Firebase alternatives in 2026: eight options, with prices

People shopping for Firebase alternatives usually want three things Firebase does not offer: SQL, a bill they can predict, and a server process they control. Supabase is the closest one-for-one swap and gives you Postgres. Appwrite and PocketBase are the self-hostable ones. Convex is the one that keeps Firebase's reactive feel. And a growing number of teams skip the backend-as-a-service category entirely and run their own API next to a managed Postgres, Redis, and object store — which on Lizard is one command.

Written 20 August 2026, against price lists published that week.

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Why teams leave Firebase

The bill scales with reads, not with users. Firestore on the Blaze plan charges $0.06 per 100,000 reads, $0.18 per 100,000 writes, $0.02 per 100,000 deletes, and $0.18 per GiB stored, on the default nam5 multi-region. A list screen that reads 40 documents on every open is a rounding error at 100 users and a real line item at 100,000. Nothing about your code changed; the read count did.

Firestore is not a relational database. Every join becomes a denormalisation, every denormalisation becomes a fan-out write, and each fan-out write is billed. Firebase SQL Connect, formerly Data Connect, now offers a Postgres path on Cloud SQL, which is an admission of the problem more than a fix for existing Firestore data.

There is no server. Cloud Functions run per invocation with cold starts and time limits. A queue consumer, a WebSocket server, a scheduler holding state in memory, or a long streaming response to a model has no natural home.

The exit is expensive by construction. Auth, database, storage, functions, and hosting are one product with one SDK. Replacing one piece means touching all of them.

What Firebase costs in 2026

The eight alternatives

Supabase — the closest swap

Postgres with row-level security, plus Auth, Storage, Realtime, and Edge Functions, and an SDK shaped enough like Firebase's that the migration is mostly mechanical. Free tier: 500 MB of database, 50,000 monthly active users, 5 GB of egress, and a project that auto-pauses after a week idle. Pro is $25 a month with a $10 compute credit, 250 GB of egress, and compute add-ons from Micro at $10 to 16XL at $3,730.

Pick it if you want SQL and want to keep the batteries. Watch out for the compute add-on line, which is where the $25 headline turns into $75 once you move up to a Medium instance.

Appwrite — the self-hostable one

An open-source backend with auth, databases, storage, functions, and messaging, run on your own Docker host or on Appwrite Cloud, which has a free tier and a Pro tier from $25 a month.

Pick it if you want Firebase's shape without Google. Watch out for the document model — it is not Postgres, so the modelling problems that pushed you off Firestore may follow you.

Convex — the reactive one

The only alternative here that keeps what people genuinely like about Firebase: queries that update themselves. Functions are TypeScript, transactional, and reactive by default. Free Starter plan; Professional is $25 per developer a month.

Pick it if realtime is the product. Watch out for the fact that it is not SQL, and that self-hosting sits under a fair-source licence rather than a plain open-source one — the FSL Apache 2.0 terms bar you from building a competing hosted product.

PocketBase — one binary

A single Go executable with SQLite, auth, file storage, realtime subscriptions, and an admin UI. It runs on a $5 VPS and backs up with a file copy.

Pick it if the app is small, single-region, and you value being able to read the whole system. Watch out for SQLite's write concurrency and the absence of any managed option.

Nhost — Postgres with GraphQL

Managed Postgres, Hasura GraphQL, auth, storage, and functions, self-hostable. A good fit for teams that already write GraphQL.

Pick it if GraphQL is the interface you want. Watch out for a smaller ecosystem than Supabase's.

AWS Amplify — the enterprise path

Auth via Cognito, data via DynamoDB or Aurora, storage on S3, functions on Lambda. Everything is AWS, billed at AWS rates, with AWS's IAM model.

Pick it if your company is already on AWS and compliance drives the decision. Watch out for the complexity, which is Firebase's opposite.

Bring your own backend

The option people arrive at after the second surprise bill: a managed Postgres, an object store, and your own API. No SDK owns your data model, no per-read pricing, and any language you like. The cost is that auth, realtime, and file uploads are now yours to wire up — worth it when the app has outgrown a client-side data layer, and not before. Where to run that API is its own question: the best PaaS providers in 2026 covers the field, and Python app hosting covers it for Django, Flask, and FastAPI backends.

