Best forDropping prebuilt sign-in, profile and organization UI into a React or Next.js app.
Trade-offPer-user pricing grows with you; users live in Clerk, not your database.
Used by 305 makers' products for this
Firebase alternatives
Not a ranking: each option is described by the situation it fits, with its trade-off, whether it's open source or free to start, whether AI coding agents can work with it, and how many makers' products use it for this job.
33 open source or self-hostable55 with a free tier50 ready for AI agents
On Product Hunt, people weigh Firebase against: Supabase, Convex, Appwrite, Xano, InstantDB, PocketBase, Google Cloud Platform. Some solve a neighbouring job rather than the same one.
For authentication
The whole decision →Hosted service or library in your own app. Hosted services give you UI, MFA and security updates for a monthly bill and some lock-in; libraries keep users in your own database for free, and you own the upkeep.
Firebase (Bundled with your backend): Mobile and client-heavy apps already using Firebase. Trade-off: Ties your user model to Google's ecosystem.
Best forComplex identity needs and enterprise compliance.
Trade-offHeavier to configure and pricier than newer options for a solo project.
Used by 21 makers' products for this
Best forB2B SaaS that will need enterprise SSO and directory sync.
Trade-offIts free tier covers basic sign-in, but enterprise SSO and directory sync are priced per connection — worth it once a customer pays for them.
Used by 19 makers' products for this
Best forApps already on Supabase — auth is part of the same project as the database.
Trade-offLess polished UI components than dedicated auth services.
Used by 13 makers' products for this · Firebase vs Supabase →
Best forTypeScript apps that want users and sessions in their own database, at no cost.
Trade-offYou host it and keep it patched; UI is yours to build.
Used by 6 makers' products for this
Best forAuth that also covers feature flags and organizations in one place.
Used by 7 makers' products for this
Best forB2B products where every customer is an organization with members, roles, invites and SAML.
Trade-offPaid plans start well above hobby budgets once you pass the free tier; users live in PropelAuth, not your database.
Used by 7 makers' products for this
Stytch
Hosted serviceFree tierllms.txt
Best forPasswordless sign-in (magic links, one-time codes, passkeys) and B2B SSO through APIs, free up to 10,000 monthly active users.
Trade-offNow part of Twilio, which says nothing changes for now; overage prices aren't published, and users live in Stytch, not your database.
Used by 5 makers' products for this
Open sourceFree tier
Best forA self-hosted identity server with SSO, OpenID Connect, SAML and user federation for several apps at once.
Trade-offA heavy Java server to run, upgrade and theme; more admin console than a small app usually needs.
Used by 3 makers' products for this
Best forA Clerk-style developer experience you can also self-host.
Trade-offYounger ecosystem than the incumbents.
Used by 2 makers' products for this
Logto
Open-source serviceBest forOpen-source OIDC auth with hosted sign-in pages, organizations and roles, on a cloud with 50,000 free monthly active users or on your own servers.
Trade-offRuns as a separate auth server your app redirects to, rather than components inside your pages; smaller community than the incumbents.
Used by 2 makers' products for this
Best forOpen-source auth with prebuilt login UI and backend SDKs, self-hosted for free or on their cloud.
Trade-offThe core runs as a separate service next to your backend; MFA and some features are paid add-ons on the cloud.
Used by 1 makers' products for this
Descope
Hosted serviceBest forLogin, MFA and SSO flows designed in a visual drag-and-drop editor instead of code.
Trade-offThe jump from the free tier to the first paid plan ($249/mo billed annually) is steep for a solo project; flows live in Descope's editor, not your repo.
Used by 1 makers' products for this
Frontegg
Hosted serviceFree tierllms.txt
Best forB2B SaaS that wants a ready-made admin portal where each customer manages its own users, roles and SSO.
Trade-offPaid pricing past 7,500 monthly active users isn't published; built for multi-tenant B2B, so it's more than a consumer app needs.
Used by 1 makers' products for this
Open sourceFree tier
Best forExisting Next.js apps built on NextAuth, and teams that want OAuth sign-in with users in their own database.
Trade-offThe project is now part of Better Auth, which offers a migration guide; v5 has stayed in beta for a long time, and features like two-factor or organizations are yours to build.
No maker product tracked for this yet
Amazon Cognito
Hosted serviceFree tierFrom $0.015 per MAU (Essentials) after 10,000 free
Best forUser sign-up and sign-in for apps already built on AWS, with a permanent free tier of 10,000 monthly active users.
Trade-offHosted login pages and error messages are hard to customise, some user pool settings can't be changed after creation, and exporting users with their passwords isn't supported.
No maker product tracked for this yet
Best forAn open-source identity server with organizations (multi-tenancy), passkeys and SSO built in, as a hosted cloud or on your own servers.
Trade-offAGPL license for self-hosting; a full identity server is more to run and learn than an auth library in your app.
No maker product tracked for this yet
Open sourceFree tierFrom $5 per internal user/mo, $0.02 per external user/mo (Enterprise, billed annually)llms.txt
Best forA self-hosted identity provider that adds single sign-on in front of many apps, via OIDC, SAML, LDAP or a proxy.
