On: Neon Postgres vs. Supabase

[ko_pivot]

While you can use Supabase as simply a Postgres provider, the more interesting comparison IMO is to other backend-as-a-service providers. Supabase used to call themselves a “Firebase alternative” but at this point they have surpassed Firebase in almost every way, in my view.

[awalias → ko_pivot]

(I'm on the supabase team)

I'd also like to offer some corrections to the linked post:

- Supabase is SOC2 type 2 and HIPAA compliant (https://supabase.com/security)

- Supabase works with all the same Postgres tooling that neon does (dbeaver, PgHero, PgAdmin, etc.)

- Supabase also offers integrations with Auth0, Clerk, and Okta etc.

- Supabase does offer verify-full SSL mode

- Supabase encrypts data in transit and at rest

- Supabase does offer pg_stat_statements and additionally the newer pg_stat_monitor

And I just want to call out that this author works for neon (self-proclaimed: https://www.reddit.com/r/SideProject/comments/1dy2r8b/commen...)

[andrenotgiant → awalias]

(I work for Neon.) The author does not work for Neon. He did some one-time consulting work for us earlier this year. We didn't review or have input on this article. I'm sure he'll be happy to update it with the Supabase corrections he is a great guy who is trying to be genuinely helpful.

[TheAnkurTyagi → awalias]

thanks for the feedback... I'll update the post but check with your founder (Paul).

I messaged Paul on Twitter on Sunday before even sharing the post to get feedback if any as I don't want any confusion like you had last time on Reddit.

and I genuinely like both databases and other awesome developer tools.

pls show some fighting spirit.

PS- I'm no longer working with Neon.

happy to show the bank statement :)

[wqtz → ko_pivot]

In my opinion.

I do not get the value of BaaS platforms. By the time you have spun up your 3rd postgres instance in a VM you get a hang of it and create a boilerplate docker container with an API layer.

Firebase has auth for free. Firebase has custom domains for free. Supabase is BaaS and Firebase is an app platform. You can make firebase just work, but for supabase you need other services to compliment.

I maybe missing the point of supabase, but I have tried it for a year and it is not for me. VPS from medium and small vendors are quite cheap and it is worth the investment to set it up in your way.

Fly.io shutdown, planetscale canceled free tier, heroku canceled free tier and frontend layer platforms like Vercel and Netlify has pricing related reputational issues.

I just do not trust these platforms any more. VPS and dedicated servers are cheap, sutainable, and experimentable. They are tried and true. But that's my opinion, I could be wrong.

[shortj → wqtz]

As far as I know, fly.io is very much alive?

[wqtz → shortj]

Ahhhh... my mistake it was "bit.io"

Bit.io was a serverless postgres platform similiar to neon. They got acquired by databricks and their service was shutdown extremely fast.

[victorbjorklund → wqtz]

fly.io isnt a baas. They give you a VM. Just a more nice dev and deploy experience (with a markup). And they didnt shutdown.

[wqtz → victorbjorklund]

Sorry. I meant to say "bit.io"

[swyx → ko_pivot]

they still do to this day because every day Google neglects Firebase is free marketing/customer churn to Supabase. i think they should keep it until ~2 years after Google inevitably kills Firebase.

[TheAnkurTyagi → ko_pivot]

yes please add issues here as it's an open-source project I started and would love some contributions from the community to keep it going. I'm hungry for ideas and write about cool dev tools https://github.com/tyaga001/devtoolsacademy