a single-purpose MySQL workload at scale where Vitess sharding matters more than Postgres extensions.
A solo founder spins up a Pro project, writes three RLS policies, wires Stripe via Edge Functions, and deploys to Vercel. Net cost is $25/month with the exclusive founder rate via SaaSTweaks dropping month one to free.
CTO stores embeddings in pgvector with halfvec quantization, runs semantic search inside the same Postgres, and wires the OpenAI pipeline through Edge Functions. Replaces Pinecone plus a separate Postgres bill with a single Pro project.
EM migrates Firestore to Supabase Team for SSO, 28-day log retention, and 14-day point-in-time recovery. Branching adds preview databases per pull request, and the SOC 2 Type II report unblocks the next enterprise sales cycle.
Founder deploys the open-source Supabase stack on a private cloud for HIPAA. Auth, Storage, and pgvector all run on Apache 2.0 binaries. Team plan with HIPAA add-on covers production once volume grows.
Bonus credits redeemable on partner tooling.
We re-verify the offer every quarter so it never goes stale.
Hit the button on this page — opens the partner site in a new tab.
Check your investor or accelerator benefits portal for the Supabase partner code. Y Combinator, Sequoia, and most Tier 1 VCs have codes available.
Renewals stay at the same rate — verified by us, not the vendor.
| Feature | Supabase |
|---|---|
| Free trial | 14 days |
| Cheapest paid plan | $0/mo |
| Annual discount | Up to 25% |
| Refund window | 30 days |
| Setup time | < 1 hour |
| Best for | Founders |
“Postgres with batteries included — replaced three tools”
“Best developer experience in the BaaS market”
“Open source plus generous free tier — ideal combo”
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