Supabase is flat $25/month Pro. Firebase Firestore charges per read/write — 1M reads costs ~$0.60, but surprise traffic spikes can multiply your bill overnight. Here's the full breakdown.
Supabase vs Firebase pricing tiers, June 2026.
| Tier | Supabase | Firebase | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0/mo — 500 MB DB, 1 GB storage, 2 GB bandwidth, 50k MAU authGENEROUS | $0/mo — 1 GB Firestore storage, 50k reads/day, 20k writes/day, 10 GB hosting | Supabase free pauses after 1 week inactivity; Firebase free is always-on |
| Pro / Blaze | $25/mo flat | Pay-as-you-go (Blaze plan, no monthly fee) | Firebase has no set monthly cost; you pay per operation |
| Database | 8 GB included on Pro (+$0.125/GB overage) | $0.18/GB storage; reads $0.06/100k; writes $0.18/100k; deletes $0.02/100k | Firebase Firestore costs scale with every API call |
| Storage | 100 GB included on Pro (+$0.021/GB overage) | 5 GB free, then $0.026/GB storage + $0.12/GB download | Supabase Storage is S3-compatible object store |
| Bandwidth | 5 GB included on Free, 250 GB on Pro (+$0.09/GB) | 10 GB/month Hosting; Cloud Functions egress billed separately | — |
| Auth MAU | 50k MAU free; 100k MAU on Pro; $0.00325/MAU beyond | 10k MAU free (Phone auth); most methods unlimited on Spark | Firebase Auth is generally free for all sign-in methods except Phone |
| Edge Functions | 500k invocations/mo free; 2M on Pro | Cloud Functions: 2M invocations/mo free on Blaze | Both use similar free tier for serverless functions |
| Team / Org | $599/mo (Team plan) | Firebase is billed per project, not per seat | Supabase Team adds SSO, audit logs, priority support |
Estimated monthly cost for three common app sizes. Firebase costs assume Firestore as primary DB.
A misconfigured Firestore query that scans 1M documents per page load costs $0.60 per 1M reads — and at 10k daily users with 100 queries each, that's $1,800/day. Supabase uses connection-based PostgreSQL queries; you pay for compute, not per row scanned.
Core BaaS capabilities compared across 12 dimensions.
| Feature | Supabase | Firebase |
|---|---|---|
| Database Model | PostgreSQL (relational, SQL) | Firestore (NoSQL, document-collection) + Realtime Database (JSON tree) |
| Open Source | ✅ Fully open source (Apache 2.0) | ❌ Proprietary Google service |
| Self-Hosting | ✅ Docker Compose / Kubernetes | ❌ Not possible |
| Real-Time | ✅ Row-level subscriptions via Elixir Channels | ✅ Real-time listeners (more mature, offline-first) |
| Auth | Email, OAuth, Magic Link, Phone, SAML SSO (Team+) | Email, OAuth, Phone, Anonymous, Apple, Game Center |
| Storage | ✅ S3-compatible object storage | ✅ Firebase Storage (Google Cloud Storage under the hood) |
| Pricing Predictability | ✅ Flat monthly fee (Pro $25) | ⚠️ Per read/write — unpredictable at traffic spikes |
| Offline Support | ⚠️ Limited (manual cache) | ✅ Built-in offline persistence (mobile SDKs) |
| Vector Search | ✅ pgvector built-in (native PostgreSQL) | ❌ No native vector search |
| Edge Functions | ✅ Deno-based Edge Functions | ✅ Cloud Functions (Node.js, Python, Go) |
| Analytics / Crashlytics | ❌ Not included | ✅ Firebase Analytics, Crashlytics, Performance Monitoring |
| Row-Level Security | ✅ PostgreSQL RLS policies | ✅ Firestore Security Rules (different model) |
| Full-Text Search | ✅ PostgreSQL tsvector / extensions | ⚠️ Limited (requires Algolia or Typesense integration) |
| Vendor Lock-in | Low — standard PostgreSQL, exportable | High — Firestore data model is Google-proprietary |
Pick based on your stack, team, and growth path.
The most fundamental difference between Supabase and Firebase is the database model. Supabase is a thin wrapper around PostgreSQL — the world's most advanced open-source relational database. You write SQL, create normalized tables with foreign keys, run complex JOINs, and use PostgreSQL extensions like pgvector, PostGIS, and pg_cron.
