parse-server VS supabase

Backend as a Service (BaaS) goes back to early 2010’s with companies like Parse and Firebase. These products integrated everything a backend provides to a webapp in a single, integrated package that makes it easier to get started and enables you to offload some of the devops maintenance work to someone else.

Prototype Pollution Fix

Parse Server is a great way to quickly spin up a backend for your project. Parse is a Node based utility that sits on top of ExpressJS.

Parse

You can try https://parseplatform.org/, it is self-hosted if you need. And also there are a number of cloud services with compatible API, like https://www.back4app.com/ It has dart-friendly generated API client, much simpler than firebase and is built on top of postgresql and mongodb.

Parse - https://parseplatform.org/

Not to crash the party or anything. Supabase is great and all but in terms of feature completeness and getting actual products built, it doesn't come close to Parse[0].

Same with Appwrite. Both of these are very popular but they either lack essential features or have them behind a subscription wall. For example, the OSS version of Supabase (last I checked) doesn't include the edge functions which are really important for easily computing stuff on the server side. Parse on the other hand is 100% open source and has a huge feature set. It's older than all of these lo-code tools and actually helps solve the issues one comes across when using such tools.

Another thing is extending these tools which is a pain. For example, Parse supports multiple databases by default (postgres & MongoDB) and the ability to write a custom adapter if you need something else. Similarly, if you at any point need to go 100% custom it also makes that possible so you are never locked in. These tools however don't have that level of low-level control and are general all or nothing kind of tools best for small-to-medium sized problems which don't have a lot of room to grow.

But both of these (Appwrite & Supabase) are super markety. Appwrite is all over the place with their ads, Supabase got a huge trend when it launched etc. Parse on the other hand is not too good at marketing their product being fully community run which is one reason not many know of it. Another is their not-so-fancy docs.

I have no stake in any of these products: just my conclusion after having tried all of these.

[0] https://parseplatform.org/

Semantic search demo

1. Create a new Supabase project: Visit Supabase and create a new project.

Supabase positions itself as the "open source Firebase alternative." It was founded in 2020 and is a developer-friendly serverless database platform that supports over 20 frameworks, including popular tools like Next.js, React, Nuxt, Svelte, Flutter, and Vue.

You can find the full application code as a Python Poetry project on GitHub.

If you use PostgreSQL and are proficient with using its row-level security feature, you can choose from several tools/services built above RLS, including Supabase, PostgREST, and PostGraphile. They all provide a way to expose database CRUD as a web API, assuming you've configured the RLS rules to properly secure the access.

Here the thing that accelerated my development the most: Supabase. Thanks to its Database, Authentication, and Edge Functions, we were able to rapidly develop the app. Their JS library made development super seamless, and their local development stack made testing a breeze.

On certain databases, yes

We only scanned for firestore, which is a NoSQL database, conversion tools may still be possible, a good firebase alternative would be https://supabase.com, but please set up RLS, its IMO much easier then Firebase.

Supabase - PostgreSQL

I am working on a Supabase project that is going to have a data model that supports content (called nuggets) that can belong to either users individually or to teams.

Supabase as our DB