Supabase was founded in 2020 to create an open-source alternative to Firebase.
Over the last three years it has evolved to offer a modern development
experience similar to Convex. Notably, they are an open-source project that
brings together many other best-in-class open-source projects such as Postgres,
Kong, and more.
Ultimately, we have a lot of respect for Supabase and what they are doing for
developers. Since Convex’s goal as a company aligns with Supabase in creating a
better backend experience for the world, it’s useful to the community to clarify
where each project shines.
What’s similar?
Both Convex and Supabase:
Are based on ACID compliant data stores
Integrate with most modern TS/JS frameworks
Provide an in-browser database editor UI
Come with file storage and a native vector database
What’s different?
Reactivity / Realtime
Convex’s database offers realtime capabilities by default with function
subscriptions to components that need to reflect the latest data. There are
significant advantages to this approach, as there is no setup or middleware
required to configure it. Convex’s websocket client provides both realtime
updates and consistency guarantees that are not possible when your reads are on
a different channel than your writes.
Supabase offers realtime capabilities through their
Realtime server containers that you can
spin up and manage alongside your installation. Supabase’s realtime data isn’t
consistently delivered over the same channel, which limits consistency
guarantees.
Database internals
Convex uses a custom, transactional document store that exclusively interfaces
with Convex mutations
and queries. This enables
us to have strong performance guarantees on any interactions with the database,
as we empower developers by not having to worry about database tuning.
Durability is provided by a write-ahead log that is stored persistently on AWS
RDS. Convex has built-in query-caching and all Convex functions are
automatically subscribed to database changes.
Supabase uses PostgreSQL as their backing store,
an industry-standard database. Using Postgres comes with years of tooling that
has been created for the project by developers, allowing you to leverage
existing projects to manage your database.
Database responsibility
Convex takes full responsibility for your database. Our custom interface with
Convex queries and mutations prevent common database failures. When something
goes wrong, it’s on us. Because the database interface is simpler, problems are
often solved with similar patterns rather than requiring bespoke SQL and data
structures for every new challenge.
Supabase uses a shared-responsibility model with your database: as
Supabase mentions themselves,
using Postgres means that you are always partially responsible for database
health. There’s many different ways to work with Postgres in production, which
is no different with Supabase.
SQL
Convex doesn’t use SQL. Convex functions write directly to documents without
needing to manage an ORM (object-relational-mapping). Convex’s pairs with
TypeScript for schema inference, meaning you don’t need to write a SQL schema.
Convex generates a Javascript-based schema for you that you can edit down the
road. We have push-time validation that your deployed schema matches the data at
rest. Our opinions on SQL are summed up
here.
Supabase uses Postgres. Using Postgres means using SQL, which is familiar for
full-stack and backend developers. Because Supabase is SQL-based, you’ll need to
write and manage a SQL schema. This can entail managing delta files that will
not completely result in a declarative definition of your current schema.
Actions
Convex has a native wrapper for external APIs called
Actions, ensuring that third-party
software doesn’t affect your database performance.
Supabase does not have a native wrapper for interacting with external APIs.
Supabase integrates with the standard set of external auth providers and has a
native auth provider.
TypeScript
Convex offers schema generation from Convex TypeScript functions, type
inference, autocompletion, and tRPC-style type-safety.
Supabase offers schema generation from a SQL schema, server-side TypeScript
edge functions, type inference,
autocompletion, and type-safe queries.
Pricing
Convex has a free developer plan with resource and member limits. Convex Pro has
a flat fee per seat on the Professional plan, with additional charges for
exceeding limits. You get 5 free projects with Convex. Convex’s open-source
distribution is self-hostable via the precompiled binaries or building them from
scratch.
Supabase has a free developer plan with resource and organization limits.
Supabase Pro has a flat fee per organization with additional charges for
exceeding limits. Supabase’s open-source distribution is self-hostable using
your own infrastructure. You get 2 free projects with Supabase on their free
plan,
1 per organization.
Resource limits are higher and lower in different areas for both projects,
compare them here:
