Supabase FREE pricing breakdown

Supabase positions itself as a backend-as-a-service, wrapping Postgres in a layer of API tooling that targets developers who want to avoid manual database administration. Their entry-level tier is technically free, but the resource ceiling is extremely low. You get 0.5 GB of RAM and 0.5 GB of database storage, which is barely enough for a proof-of-concept or a dormant hobby project. This hardware allocation is significantly tighter than what you would find on a standard VPS from Hetzner or DigitalOcean, where you typically pay $4.00/mo to $6.00/mo for dedicated resources that do not throttle your schema size.

• Exceeding the 0.5 GB storage limit triggers an overage fee of $0.13/GB per month.
• Bandwidth is capped at 5 GB of egress, with subsequent data transfer billed at $0.09/GB.
• The free tier projects are paused after one week of inactivity, which forces a cold-start delay when the next request hits the API.
• Database backups are not included in the free tier, meaning you must handle your own data dumps to ensure recovery if a project grows unexpectedly.

This platform shines when building rapid prototypes or internal tools where the overhead of managing Postgres extensions, Auth, and Realtime subscriptions is more expensive than the monthly bill. If your application architecture relies on large binary objects or heavy JSON payloads, the storage overage rates will quickly outpace the cost of simply deploying a standalone Postgres instance on an AMD EPYC-backed cloud server. The pricing model forces a migration to paid tiers as soon as your active user count increases, as the 0.5 GB limit is designed to expire once you have real traffic. Most production-grade applications will exceed these base limits within the first month of deployment.