PocketBase

PocketBase — One Go binary: SQLite database, auth, file storage, realtime and an admin UI. PocketBase is a single executable providing an SQLite-backed database, auth, file storage, a realtime subscription API and an admin dashboard, extensible in Go or embedded JavaScript hooks. It scales exactly as far as one machine does, which is further than most people expect. Because the store is a plain SQLite file, data extraction is a copy command and raw SQL is available from hooks. Founded 2022. Open source under MIT.

We track it in 1 comparison — Convex alternatives — so every claim below is a cell in a table you can open and check rather than an impression. Across those rosters it sits against 10 other tools, and what follows is where it visibly separates from them.

Where it wins.

• Entry price — $0 /mo, tied for best across 3 of 9 tools.
• Cold start — 0 ms, tied for best across 2 of 6 tools.

Each of those is ranked against the whole roster on its category page, not against a hand-picked subset, so a first place here means first of everything we list.

Where it gives ground.

• MCP server — No. Convex records Yes.
• Egress metered — No. Convex records Yes.
• Vector search — No. Convex records Yes.
• Backing — solo-maintainer, the weakest of the 11 here. Firebase records big-tech.

None of these disqualify it on their own. They are the fields to check against your own requirements before you commit, because they are the ones where a competitor genuinely does better.

Provenance. 25 of 26 tracked fields carry a value for PocketBase, and 8 of those cite a document you can open. Last verified 2026-07-20. Every figure keeps its own provenance — measured by us, claimed by the vendor, inferred, or community-reported — and we would rather print a dash than a guess.

Its nearest neighbour in our data is Appwrite. PocketBase is ahead on Transactions (serialisable against none) and Raw SQL (Yes against No). Appwrite takes MCP server (Yes against No) and Egress metered (Yes against No). That pattern repeats across the rest of the roster — see PocketBase alternatives for the other rivals, each compared the same way.

Founded

2022

Licence

MIT (open source)

Fields we track

25 of 26

Last verified

2026-07-20

Absurdly good value for single-machine workloads, and the easiest data extraction here — the store is a file you own. The ceiling is real: one writer, one box, and a bus factor of roughly one.

Entry price

$0 /mo1st of 9

Vendor-claimedverified 2026-07-20source

MCP server

○No8th of 11

Inferred

Cold start

0 ms1st of 6

Inferred

Egress metered

○No8th of 9

Inferred

Vector search

○No8th of 11

Inferred

Backing

solo-maintainer11th of 11

Community-reported

Reactivity

push1st of 11

Vendor-claimedverified 2026-07-20source

Self-hostable

●Yes1st of 11

Vendor-claimedverified 2026-07-20source

PocketBase is the right call in these situations, each one drawn from a field we actually record:

• Internal tools and side projects where one VPS is plenty.
• Anyone who wants the entire backend to be a file they can copy.
• Air-gapped or on-premises deployments.
• Entry price is your binding constraint. PocketBase records $0 /mo, the best figure in the Convex alternatives roster. We define that field as monthly cost of the cheapest paid tier, excluding usage, in USD.
• Cold start is your binding constraint. PocketBase records 0 ms, the best figure in the Convex alternatives roster. We define that field as added latency on the first request after an idle period, for the platform's own function runtime or compute.

Reach for something else when any of the following is a requirement rather than a nice-to-have:

• MCP server. PocketBase records No on the Convex alternatives table. Convex records Yes on the same field. If that is a hard requirement rather than a preference, start elsewhere.
• Egress metered. PocketBase records No on the Convex alternatives table. Convex records Yes on the same field. If that is a hard requirement rather than a preference, start elsewhere.
• Vector search. PocketBase records No on the Convex alternatives table. Convex records Yes on the same field. If that is a hard requirement rather than a preference, start elsewhere.
• Backing. PocketBase records solo-maintainer, the weakest of the 11 tools in the Convex alternatives roster. Firebase records big-tech on the same field. If that is a hard requirement rather than a preference, start elsewhere.
• Optimistic writes. PocketBase records No on the Convex alternatives table. Convex records Yes on the same field. If that is a hard requirement rather than a preference, start elsewhere.

We publish this block because a comparison that only lists what a tool is good at is marketing. Every figure above sits on the same page as its source, and the field definitions are on the category tables if you want to check how we measured them.

What we don't know. 1 of the 26 fields we track for PocketBase are still blank: Function timeout. Those render as dashes rather than as zeroes or assumptions, because an empty cell and a bad cell are not the same thing and only one of them is honest. If you know any of these figures and can point at a document, tell us.