Supabase

The free-tier pause is the gotcha

Supabase gives you a real Postgres database, auth, storage, and edge functions on a generous free tier — with one catch that surprises people: free-tier projects pause after 7 days of inactivity. A demo you show a client, or a low-traffic side project, can be asleep when someone visits. You restore it with a click, but the first request after a pause is slow or fails.

Practical implications

• For anything a real user might hit unpredictably, upgrade to Pro to keep the project always-on — the pause policy makes the free tier unsuitable for production.
• Because the database is standard Postgres, you are not locked in: you can pg_dump and move. This is a genuine advantage over proprietary NoSQL backends.
• Row Level Security is powerful but easy to misconfigure. Test your RLS policies — an open policy silently exposes data.

When to choose it

Choose Supabase when you want a SQL-first backend, predictable Postgres semantics, and the option to self-host later. If you prefer a document model and deep Google integration, Firebase is the alternative — see the comparison.