Why We Use Supabase Instead of Firebase (And When We Don't)

When we started Solforge, Firebase was the default for fast backend setup. It's still a great product. But over the last two years, we've migrated most of our new projects to Supabase — and the projects that stayed on Firebase stayed there for specific reasons.

Here's the breakdown.

What Supabase Gets Right

It's just Postgres

This is the biggest one. Supabase is a hosted Postgres database with a REST API, real-time subscriptions, auth, and storage layered on top.

Postgres means:

JOINs that actually work
Full SQL — transactions, views, functions, triggers
Data migrations that behave like you expect
No vendor-specific query language to learn

Firebase's Firestore is a document database. It's fast for simple gets and real-time listeners, but the moment you need a relational query, you're either denormalising your data or running multiple reads in your client.

Row Level Security

Supabase's RLS lets you write security rules in SQL. One policy to say "a user can only read their own records" — done, enforced at the database level.

Firebase's security rules are powerful but cryptic. They're in a custom DSL that trips up even experienced developers.

Pricing that scales

Firebase's pricing on Firestore reads gets expensive at scale. Supabase's pricing is based on compute and storage — more predictable, cheaper at volume.

What Firebase Still Wins On

Mobile SDKs

Firebase's Android and iOS SDKs are exceptionally mature. Offline sync in particular is a solved problem on Firebase in a way that Supabase (still growing) isn't quite there on yet.

If you're building a Flutter app that needs offline-first with complex real-time sync, Firebase is still the safer bet for the SDK layer.

Analytics and Crashlytics

Firebase's analytics and crash reporting are best-in-class for mobile. Nothing in the Supabase ecosystem touches it.

Simpler auth for mobile

Firebase Auth with phone OTP is extremely well tested across markets, including Pakistan where SMS delivery can be spotty. Supabase Auth is excellent for email/OAuth, but phone auth is less battle-tested.

Our Current Default Stack

For web apps and SaaS products:

Next.js (App Router) + Supabase — everything from auth to storage to real-time
Deployed on Vercel + Supabase cloud

For mobile apps that need serious offline support:

Flutter + Supabase for the backend, Isar (local database) for offline-first layer
Firebase for analytics and crash reporting only

The Honest Bottom Line

Supabase is our default because it treats us like engineers who know SQL. Firebase treats you like a developer who needs protecting from yourself.

Both are valid. We just prefer the former.

If you're starting a new project and aren't sure which way to go, tell us what you're building — we'll give you a straight answer.