Why We Chose Supabase as the Backbone for Refront
An honest account of our decision to choose Supabase over Firebase and other alternatives. With real experiences, costs, and technical trade-offs.
Introduction
When you build a SaaS product, choosing your database and backend infrastructure is one of the most important decisions you make. It is a choice that haunts you for years if you get it wrong.
We chose Supabase as the backbone of Refront. Not because it is trendy, but because after months of evaluation, it offered the best balance between speed, flexibility, and cost. Here is what we learned.
The alternatives we evaluated
Before we landed on Supabase, we evaluated Firebase, PlanetScale, Neon, and a self-managed PostgreSQL setup. Each had strong points but also showstoppers.
Firebase was fast to start with, but vendor lock-in and the lack of SQL made complex queries difficult. PlanetScale had great scaling but lacked built-in auth and storage. Neon was promising but still too young for production.
What Supabase offers that others miss
Supabase combines five things you normally have to arrange separately: a PostgreSQL database, authentication, real-time subscriptions, file storage, and edge functions. All under one roof, with an open-source core.
For Refront, this means we can push a ticket update in real-time to the dashboard, store an attachment in Storage, authenticate the user with OTP, and trigger an edge function for AI analysis. All from the same SDK.
Real experiences after 18 months in production
After 18 months in production, we can say Supabase delivers on its promises, with nuances. Database performance is excellent, especially with proper indexes and connection pooling. Row Level Security is powerful but requires discipline in your policies.
Real-time functionality works reliably for our use cases, but you need to be intentional about the number of subscriptions. Storage is simple and affordable. Auth with our custom OTP flow runs stable.
Costs in perspective
One of the reasons we chose Supabase is cost predictability. Unlike Firebase, where costs grow exponentially with reads, Supabase charges primarily for compute and storage.
For Refront, our entire production stack including database, auth, storage, and real-time runs at a fraction of what a comparable Firebase setup would cost. At our current usage, costs are around 50 euros per month.
Conclusion
Supabase is not perfect. Documentation could be better, some features are still in beta, and you depend on their hosting unless you self-host. But for a team that wants to build fast with SQL power and open-source flexibility, it is the best choice we could have made.
Considering Supabase for your own project? Get in touch, we are happy to share our experiences.
Sidney
Co-founder
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