A practical comparison after migrating 12 projects. Real costs, scaling limits, and when to switch. By David Friedman , Founder of AppBrewers I have built 50+ projects on Firebase and migrated 12 of them to Supabase. Both are excellent. Both will fail you at scale if you choose wrong. Here is what I wish I knew before picking either. The Short Answer Factor Firebase Supabase Winner Setup speed 5 minutes 10 minutes Firebase Real-time Built-in Built-in Tie SQL queries Limited Full PostgreSQL Supabase Self-hosting No Yes Supabase Vendor lock-in High Low Supabase Cost at scale Expensive Cheaper Supabase Documentation Excellent Good Firebase Community Massive Growing Firebase Choose Firebase if: You want to ship fast and do not care about vendor lock-in. Choose Supabase if: You need SQL, self-hosting, or want to avoid Google. When Firebase Wins 1. Speed of Development Firebase Auth works in 5 lines of code. Firestore reads in 3. Cloud Functions deploy in 30 seconds. For MVPs, this is unbeatable. 2.…