Supabase vs Turso
Pricing
Supabase: Free tier, Pro from $25/mo
Turso: Free tier (5 GB storage, 100 databases), paid from $4.99/mo billed yearly
Description
Supabase: Postgres database with built-in auth, storage, and real-time (the open-source Firebase alternative)
Turso: SQLite-compatible cloud database built for one database per user, agent or tenant, with sync to devices
Pros
- Full Postgres database, not a proprietary system: your data, your queries
- Auth, file storage, edge functions, and real-time included at no extra cost
- Free tier includes 500MB database and 1GB file storage
- Cheap to run many databases: idle databases cost only storage
- Free tier includes 5 GB storage, 100 databases and 500 million row reads a month
- Open-source, SQLite-compatible engine that also runs locally for free
Cons
- Some features (like edge functions) are still maturing compared to Firebase
- Free tier pauses inactive projects after 7 days
- Less hand-holding than Firebase: you need to know some SQL
- Edge replicas are no longer offered to new users: fast local reads now come from replicas or sync inside your app
- Ecosystem is young: fewer ORMs and tools have native Turso support compared to Postgres
- Not suited for heavy relational workloads that need JOINs across large tables
Details
Supabase gives you a real Postgres database with the convenience of Firebase. Set up a project, and you immediately get a database, auth system, file storage, edge functions, and real-time subscriptions. No piecing together separate services.
The free tier is enough to build and test a real product. The Pro tier at $25/month gives you a production-ready setup. The key advantage over Firebase: it is Postgres under the hood. Your queries are standard SQL, and you can migrate your data to any Postgres host if you ever want to leave. That data portability is worth a lot for a solo founder building something long-term.
Turso takes SQLite and makes it work as a cloud database. Its design goal is many small databases rather than one big one: you can give every user, workspace or AI agent its own isolated database, and idle ones cost only storage. Embedded replication lets the same database run inside your app or on a user’s device, reading and writing locally and syncing with the cloud. Turso no longer offers edge replicas in multiple regions to new users.
The free tier gives you 5 GB of storage, 100 databases, 500 million row reads and 10 million row writes a month. Paid plans start with Developer at $4.99 a month billed yearly ($5.99 monthly) and Scaler at $24.92 billed yearly ($29 monthly). On 2 October 2026 Turso announced that it is being acquired by Supabase. It says the service keeps running as before and the open-source engine stays in active development; the announcement does not mention plan or price changes. If your app is read-heavy or naturally split per tenant, Turso is fast and cheap. If you need complex relational queries or heavy write throughput, Postgres on Neon or Supabase is a better foundation.
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