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Supabase for Supabase

Posted on • Originally published at supabase.io

Supabase: ten months of building.

Supabase is an open source Firebase alternative. We're building the features of Firebase using enterprise-grade open source tools.


After 10 hectic months of building, Supabase is now in Beta. This is also available as a blog post and a video demo.

Supabase is now in Beta

We spent months working on Performance, Security, and Reliability. Read more on our Beta Page.

This image shows our Beta Page

Improve your docs inline

Add comments and descriptions to your Tables directly from our auto-generated docs.

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Table View now has realtime changes

Any updates that happen to your database are reflected in the Table View immediately.

realtime-updates

Table Pagination

Our table view now has pagination - better for working with large data sets.

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Supabase raised a Seed Round

We raised $6M from Y Combinator, Mozilla, and Coatue. You can read more on TechCrunch.

Kaizen

  • Supabase is now 26% faster in regions which support Graviton (1460 reqs/s up from 1167 reqs/s)
  • We launched a new region in Sao Paulo.
  • Postgres Array Support. You can now edit Native Postgres array items in the grid editor or the side panel.
  • We added better support for your custom Database Types.
  • Fixed some buggy keyboard commands. We're continuously improving key commands in the Table editor.

Community

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If you want to keep up to date, make sure you subscribe to our YouTube channel or follow us on Twitter.

Coming next

We've go a lot of exciting things planned for Q1 2021. We're already planning out Supabase Storage and a Supabase CLI for better local development. Let us know if there's something you want us to release as a priority!

We also have something exciting planned with Vercel and Stripe ... stay tuned.

Get started

Top comments (13)

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johncarroll profile image
John Carroll

As a Firebase user, I was surprised to see that Supabase's API is completely different from Firebase's. With a definition of "firebase alternative" this loose, I gotta say: an open source Firebase alternative already exists and it's called Hasura. Obviously there's enough room in the world for multiple open source projects addressing the same goal, but, after looking at Supabase's website, my thought wasn't "Why would I choose this instead of Firebase." It was, "Why would I choose this instead of Hasura?"

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supabase_io profile image
Supabase

Hey John, thanks for the feedback. We're implementing the features of FIrebase, but we're not creating a 1:1 mapping. For example, we use Postgres instead of a NoSQL store. This is on purpose - we want to make the platform scalable, and Postgres is proven to scale.

Why would I choose this instead of Hasura?

Probably a matter of preference! There are quite a few similarities. Joe highlighted some of the differences in his response.

Ultimately we're both open source and contributing to other open source tools like Postgres, so it's great for you and the community :)

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johncarroll profile image
John Carroll

We're implementing the features of FIrebase, but we're not creating a 1:1 mapping.

Fair enough. I guess the point I was trying to make is that, for me (a Firebase user for about 2 years who is aware of, but has never used, Hasura), I don't find the current Supabase marketing materials that compelling. But it's important for me to acknowledge that, in general, I'd rather use a GraphQL API than another proprietary javascript one. While I like the Firestore API, it's definitely a negative that it's proprietary.

Ultimately we're both open source and contributing to other open source tools like Postgres, so it's great for you and the community :)

You are correct! Best of luck.

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techronin profile image
Collin Thompson • Edited

Yeah it’s a bit “YCombinator” the a,b,c for x,y,z. I’ve used all three and while there are similarities, what makes Supabase stand out for me is the authentication, Postgres and that it’s open source. I do wish it had some of the “functions” of firebase and the GraphQL capabilities of Hasura—I’m really liking the security features as well as how easy it is to manage, query, and edit the database. It’s hella fast too.

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elitan profile image
Johan Eliasson

You might really like Nhost. We do Postgres, Hasura, Auth, Storage and Serverless functions :)

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vinksz profile image
vinksz

will Supabase have graphql ? :D

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elitan profile image
Johan Eliasson

You should try Nhost :)

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jcs224 profile image
Joe Sweeney • Edited

I've used Supabase, but not Hasura or Firebase. Some surface-level differences I see from Hasura:

  • Supabase doesn't use GraphQL, just JavaScript. When you want to fetch data, you write straight-up JavaScript for querying data and setting up real-time subscriptions. No GraphQL at all. I believe this makes Supabase more similar to Firebase than Hasura.

  • Authentication is handled in Supabase, whereas it's deferred to another service in Hasura, according to Hasura's own docs. Authorization/role-based access in Supabase uses Postgres's built-in Row Level Security, whereas Hasura does it the GraphQL way.

I've played around with Supabase and quite like it! I'm excited to see what they come up with for their Functions feature. To me, that would be a real game-changer.

Again, never used Hasura, or even GraphQL. Supabase is a more appealing API to me personally.

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mattymaloney profile image
mattymaloney

In what manner is this similar to Hasura?

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johncarroll profile image
John Carroll • Edited

Honestly, I don't think Supabase or Hasura is that similar to Firebase. But, if you argue that Supabase is similar to Firebase, then Hasura is also similar to Firebase and hence Supabase and Hasura are similar to each other. Each provides real-time database subscriptions, an authorization/authentication layer, ability to call server side functions, etc. The three have completely different APIs, and Supabase/Hasura rely on a relational database vs Firebase's NoSQL database, but the high-level Supabase marketing materials seem to ignore that. My point is that equating Supabase and Firebase to one another seems like a stretch to me but, if you're going to go there, it raises some additional questions that seem to be unaddressed (for me at least).

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hiccupq profile image
hiccupq

Firebase is big and slow on web. Does your alternative solves this problem?

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supabase_io profile image
Supabase

Check out the "Performance" section here! supabase.io/beta

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hiccupq profile image
hiccupq

will take a look thanks