Supabase is an open source alternative to Firebase. Open source Postgres platform that builds the Firebase experience (auth, realtime, storage, functions, APIs) with a hosted platform and Docker self-hosting. Apache-2.0 licensed, 107.8k GitHub stars, hosted version available, self-host with Docker, and last released 2026-08-07.
Open source Postgres platform that builds the Firebase experience (auth, realtime, storage, functions, APIs) with a hosted platform and Docker self-hosting.
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Should you switch?
Teams that want a Firebase-like developer experience (hosted Postgres, auth, auto-generated REST and GraphQL APIs, realtime subscriptions, storage, edge functions) built on open source tools, with a managed platform on supabase.com plus a self-hosted Docker stack.
You need a 1-to-1 Firebase clone you can drop into an existing Firebase app. Supabase explicitly states it is not a 1-to-1 mapping of Firebase, and migrating an existing Firebase project to Supabase is a significant rewrite of frontend and backend, not a drop-in replacement.
The repo is Apache-2.0 but Supabase is open-core: the hosted dashboard and management experience are proprietary, and community reviewers flag default security as too permissive and paid-tier backups/data-loss caveats. Self-hosted Docker runs the open source stack; the managed convenience layer is not open source.
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Community proof
Some quotes here endorse the approach rather than report first-hand use, or report a problem. We label those.
"Firebase is completely closed source and make it extremely hard to migrate any moderate size project. Supabase builds on open source parts that everyone is already familiar with. Postgres for data store instead of firestore (which is a proprietary nosql Google cloud database with many quirks to keep you in). GoTrue for Auth which is an open source project by netlify. Real-time to provide Postgres changes over sockets open sourced by them. There are many parts which make up "supabase".…"
"As someone who has dealt with both recently, if you’re considering Firebase for anything, seriously consider Supabase instead."
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