Firebase offers two databases: Firestore (a document-collection store that is Google's recommended choice) and Realtime Database (a large JSON tree, now mostly legacy). Both are schema-less NoSQL databases. You structure data by duplicating and denormalizing it — a common pattern is to store the same data in multiple places to avoid expensive collection-wide queries.
For most web and SaaS apps with relational data (users → orders → line items → products), PostgreSQL is the natural fit. For apps that need a single real-time JSON blob synced to thousands of mobile devices simultaneously, Firestore's model shines.
Supabase Pro at $25/month is a flat fee covering the vast majority of small-to-medium apps. Firebase operates on a pay-as-you-go model — there is no monthly subscription. Firestore charges $0.06 per 100,000 document reads and $0.18 per 100,000 writes.
This sounds cheap, but a single app feature can read thousands of documents. A dashboard that loads 10 stats cards, each backed by a Firestore query returning 50 documents, costs 500 reads per page view. At 10,000 daily users with 5 page views each, that's 25 million reads/month = $15 — just for one dashboard widget. Firebase bills can balloon fast with inefficient query patterns or unexpected viral traffic.
Supabase uses PostgreSQL connection pooling. A query scanning 1 million rows is a single database operation — not 1 million billable reads.
Firebase's real-time capabilities were revolutionary when launched. Firestore listeners push document changes to connected clients in under 100ms. The mobile SDKs (iOS, Android) include built-in offline persistence — your app keeps working with no internet connection and syncs when reconnected.
Supabase Realtime uses Phoenix Channels (Elixir/WebSocket) and supports row-level change subscriptions. It works well for web apps and has improved greatly since 2023, but the offline-first mobile story isn't as polished. If your core product is a mobile app that needs to work offline (field service, note-taking, collaborative docs), Firebase still wins here.
Supabase ships with pgvector natively — the PostgreSQL extension for storing and searching vector embeddings. You can store OpenAI or Anthropic embeddings alongside your relational data, run cosine similarity searches in SQL, and implement semantic search or RAG pipelines without an external vector database.
Firebase has no native vector search. Adding semantic search requires integrating Algolia, Typesense, or Pinecone as separate services. For AI-native apps in 2026, Supabase has a significant advantage.
TL;DR — pick Supabase for web/SaaS, Firebase for offline-first mobile.
Migrating from Firebase to Supabase? The community-maintained firebase-to-supabase CLI tool exports Firestore collections as CSV and imports them into PostgreSQL tables. Auth users can be migrated via the Supabase Admin API. Plan 1–2 weeks for a medium-size app.
Compare Supabase Auth vs Clerk, Auth0, and Better Auth — free calculator with MAU-based pricing.
Open Auth Cost Calculator →For most apps, Supabase is cheaper at scale. Supabase Pro is a flat $25/month with 8 GB database, 100 GB storage, and 5 GB bandwidth included. Firebase uses per-operation pricing for Firestore ($0.06/100k reads, $0.18/100k writes) with no flat monthly fee — costs scale directly with usage. A medium app with 1M Firestore reads/day costs roughly $18/day on Firebase but fits within Supabase Pro for $25/month total.
Yes. Supabase is fully open source (Apache 2.0 / PostgreSQL license) and can be self-hosted using Docker Compose or Kubernetes. The official supabase/supabase GitHub repo includes all services: Auth, Storage, Realtime, PostgREST, and the Studio UI. Firebase is a proprietary Google service with no self-hosting option.
Firebase has historically been stronger for real-time use cases. Firestore and Realtime Database both offer real-time listeners with sub-second latency and built-in offline support. Supabase Realtime (built on Elixir/Phoenix Channels) supports row-level real-time subscriptions and has improved significantly, but Firebase's offline-first SDKs (especially for mobile) remain more mature for fully offline-capable apps.
Supabase covers the core Firebase use cases: PostgreSQL database (vs Firestore), Auth (similar feature set), Storage (similar to Firebase Storage), and Realtime subscriptions. It does not have equivalents for Firebase Analytics, Crashlytics, Remote Config, A/B Testing, or Cloud Messaging (push notifications). For mobile-centric apps heavily using those services, Firebase remains the better fit.