Open-source Firebase alternatives

Supabase is a backend platform built around a dedicated Postgres database. It packages the pieces most web, mobile and AI apps need, including authentication and authorization, auto-generated APIs, file storage, serverless functions and a dashboard, so developers can start without assembling separate services. Its stated aim is a developer experience similar to Firebase, built from open-source components.

APIs are generated from your schema as REST and GraphQL, with realtime subscriptions over websockets. Logic can live in database functions or in Edge Functions that run on Deno. For AI work there is a toolkit for vectors and embeddings built on pgvector, and Postgres extensions such as PostGIS are available. Supabase combines existing open tools with ones it builds itself when nothing suitable exists.

The code is Apache-2.0 licensed. Supabase is offered as a hosted platform you can sign up for without installing anything, and the same stack can be self-hosted or run locally for development. It suits teams that want Postgres at the core of their app but prefer not to build the surrounding backend themselves.

PocketBase is an open-source backend written in Go that ships as one file. It bundles an embedded SQLite database with realtime subscriptions, built-in management of users and files, a convenient admin dashboard and a simple REST-style API, which makes it quick to stand up a backend for a small web or mobile project.

You can use it as a standalone application by downloading the prebuilt executable for your platform and running its serve command, or you can extend it as a Go library to add custom routes and logic. The prebuilt binaries come with a JavaScript VM plugin enabled for scripting. Official SDK clients exist for JavaScript, covering browsers, Node.js and React Native, and for Dart, covering web, mobile, desktop and CLI.

PocketBase is MIT licensed. The maintainers warn that it is still under active development and that backward compatibility is not guaranteed before version 1.0.0, so upgrades deserve some care. It suits solo developers and small teams who want a simple, self-contained backend without managing a database server separately.

Appwrite is an open-source platform for building and scaling web, mobile and AI apps. It bundles the backend services most apps need, namely auth, databases, storage, functions, messaging, realtime and hosting, and presents them as an agent-friendly cloud with MCP support. It can run as a managed cloud platform or be self-hosted on infrastructure you control.

Auth supports email, SMS, OAuth, anonymous sessions and magic URLs. Databases can be modeled and queried through Appwrite itself or backed by managed PostgreSQL and MySQL. Storage keeps files with compression, encryption, image transformations and permission controls, and Functions run serverless code in isolated runtimes triggered by events. Sites deploys static, SSR and CSR frontends from Git with previews, and Messaging sends email, SMS and push notifications.

Developers integrate through client and server SDKs, including Flutter, Swift, React Native and JavaScript, or let coding agents such as Cursor, Claude Code and Codex operate a live project through a hosted MCP server. Appwrite is BSD-3-Clause licensed and written mainly in PHP, with Docker-based self-hosting for Unix and Windows.

Parse Server is an open-source backend that runs anywhere Node.js can run. It works with the Express web framework, so you can mount it inside an existing web application or run it by itself, and it is the maintained successor to the original hosted Parse platform. Topics identify it as a mobile backend as a service with REST and GraphQL APIs.

The documentation covers the full lifecycle: running Parse Server locally or in a Docker container, saving and querying objects, connecting an SDK, configuring options and access scopes, and deploying elsewhere. It works with MongoDB and PostgreSQL as databases and offers Cloud Code for custom server logic, file storage, and a health endpoint for monitoring. A guide, API reference and Cloud Code guide help with getting started, and long-term-support branches exist alongside the current release.

Parse Server is written in JavaScript and licensed under Apache-2.0, with development supported by sponsors and backers on Open Collective. It suits teams that want a Firebase-style backend they host themselves, particularly mobile developers who already use the Parse SDKs.

SuperTokens is an open-source authentication provider positioned as an alternative to Auth0, Firebase Auth and AWS Cognito. It adds secure login and session management to your apps, with SDKs for popular languages and frameworks such as Node.js, Go, Python, React and React Native.

Its architecture has three building blocks: a frontend SDK that manages session tokens and renders login UI widgets, a backend SDK that provides the APIs for sign-up, sign-in, sign-out and session refreshing, and the SuperTokens Core, an HTTP service in Java that implements the authentication logic and database operations used by the backend SDK. The feature list spans passwordless and social sign-in, email and phone with password, session handling, MFA, multi-tenant organizations with enterprise SSO, user roles, authentication between microservices, and a dashboard for managing users.

