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Frameworks, core principles and top case studies for SaaS pricing, learnt and refined over 28+ years of SaaS-monetization experience.
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Choosing between Supabase and Firebase isn't just a technical decision—it's a financial one that compounds over time. When comparing Supabase vs Firebase cost, the answer depends entirely on your usage patterns, scale trajectory, and feature requirements.
Quick Answer: Supabase typically costs 40-60% less than Firebase at scale due to transparent per-GB pricing and open-source flexibility, but Firebase offers better free-tier limits for early-stage apps. Your choice depends on expected database size, query volume, and whether you need Firebase's mobile-first features or Supabase's PostgreSQL power.
Let's break down the real numbers so you can make an informed BaaS pricing comparison for your team.
Pricing Model Fundamentals: How Each Platform Charges
Understanding how each platform meters usage is essential before comparing costs. Firebase and Supabase operate on fundamentally different pricing philosophies.
Firebase's Usage-Based Pricing Structure
Firebase charges based on granular consumption metrics: document reads, writes, deletes, bandwidth, and storage. This pay-as-you-go model means costs scale directly with activity.
Key billing dimensions include:
- Firestore: $0.06 per 100K document reads, $0.18 per 100K writes
- Realtime Database: $5/GB stored, $1/GB downloaded
- Cloud Storage: $0.026/GB stored, $0.12/GB downloaded
- Authentication: Free up to certain thresholds, then tiered
This granularity offers flexibility but creates unpredictable bills when traffic spikes.
Supabase's Transparent Tier System
Supabase uses flat monthly tiers with clear resource allocations, plus optional compute add-ons. Their pricing model centers on:
- Fixed monthly base: $0 (Free), $25 (Pro), $599 (Team)
- Database size included: 500MB to 8GB depending on tier
- Bandwidth allocations: 5GB to 250GB monthly
- Compute add-ons: Starting at $5/month for additional processing power
This predictability simplifies budgeting but requires tier upgrades as you grow.
Free Tier Face-Off: Which Gives You More Runway?
For bootstrapped teams and MVPs, free tier limits determine how long you can validate ideas without spending.
Firebase Spark Plan Limits and Use Cases
Firebase's Spark plan offers:
- 1GB Firestore storage
- 50K document reads/day
- 20K document writes/day
- 10GB bandwidth/month
- Unlimited authentication users
This generous allocation suits apps with light database usage but frequent authentication needs—think social apps or content platforms.
Supabase Free Tier: What You Actually Get
Supabase's free tier provides:
- 500MB database storage
- 2GB bandwidth/month
- 50MB file storage
- Unlimited API requests
- 50K monthly active users (authentication)
The smaller storage cap limits data-heavy applications, but unlimited API requests benefit query-intensive workloads.
Verdict: Firebase wins for authentication-heavy apps; Supabase wins for API-heavy, smaller-dataset projects.
Cost at Scale: Real Numbers for Growing SaaS Products
Here's where the Supabase vs Firebase cost comparison gets concrete. Let's examine two common scenarios.
Scenario 1: 10K Active Users with 50GB Data
A mid-stage B2B SaaS with moderate database usage:
| Cost Factor | Firebase | Supabase |
|-------------|----------|----------|
| Database Storage | $150/month | $25/month (Pro tier) |
| Document Operations | ~$180/month (est. 3M reads) | Included |
| Bandwidth (100GB) | $12/month | Included |
| Authentication | Free | Free |
| Monthly Total | ~$342 | ~$50 |
Supabase savings: ~85%
Scenario 2: 100K Users with Real-Time Features
A scaling consumer app with heavy real-time requirements:
| Cost Factor | Firebase | Supabase |
|-------------|----------|----------|
| Database/Storage | $400/month | $599/month (Team tier) |
| Operations/Queries | ~$600/month (30M reads) | Included |
| Bandwidth (500GB) | $50/month | $20 add-on |
| Real-time Connections | Included | Included |
| Monthly Total | ~$1,050 | ~$619 |
Supabase savings: ~41%
Where the Cost Crossover Happens
Firebase becomes more economical when:
- Your app is authentication-heavy with minimal database queries
- You're under 100K document reads daily
- You need Firebase's ML Kit or Crashlytics (no Supabase equivalent)
Supabase pulls ahead when:
- Database queries exceed a few million monthly
- You're storing more than 10GB of structured data
- You need complex PostgreSQL queries or joins
Hidden Costs and Pricing Gotchas
Advertised pricing never tells the whole story. Both platforms have cost surprises.
Firebase: Bandwidth Overages and Firestore Read Costs
Firebase's most common billing shock comes from Firestore reads. Poorly optimized queries can trigger millions of reads monthly. A single misconfigured listener refreshing unnecessarily can generate $500+ in unexpected charges.
Other gotchas:
- Cloud Functions cold starts increasing response times (requiring more instances)
- Realtime Database bandwidth charges for listeners that reconnect frequently
- No spending caps—you must set budget alerts manually
Supabase: Compute Limits and Dedicated Infrastructure Needs
Supabase's hidden costs emerge differently:
- Paused projects: Free tier databases pause after one week of inactivity
- Compute bottlenecks: Base tier includes limited CPU; complex queries require add-ons
- Point-in-time recovery: Only available on Team tier ($599+)
- Dedicated infrastructure: Required for compliance-heavy industries, starting at custom pricing
Open Source vs Proprietary: The Long-Term Cost Implications
The open source vs proprietary pricing debate extends beyond monthly bills to strategic flexibility.
Self-Hosting Supabase: When It Makes Financial Sense
Supabase's MIT-licensed stack can run on your own infrastructure. Self-hosting makes sense when:
- Monthly Supabase bills exceed $1,000
- You have DevOps capacity to manage PostgreSQL, GoTrue, and PostgREST
- Compliance requirements mandate data residency control
- You're already paying for AWS/GCP compute you can repurpose
Typical self-hosting costs: $200-400/month for equivalent infrastructure on major cloud providers, plus engineering time.
Vendor Lock-In Costs with Firebase
Firebase's proprietary nature creates switching costs:
- Data migration: Firestore's document model doesn't map cleanly to SQL databases
- Rewriting queries: Firebase SDK calls must be replaced entirely
- Authentication migration: User password hashes aren't exportable
Estimated migration cost from Firebase to alternatives: 2-4 engineering weeks for mid-sized applications.
Making the Decision: Cost Calculator Framework
Use this comparison to guide your decision:
| Usage Profile | Monthly Users | Data Size | Firebase Est. | Supabase Est. | Winner |
|--------------|---------------|-----------|---------------|---------------|--------|
| MVP/Prototype | <1K | <500MB | $0 | $0 | Tie |
| Early Stage | 1K-10K | 1-10GB | $50-200 | $25 | Supabase |
| Growth Stage | 10K-50K | 10-50GB | $200-600 | $25-100 | Supabase |
| Scale | 50K-500K | 50-500GB | $600-3,000 | $100-700 | Supabase |
| Enterprise | 500K+ | 500GB+ | Custom | Custom | Depends |
Decision framework:
- Choose Firebase if: Mobile-first development, need ML Kit/Crashlytics, authentication-dominant workload, team already knows Firebase
- Choose Supabase if: PostgreSQL expertise on team, query-heavy workloads, cost predictability matters, future self-hosting possible
Remember: backend-as-a-service costs vary dramatically based on your specific workload. A database-heavy analytics app and an authentication-heavy consumer app will see completely different cost profiles on the same platform.
**Calculate your actual BaaS costs with our interactive Firebase vs Supabase pricing calculator—input your projected users and data to