Supabase vs Xata
Pricing
Supabase: Free tier, Pro from $25/mo
Xata: Free (open source, self-hosted), Cloud from about $9/mo plus storage
Description
Supabase: Postgres database with built-in auth, storage, and real-time (the open-source Firebase alternative)
Xata: Postgres platform for instant copy-on-write database branches that scale to zero, open source or hosted
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
- Branch a Postgres database in seconds: branches share storage with the parent and store only their changes
- Idle branches scale to zero and wake on the first query, so preview and test databases cost little
- Runs upstream Postgres, so standard extensions, drivers and tools work
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
- No free cloud tier: Xata Cloud has a 14-day trial, then hourly billing
- Built around branching for teams and coding agents, more than a simple side project needs
- Smaller community and ecosystem compared to Supabase or Neon
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.
Xata is a Postgres platform built around branching. You can start a fresh database or branch an existing one in seconds. Each branch gets its own schema, compute and data, but shares storage with its parent through copy-on-write, so you pay only for what changes. Idle branches hibernate and use no compute until the next query. Xata also maintains two open-source Postgres tools: pgroll for zero-downtime schema migrations and pgstream for anonymizing personal data.
The open-source edition is free to self-host. Xata Cloud starts with a 14-day trial, then bills by the hour: the smallest instance costs $0.012 an hour, about $9 a month, plus $0.28 per GB of storage. For a solo founder who needs one database, Supabase or Neon are simpler starting points with free tiers. Xata makes more sense once you want a separate database branch for every pull request, preview environment or coding agent.
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