Supabase vs Firebase vs Clerk

Supabase, Firebase, Clerk side by side: price, free tier, who each one fits and when to skip it.

Item	Supabase	Firebase	Clerk
What it does	Postgres database with login, file storage, edge functions and realtime in one project.	Google's app platform: login, Firestore database, file storage and free push notifications (FCM).	Drop-in login and user management with ready-made sign-in screens for React and Next.js.
Best for	A solo founder who wants login, database and uploads in one place, with a region close to their users so the app feels fast.	A mobile-first app for a mostly Android audience that needs push notifications and login working within the week.	A Next.js SaaS that needs Google login, user profiles and team accounts by tomorrow, without designing a single auth screen.
Skip it if	You plan to leave a free project idle while you validate, since free projects get paused after a week without activity.	Your SaaS runs on relational data like charges, plans and reports that you will want to query with SQL.	You sell B2B to lots of small companies, since organizations are a paid add-on billed per active organization.
Setup	Needs a developer. Login and a first table in an afternoon; access rules and email setup take another day or two.	Needs a developer. Login and push on a test app in a day; security rules and data modeling take most of a week.	Needs a developer. Working login in about an hour; going live takes up to 48 hours waiting for DNS.
Price	Free, then Pro from $25/month plus usage	Free Spark plan, then pay-as-you-go (Blaze)	Free; Pro $25/month ($20 billed yearly)
What it costs in practice	A SaaS with 2,000 monthly active users and a 3 GB database outgrows the free 500 MB, so it goes to Pro: $25/month, which already covers one Micro server, 100k users, 8 GB of disk and 250 GB of egress. Add $10 for a custom domain on login and you're at about $35/month (estimate, in dollars).	With 2,000 monthly users, login and push are free. If each user loads 200 documents a day, that's 400k reads a day, about 12 million a month. The free 50k a day covers about 1.5 million; the other 10.5 million at $0.03 per 100k (us-central1) cost about $3/month on Blaze (estimate; the price varies by region).	A SaaS with 2,000 users returning each month stays on the free plan: $0. If you want MFA and your own branding, Pro is $25/month ($20 billed yearly). With 150 active customer teams, add 50 × $1 = $50, about $75/month in total (estimate).
Free plan	2 projects, 50k monthly users, 500 MB database and 1 GB of files; paused after a week idle.	Spark plan: 50k monthly users, 1 GiB Firestore with daily read/write limits, push at no cost.	Up to 50k monthly retained users per app, no card required.
Free tier	50k MAU, 500 MB DB, 1 GB files	Push free; 50k MAU; 1 GiB Firestore	50k retained users/month
Price for 10k monthly users	Free (Pro: $25/mo, 100k MAU included)	Free on Spark (50k MAU included)	Free (within the 50k free tier)
Self-host	Yes, open source	No, Google Cloud only	No
Open source	Yes: yes	No: no	No: no
Before you build	Free projects are paused after one week without activity, and you get only 2 free projects across all your organizations. The built-in email only reaches members of your Supabase team, at about 2 emails an hour. Real users get no confirmation or reset email until you plug in your own SMTP. Phone login doesn't send SMS by itself: you open an account with Twilio, MessageBird or Vonage and pay them per message. The free plan has no automatic backups; Pro keeps 7 days, and point-in-time restore is an add-on of about $100/month. The Pro fee is per organization, but each project runs its own server: every extra project adds compute (Micro is $10/month) on top.	Since February 3, 2026, Cloud Storage requires the Blaze plan, even for the default bucket. On Spark, uploads and downloads fail until you add a card. Budget alerts don't stop anything: they only send email. On Blaze, a loop of reads keeps being billed until you notice. Firestore bills every document a query returns, and every change a live listener receives counts as a new read, so a busy list screen adds up fast. Phone (SMS) login only works on Blaze and is billed per SMS sent, on top of the free 50k users. The database location is permanent: pick a far-away region by mistake and your users stay farther from their data for good.	Production needs a domain you own: a free host address like yourapp.vercel.app is refused, since Clerk needs DNS records on it. The free plan has no MFA, no passkeys, no SMS codes and keeps the Clerk badge; those start on Pro at $25/month. On the free plan, sessions are fixed at 7 days, so users have to log in again every week; changing that requires Pro. Organizations are billed separately: 100 active ones are included, then $1 each per month, and custom roles are a $100/month add-on.
Price checked	Checked on Oct 28, 2026 · official pricing	Checked on Oct 28, 2026 · official pricing	Checked on Oct 28, 2026 · official pricing

Prices are read from each official pricing page on the date shown and can change. Always confirm before signing up.

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