You can self-host the core to keep user data in your own database, or use the vendor's managed offering. The repository's license is listed as 'Other' on GitHub, because enterprise features sit under a separate license, so check which features you need. It suits teams that want to own authentication without building it from scratch.

Convex is an open-source reactive database and backend platform for web app developers. It provides a database, a place to write server functions in TypeScript, and client libraries, and it is designed to make building and scaling live-updating applications straightforward, whether the author is a person or an LLM.

Data is fetched and business logic is run with strong consistency by writing pure TypeScript. Applications built on it update automatically when the underlying data changes, which removes much of the work of wiring up real-time sync. The Convex team leads development of the backend, and the repository, written in Rust and TypeScript, is kept in sync with internal work within days.

The simplest path is Convex's cloud platform, which includes a free tier for small applications and side projects. A self-hosted product with most cloud features, including the dashboard and CLI, can be run with Docker, which is recommended, or a prebuilt binary, and works with databases and hosts such as Postgres, SQLite, Neon and Fly.io. The repository lists the licence as Other, and the extensive internal tests are not included.

Nhost is an open-source backend platform positioned as a Firebase alternative with GraphQL. It is built around open source, GraphQL, SQL and a good developer experience, and gives frontend developers a complete backend without writing server code.

The stack combines a PostgreSQL database, an instant GraphQL API through Hasura, an authentication service, a storage service and serverless functions written in Node.js, in JavaScript or TypeScript. The Nhost CLI creates a local development environment that follows database migrations and Hasura metadata, and a client package called nhost-js is used from the app. Nhost is frontend agnostic, with topics listing Next.js, React, Vue and Flutter.

You can use the Nhost hosted platform, develop locally with the CLI or self-host the entire stack, with an example docker-compose file provided. The project is written in TypeScript and licensed under MIT. It suits developers who prefer SQL and GraphQL to a proprietary NoSQL backend.

TrailBase is a backend platform packaged as one executable, aimed at developers who want something simpler to run than a collection of services. It positions itself as a Firebase alternative and provides type-safe REST and realtime APIs, authentication, an admin UI, and a WebAssembly runtime for extending the backend.

It is built on Rust, the Wasmtime runtime and SQLite, with experimental support for Postgres, and the authors emphasize very low latency so that dedicated caches are less necessary. Other capabilities named in the README and description include multi-database support, geospatial support, server-side rendering and an MCP interface. An online demo and a FAQ are provided on the project website.

TrailBase is licensed under OSL-3.0 and is designed to be easy to self-host, whether for mobile, web or desktop applications. It suits solo developers and small teams who want an integrated backend with few moving parts.

Ory Kratos is a headless identity and user management system for cloud-native applications. It centralizes login, registration, account recovery, verification and profile management so that services call it over HTTP APIs instead of reimplementing those flows, and it works with any UI framework through browser and native app flows.

Supported capabilities include self-service login and registration, multi-factor authentication, social sign-in, OIDC, passkeys, magic links, SMS and TOTP, along with configurable identity schemas and traits and admin APIs for managing the identity lifecycle. It integrates with the wider Ory stack for OAuth2, OpenID Connect and access control.

Kratos is an open-source alternative to hosted identity providers such as Auth0 and Firebase, and the README suggests pairing it with Ory Hydra when migrating from Auth0 or Okta using OAuth2 or OpenID Connect. It is licensed under Apache-2.0 and written in Go, and it can be self-hosted or used through the managed Ory Network.

pREST, short for PostgreSQL REST, is a production-ready service that exposes an existing or new Postgres database as an HTTP API. It delivers CRUD endpoints, custom SQL routes, authentication and access control lists without you having to hand-write a back end, and it adds a read-only endpoint for the Model Context Protocol so AI clients can query data.

It requires PostgreSQL 9.5 or newer and can be obtained with Docker, Homebrew or Go. The documentation covers configuration, an API reference, MCP over HTTP, multi-database setups and the roadmap, plus guidance for AI clients such as Cursor and Claude. Topics list JWT, OpenAPI, TimescaleDB and microservice use, and it is written in Go.

pREST is licensed under MIT and is self-hosted. It suits developers who want a quick, low-code back end on top of Postgres for prototypes, internal tools or microservices, without adopting a larger backend-as-a-service platform.