Learn about Supabase, an open source Firebase alternative, with a fun example build and detailed descriptions of its functionality.

Supabase is an open source Firebase alternative. This is a bold title, because Firebase is intended as a complete solution, with various features like authentication, file storage, serverless functions, SDK, and much more.

Even though Firebase has tons of features, Supabase may be more useful because it uses open source technology. Supabase gives you the flexibility to host on your local machine, in a cloud service provider, or even as a Docker container. This means it’s restriction free, so there’s no vendor locking.

Supabase uses PostgreSQL under the hood for the database and listens to real-time changes through several tools that they build.

Currently, Supabase only supports features like databases, authentication, and storage. They also have serverless functions, although these are still in the development stage.

Supabase stands out for the following reasons:

• Supabase handles the scaling for you (even though it uses an SQL database)
• Unlike Firebase, you can perform complex queries or text searches
• Data migration is straightforward in Supabase as it uses PostgreSQL, so you can import data through a .sql file

There are, however, several downsides to using Supabase. They include:

• Limited features
• It requires you to enable replication features for a table in order to receive real-time updates
• When real-time updates are enabled, the security policies of Supabase do not apply
• Its SDK only supports JavaScript (Support for other languages is still in beta)

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