Supabase

Supabase is an open source backend platform built around PostgreSQL that gives applications a database, authentication, file storage, realtime updates, and serverless functions behind a single set of client libraries. It positions itself as an alternative to Firebase, with the key difference that data lives in a standard relational database the developer can query with SQL, connect to with any Postgres client, and move elsewhere without a rewrite. A REST API and a GraphQL endpoint are generated automatically from the schema, and realtime subscriptions stream row changes to connected clients over websockets. Authentication supports email, magic links, and OAuth providers, and access control is enforced through PostgreSQL row level security policies rather than a separate rules language. The pgvector extension is available, which makes Supabase a frequent choice for storing embeddings in retrieval pipelines alongside application data. The project is open source and can be self-hosted, though most teams use the managed service. The main risk follows from the design: because clients talk to the database directly using a public key, security depends entirely on correctly written row level security policies, and a missing or overly permissive policy exposes a table to anyone who finds the endpoint.