What it is
Supabase gives you a Postgres database with everything an app needs around it: user sign-in, auto-generated APIs, file storage, realtime, server-side functions and vector search for AI. It's open source and self-hostable, though most teams use the hosted cloud. It's the go-to Firebase alternative for people who prefer SQL and want to avoid vendor lock-in.
How to use it
- Create your database in a spreadsheet-style table editor or straight in SQL.
- Add sign-in with email, magic links, Google, Apple and other providers.
- Query data from the frontend through auto-generated REST and GraphQL APIs, secured with row-level policies.
- Store embeddings with pgvector to power semantic search or a chatbot.
- Run server-side logic with TypeScript Edge Functions.
What it's good for
- An early-stage startup shipping its first version with sign-in, a database and file uploads without managing servers.
- A dev agency spinning up one project per client, all on the same stack.
- A team building an AI chatbot that keeps documents and embeddings in the same Postgres database.
Pros
- It's standard Postgres: export your data and move without rewriting the app
- Open source and self-hostable with Docker
- Auth, storage, realtime and vectors in one project
- São Paulo region keeps data close to Latin American users
Cons
- Free projects pause after a week of inactivity
- Costs rise with extra compute and traffic, so usage needs watching
- Dashboard and docs are English-only
