PocketBase vs Supabase

Both are open-source backends you can self-host instead of paying for a proprietary BaaS, and each already lists the other as an open-source alternative — but they sit at opposite ends of "how much are you operating?"

PocketBase ships as a single small Go binary that embeds SQLite: download it, run it, and auth, a database, file storage, and a realtime API are all there in one process, one file. There's no separate database service to provision or keep up — backing it up is copying the file. The tradeoff is SQLite itself: it doesn't suit workloads with many concurrent writers the way a client-server database does, and PocketBase has no managed cloud tier — self-hosting (or running it yourself some other way) is the only option.

Supabase is built on real Postgres, either self-hosted or as a fully managed cloud service. That gets you Postgres's concurrency model, SQL, and extension ecosystem, plus the option to not operate anything at all — but self-hosting the full stack means running several services (Postgres, Auth, Storage, Realtime, and more), not one binary.

In short: reach for PocketBase for a small-to-medium app where minimal operational overhead matters most and SQLite's limits aren't a concern; reach for Supabase when you need Postgres's concurrency and ecosystem, or want a managed option without giving up self-hosting later.