Best Supabase Alternatives for Startups Under $50/Month

Supabase has become the darling of the modern backend-as-a-service world — open-source Postgres, real-time subscriptions, and a generous free tier that makes prototyping a joy. But when your startup hits the $25/month Pro plan and you're watching usage creep upward, the question becomes: what else is out there for less?

We evaluated the leading alternatives across three dimensions — pricing predictability, database paradigm, and startup-friendliness — to find the services that keep you under $50/month without sacrificing the things actually worth building on.

The Contenders

1. Railway — Best for Managed Postgres & Deployment Simplicity

If your stack is already Postgres and you just want someone else to handle the ops, Railway is the closest spiritual cousin to Supabase's database layer — without the BaaS overhead. You get managed Postgres instances, Redis, and a deployment platform that connects to your GitHub repo in one click. Pricing is usage-based with a predictable $5/month minimum, and most early-stage projects land well under $50/month.3

Railway shines when your startup needs a straightforward backend: deploy a Node.js or Python app, attach a Postgres database, and you're live. No vendor lock-in on the database side — you can dump and migrate anytime. For teams that prefer SQL's relational rigor and want to avoid learning a new query language, Railway delivers Supabase-level Postgres ergonomics at a lower entry point.

2. Firebase — Best for Real-Time & Mobile-First Apps

Firebase remains the 800-pound gorilla of BaaS, and for good reason. Its real-time database and Firestore offer a generous free tier — 1 GB of storage and 50,000 daily reads — that keeps early-stage startups at zero cost for months.2 The pay-as-you-go model means you only pay for what you use, and most mobile-first or real-time collaboration apps stay comfortably under $50/month through their first growth phase.

The trade-off is the NoSQL paradigm. If your data model is heavily relational, Firebase's document store will force you to denormalize and manage joins in application code. But for chat apps, live dashboards, and mobile backends where real-time sync is table stakes, Firebase's SDKs and offline support are unmatched in developer experience.

3. Aleph Cloud — Best Decentralized Alternative

For startups that prioritize privacy, censorship resistance, and zero vendor lock-in, Aleph Cloud offers a decentralized compute and storage layer that flips the cloud model on its head. Instead of renting servers from a single provider, you deploy across a peer-to-peer network with no central point of failure — or control.

Aleph Cloud is still emerging compared to the incumbents, but for privacy-focused projects — think encrypted messaging, DeFi dashboards, or any app where users demand data sovereignty — it's the only alternative that structurally prevents vendor lock-in. Pricing is competitive with centralized options, and the free tier lets you experiment before committing.

Honorable Mention: Appwrite — Best Budget BaaS

If you want a full BaaS experience (auth, storage, databases, functions) at the lowest possible price, Appwrite's $15/month cloud plan is the most economical offering in the category. Self-hosted deployments incur zero platform fees, making it the ultimate budget option for startups willing to manage their own infrastructure.1

How They Compare

Which One Should You Choose?

The answer depends on your data complexity and budget strictness:

• You're already using Postgres and want simplicity → Railway. You get managed Postgres without the BaaS learning curve, and your data stays portable.3

• You're building a mobile app or real-time collaboration tool → Firebase. The free tier buys you runway, and the real-time SDKs save months of engineering time.2

• You need privacy and decentralization → Aleph Cloud. If vendor lock-in keeps you up at night, this is the only alternative that structurally solves it.

• You want the most economical BaaS → Appwrite. At $15/month per project (or free if self-hosted), Appwrite offers the lowest entry point for a full-featured BaaS with both SQL-like queries and real-time capabilities.1

The Bottom Line

Supabase is excellent — we use it ourselves. But the things actually worth buying for a bootstrapped startup are the tools that keep you under $50/month while your product finds product-market fit. Railway gives you Postgres without the Pro-plan price tag. Firebase gives you real-time sync for free. Aleph Cloud gives you sovereignty. Pick the paradigm that matches your data, and don't pay for overhead you don't need yet.

Recomate earns affiliate commissions from some of the services mentioned above. We only recommend tools we've tested and believe deliver genuine value to founders building on a budget.

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