Mapping Firebase onto its replacement

That last row matters. Leaving Firestore does not mean leaving every Google product; Cloud Messaging is genuinely good and free, and there is no prize for purity.

Running your own backend on Lizard

Lizard is the "bring your own backend" option with the setup step removed. One command provisions the three stateful pieces every Firebase replacement needs:

npm i -g @lizard-build/cli
cd your-api && lizard up
lizard add postgres redis s3

• Managed Postgres — PostgreSQL 18, ready in one command, with a table browser and SQL editor in the dashboard.
• Managed Redis — Redis 8 with append-only persistence on from the first key, for sessions, queues, and rate limits.
• Managed Object Storage — S3-compatible, so every AWS SDK and the aws CLI work once you change the endpoint and set forcePathStyle: true.

lizard add provisions them; a lizard secrets set DATABASE_URL='${{postgres.DATABASE_URL}}' --service api wires each one into your service by reference, so rotating a password never touches your code. Your API runs as a long-lived process in its own Firecracker micro-VM — WebSockets, queue consumers, and streaming responses all work, because there is no invocation to end. Lizard bills only for active resources, by the second, at $0.0278 per vCPU-hour and $0.0139 per GB-hour on measured use, and nothing per read.

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Postgres, Redis, and storage in one command

Free to start with $5 of credit and no card. Hobby is $5 a month.

Get started free → lizard.build/login

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FAQ

What is the best Firebase alternative? Supabase, for most teams — it is the closest match to Firebase's product surface and gives you Postgres instead of Firestore. Appwrite and PocketBase are the self-hostable options, Convex is the closest match for realtime-first apps, and running your own API next to a managed Postgres is the right answer once the app has outgrown a client-side data layer.

Is Supabase cheaper than Firebase? Usually, and more predictably. Supabase Pro is $25 a month with a $10 compute credit and 250 GB of egress, so the bill tracks the size of the instance. Firebase charges per operation — $0.06 per 100,000 Firestore reads and $0.18 per 100,000 writes — so a read-heavy screen can multiply the bill without any change to your infrastructure.

What is the best open-source Firebase alternative? Supabase and Appwrite are the two full ones, both self-hostable with Docker. PocketBase is the minimal one: a single Go binary with SQLite, auth, file storage, and realtime, suitable for small single-region apps. Nhost is the choice if you want Postgres behind a GraphQL API.

How do I migrate from Firestore to Postgres? Export the collections with the Firebase CLI or the Admin SDK, then design the relational schema first rather than copying the document shapes over — that redesign is most of the work. Move reads to the new database behind a feature flag, dual-write during the transition, then cut over. Expect to rewrite the client data layer, since Firestore's SDK has no relational equivalent.

Can I keep Firebase Auth and replace only Firestore? Yes, and it is often the cheapest first step. Firebase Auth issues JWTs your own backend can verify with Google's public keys, so you can move the data layer to Postgres while leaving sign-in alone. Firebase Cloud Messaging composes the same way.

Does Firebase have a real server I can run code on? No, and this is the structural limit. Cloud Functions run per invocation with cold starts and execution limits, and Cloud Run is a separate Google product. If you need a process that stays alive — a queue consumer, a WebSocket server, a scheduler — you need a platform that runs one, such as Lizard, Railway, or Render.

What does Firebase cost in 2026? The Blaze plan bills $0.06 per 100,000 Firestore reads, $0.18 per 100,000 writes, $0.02 per 100,000 deletes, and $0.18 per GiB of storage a month in the default nam5 multi-region — a single region such as us-central1 halves the per-operation rates — keeping the free daily allowance of 50,000 reads, 20,000 writes, and 20,000 deletes. The default database includes 10 GiB of outbound transfer a month.

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Sources

• Firebase pricing and Cloud Firestore pricing
• Supabase pricing, Appwrite pricing, Convex pricing
• PocketBase and Nhost
• Lizard documentation and Lizard pricing