Supabase

Supabase — Managed Postgres with auth, storage, realtime and edge functions around it. Supabase is a hosted Postgres surrounded by services: GoTrue for auth, PostgREST for a generated REST API, a realtime change-feed server, S3-compatible storage and Deno edge functions. Access control is row-level security written in SQL, which is powerful and easy to get wrong. The stack is Apache-2.0 and runs under Docker Compose, though the self-hosted build trails the cloud one. Founded 2020. Venture-backed. Open source under Apache-2.0.

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.

• Full-text search — Yes, which only 4 of 11 tools here manage.
• Exit cost — 2, 2nd of 11.
• GitHub stars — 90,000, the best figure of the 10 here.
• Agent fit — 4, 2nd of 11.

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.

• Entry price — $25 /mo, 6th of 9. Firebase records $0 /mo.
• Function timeout — 2.5 min, the weakest of the 4 here. Firebase records 60 min.
• Optimistic writes — No. Convex records Yes.

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. 26 of 26 tracked fields carry a value for Supabase, and 16 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. Supabase is ahead on Transactions (mvcc against none) and Raw SQL (Yes against No). Appwrite takes Entry price ($15 /mo against $25 /mo) and Function timeout (15 min against 2.5 min). That pattern repeats across the rest of the roster — see Supabase alternatives for the other rivals, each compared the same way.

Founded

2020

Funding

Venture-backed

Licence

Apache-2.0 (open source)

Fields we track

26 of 26

Last verified

2026-07-20

The default choice for anyone who wants managed convenience without giving up their database. The seams show — four services, RLS in SQL, codegen instead of inference — but pg_dump is a complete exit, and that buys a lot of friction.

Full-text search

●Yes1st of 11

Vendor-claimedverified 2026-07-20source

Exit cost

22nd of 11

Inferred

Entry price

$25 /mo6th of 9

Vendor-claimedverified 2026-07-20source

GitHub stars

90,0001st of 10

Inferred

Cold start

250 ms3rd of 6

Community-reported

Function timeout

2.5 min4th of 4

Inferred

Agent fit

42nd of 11

Inferred

Reactivity

push1st of 11

Vendor-claimedverified 2026-07-20source

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

• Teams that need raw SQL, BI tooling or a third-party ORM against the same data.
• Anyone who wants a credible migration path off the platform from day one.
• Projects already comfortable with Postgres row-level security.
• Full-text search is your binding constraint. Supabase records Yes, which only 4 of the 11 tools in the Convex alternatives roster do. We define that field as first-party text indexing with relevance ranking.
• Exit cost is your binding constraint. Supabase records 2, 2nd of 11 in the Convex alternatives roster. We define that field as 1–5 judgement score, lower is better, for how much application code must be rewritten to move off the platform, assuming the data is already extracted.
• GitHub stars is your binding constraint. Supabase records 90,000, the best figure in the Convex alternatives roster.
• Agent fit is your binding constraint. Supabase records 4, 2nd of 11 in the Convex alternatives roster.

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

• Entry price. Supabase records $25 /mo, 6th of 9 in the Convex alternatives roster. Firebase records $0 /mo on the same field. If that is a hard requirement rather than a preference, start elsewhere.
• Function timeout. Supabase records 2.5 min, the weakest of the 4 tools in the Convex alternatives roster. Firebase records 60 min on the same field. If that is a hard requirement rather than a preference, start elsewhere.
• Optimistic writes. Supabase 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. Nothing, on the fields we track: all 26 of them carry a value for Supabase. That is unusual and it will decay — vendors add dimensions faster than we add columns — so the verification dates beside each figure matter more than the completeness does.