PostgreSQL vs Firebase

At a Glance

Attribute	PostgreSQL	Firebase
Category	Database	Database
Pricing Model	open-source	freemium
Starting Price	Free	Free
Free Tier	Yes	Yes
Open Source	Yes	No
Platforms	linux, macos, windows, containers	web, iOS, Android

PostgreSQL

Firebase

PostgreSQL

Firebase

PostgreSQL

No data available.

Firebase

Pros

The free Spark plan is surprisingly capable and you can prototype an entire app without a credit card+156
Realtime database sync across clients is dead simple and the SDK handles reconnection and offline state for you+143

Database

Supabase vs Firebase

Database

Supabase vs Firebase vs PlanetScale

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Cons

Vendor lock-in is severe — the client SDK is so deeply embedded in your app that migrating away took my team two full weeks+199
NoSQL Firestore makes complex queries painful — I rewrote a feature three times trying to avoid needing a proper join+189
Pricing can spike unexpectedly because reads are charged per document, and a single inefficient query can cost dollars instead of cents+176
There's no way to do schema migrations or version your data model, so evolving your data structure over time is a manual nightmare+134
Cloud Functions cold starts on the free tier are often 3-5 seconds, which makes them useless for user-facing request handlers+118