The Real Question
"Should I use Supabase or Firebase?" is the wrong question.
The right question is: "What does my product need in the next 18 months, and which platform fits that trajectory?"
Having built production apps on both, here's our honest take.
Firebase: Strengths
1. Real-time first
Firestore's real-time listeners are genuinely excellent. If your product's core value is live collaboration (think Figma, Notion, multiplayer games), Firebase's real-time architecture is battle-tested and scales without you thinking about it.
2. Auth is best-in-class
Firebase Auth is the easiest auth system to set up in existence. Social logins, magic links, phone auth — all work in 30 minutes.
3. Ecosystem
FCM (push notifications), Crashlytics, Remote Config, A/B Testing — Firebase's ecosystem is unmatched if you're building a mobile-heavy product.
Supabase: Strengths
1. PostgreSQL
Supabase gives you a real PostgreSQL database. This is massive. You get:
2. Open Source and Portable
Supabase is open source. You can self-host it. You can migrate your data to any PostgreSQL-compatible database. Firebase is a proprietary Google product — migrating away is painful.
3. Pricing
Supabase's free tier is genuinely useful (500MB database, 2GB bandwidth). Firebase's free tier is deceptive — Firestore reads/writes add up fast.
The Decision Framework
IF your app needs:
- Complex relational data → Supabase
- SQL queries → Supabase
- Row Level Security → Supabase
- Open source / self-host option → Supabase
- Mobile app with real-time → Firebase
- Rapid prototyping → Firebase
- Google ecosystem → Firebase
What We Use at NineLab
We default to Supabase for almost everything.
The combination of PostgreSQL + Row Level Security + the JavaScript client SDK is incredibly powerful. RLS policies mean you write security rules once in SQL, and they apply everywhere — no matter how a client accesses the database.
-- Example RLS policy: users can only see their own data
CREATE POLICY "Users can view own data"
ON profiles
FOR SELECT
USING (auth.uid() = user_id);
The exception: if a client has an existing Firebase setup or needs Firebase's mobile push notification infrastructure, we keep Firebase for those specific features and use Supabase for everything else.
The Bottom Line
Most product teams will find Supabase more flexible and less expensive at scale. But Firebase is faster to get started with for simple use cases.
