Why We Chose Supabase Over Firebase for Production

The Firebase Era

Firebase is an excellent product. Its real-time listeners and frictionless auth made us productive quickly. But as our data grew more relational, we started hitting its limits.

The Breaking Points

Complex queries are painful. Firebase's NoSQL model means aggressive denormalization — the same data living in four places, getting out of sync.

Pricing surprises. At scale, read-based pricing can bite you unexpectedly.

Vendor lock-in. Firebase's SDKs are deeply proprietary.

Why Supabase

Supabase is just Postgres:

• Any Postgres skill transfers directly
• Full SQL — joins, CTEs, window functions
• Row-level security that makes sense
• Predictable pricing

CREATE POLICY "users see own data"
ON messages FOR SELECT
USING (user_id = auth.uid());

The Verdict

For most production applications, Supabase's SQL foundation, predictable pricing, and open-source nature make it the right choice.