supabase.comcontributed by Samuele Ongaro
The value is the network, the data or the infrastructure. Keep paying.
A backend built on Postgres: the database plus authentication, file storage, realtime subscriptions and edge functions, with client libraries that talk to all of it.
Do not rebuild this — and note that it is open source, so self-hosting is a real answer rather than a rewrite. What the fee buys is **a database somebody else operates**: backups taken, point-in-time restore available, upgrades applied, and a person who helps when a disk fails. That is worth more than the compute, and it is what most people are actually paying for. THREE OPTIONS - **Keep paying.** Sensible, and the free tier covers a lot - **Self-host it.** Several containers and real memory — heavier than it looks, but genuinely the same software - **Use Postgres directly** on a machine you rent, with your own small server in front. Then you have a database and an application rather than a platform, which for many projects is simpler IF YOU SELF-HOST, THE DATABASE IS THE WHOLE RISK Everything else is recoverable in minutes from a repository. The data is not: - Continuous archiving of the write-ahead log to object storage, giving a recovery point in seconds rather than a night - Nightly snapshots with a stated retention - **A restore rehearsed onto a clean machine, with the time written down.** That number is your recovery time and almost nobody knows theirs - A verification job, because a backup failing quietly for three weeks looks exactly like one that works - An alert on the age of the last successful backup THE PART TO GET RIGHT WHATEVER YOU CHOOSE **Row-level security is your entire authorisation layer** when clients talk to the database directly. Policies are easy to get subtly wrong in a way that exposes a whole table. Write tests for them, and test the negative case explicitly: sign in as one user and try to read another's row. That test is the acceptance criterion for the whole design. And keep an eye on what the client can reach. Anything that must not be bypassed belongs in a policy or a server-side function, never in the application code. THE MIGRATION DISCIPLINE Backwards-compatible in both directions across a deploy: add a column, deploy, write to it, backfill in batches, read from it, and remove the old one later. Never two steps in one release. THE ONE-LINE VERSION You are paying for somebody to recover the database. Self-host if you will own that — and test your row-level policies from the wrong account.
What you lose
- A managed Postgres with backups, point-in-time recovery and upgrades handled
- Auth, storage, realtime and edge functions already wired to the same database
- Row-level security policies enforced by Postgres rather than by your API code
- A dashboard that lets a whole team query and edit safely
- Someone else being awake when the database is not
If you would rather not build
- PostgREST plus Postgres — the same API layer, self-run
- Neon — paid, Postgres with branching, narrower scope
What it costs
read from their page 15 Aug 2026
| Plan | Billed monthly | Billed yearly | Last read |
|---|---|---|---|
| — | $25/mo | — | 15 Aug 2026 |
Their pricing page is where these came from. Seeing a different price? Tell us.
The escape hatch
open source · no votes, no paid placement
Supabase
$0Supabase's own stack, run on your machine — the same product, your operations bill.
supabase/supabasefree · open source
Appwrite
$0Self-hosted backend with auth, database, storage and functions in one deployment.
appwrite/appwritefree · open source
Why this verdict
our own opinion · changed only by a person
32/100
Verdict no at 32: every piece here is open source and this prompt assembles them properly, which is exactly why the answer is no — assembling is easy, and the recurring cost is operations. Point-in-time recovery you have actually tested is what the $25 buys.
History
tracked since 9 Aug 2026 · nothing is ever overwritten
Questions about Supabase
answered from the record above
Is Supabase free?
No — the plan we track is $25 a month. Pro at $25 per organisation per month including a compute credit; compute, storage and egress above that are billed on top.
Can you replace Supabase by building your own?
KEEP IT. The value is the network, the data or the infrastructure. Keep paying. Replacement score 32 out of 100, build time longer than it saves. Read what you lose before you decide.
How much does Supabase cost?
$25 a month on Pro — $300 a year. Recorded 9 Aug 2026.
What do you lose by replacing Supabase?
A managed Postgres with backups, point-in-time recovery and upgrades handled; Auth, storage, realtime and edge functions already wired to the same database; Row-level security policies enforced by Postgres rather than by your API code; A dashboard that lets a whole team query and edit safely; Someone else being awake when the database is not. If any of those carry weight for you, keep paying.
Is there an open-source alternative to Supabase?
Yes: Supabase, Appwrite. The prompt on this page is for when you want it your way instead.
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