Trade-offSelf-hosted only, with no hosted plan; built more for SSO across apps than for sign-up flows inside a customer-facing product.
No maker product tracked for this yet
BoxyHQ
Library in your appBest forAdding enterprise SAML SSO and SCIM directory sync to an existing login system, self-hosted for free.
Trade-offOry acquired BoxyHQ and now ships it as Ory Polis; it handles SSO only, not sign-up, sessions or passwords, and you run and patch it yourself.
No maker product tracked for this yet
For database
The whole decision →Where the data lives: a whole backend platform (database, auth and storage in one project), a managed database you reach from your own code, or the raw engine on your own server. Postgres is the default unless you have a reason to pick otherwise; analytics and graph databases sit next to it for workloads it handles poorly, not instead of it. How your code talks to it is its own decision (Database Access & ORMs).
Firebase (Backend platform): Mobile apps that need offline sync and client-side SDKs. Trade-off: A document store without SQL joins; hard to migrate off.
Best forPostgres plus auth, storage and realtime in one project.
Trade-offAuth, storage and database in one vendor makes leaving harder later, and free projects pause after a week without activity.
Used by 563 makers' products for this · Firebase vs Supabase →
Best forDocument-shaped data and teams already fluent in Mongo.
Trade-offNo joins or schema by default, so relational data and migrations take discipline you'd get for free in Postgres.
Used by 131 makers' products for this
Best forServerless Postgres that scales to zero, with a branch per preview deploy.
Trade-offCold starts after idle periods add latency to the first query, and heavy always-on workloads can cost more than a fixed server.
Used by 95 makers' products for this
Open sourceFree tierIn Replit
Best forThe engine behind most of the hosted options above, run on your own server or container for full control and a flat cost.
Trade-offBackups, upgrades, failover and connection pooling are yours to set up and watch.
Used by 74 makers' products for this
Best forRealtime, collaborative apps written entirely in TypeScript.
Trade-offIts own data model and query API rather than SQL.
Used by 50 makers' products for this
From $5/mollms.txt
Best forApps that expect heavy scale and want zero-downtime schema changes.
Trade-offNo free tier.
Used by 29 makers' products for this
Best forSQLite at the edge, or one database per customer.
Trade-offSQLite semantics — one writer at a time, fewer extensions — suit read-heavy apps better than write-heavy ones.
Used by 13 makers' products for this
Best forFast aggregate queries over billions of rows of events, logs or metrics, self-hosted or on ClickHouse Cloud.
Trade-offBuilt for bulk inserts and scans, not frequent row updates or transactions; runs next to your main database, not instead of it.
Used by 40 makers' products for this
Best forManaged ClickHouse that turns SQL over event streams into fast API endpoints for dashboards and usage analytics in your product.
Trade-offClosed, cloud-only service; its own project format and CLI to learn on top of ClickHouse SQL.
Used by 29 makers' products for this
Best forData that is mostly relationships — social graphs, recommendations, knowledge graphs — queried with Cypher.
Trade-offA second database and query language to learn and run; managed AuraDB is priced by memory.
Used by 19 makers' products for this
Best forAnalytical SQL inside your app or script over local or S3-hosted CSV and Parquet files, with no server to run.
Trade-offAn embedded library, so it doesn't serve many concurrent writers like a database server does.
Used by 14 makers' products for this
Best forA Firebase-style backend — database, auth, storage, functions and messaging — that is open source and can be self-hosted.
Trade-offIts own document-style database API rather than plain SQL; self-hosting runs many containers.
Used by 8 makers' products for this · Firebase vs Appwrite →
Xano
Backend platformFrom $85/mo (billed annually)llms.txt
Best forA backend — database, API endpoints, business logic and auth — built visually instead of in code.
Trade-offClosed platform with logic stored in its own visual format; the free plan is rate-limited and meant for testing, so production starts at a paid annual plan.
Used by 8 makers' products for this
Open sourceFree tier
Best forA whole backend — database, auth, files, realtime and admin UI — in one self-hosted executable.
Trade-offSQLite on a single server, so it scales up, not out; still pre-1.0, so upgrades can include breaking changes.
Used by 6 makers' products for this
Open sourceFree tier
Best forPHP, Laravel, WordPress and Rails stacks, and teams that already know MySQL well.
Trade-offFewer extensions and advanced types than Postgres, so most new tooling (vectors, JSON-heavy work) targets Postgres first.
Used by 6 makers' products for this
InstantDB
Backend platformOpen sourcellms.txt
Best forRealtime, multiplayer and offline-friendly apps where the frontend queries and writes data directly, with auth, permissions and storage included.
Trade-offInstant Cloud closed to new signups in August 2026 and shuts down in August 2027, so new projects mean self-hosting it.
Used by 2 makers' products for this
Xata
Managed databaseBest forPostgres branches that copy instantly and scale to zero, for a separate database per developer, pull request or agent, optionally filled with anonymized production data.
Trade-offNo ongoing free tier on its cloud, only a trial; the older Xata with built-in search and its own SDK was retired in 2026, so older tutorials don't apply.
Used by 1 makers' products for this
Open sourceFree tier
Best forA database that is just a file in your app — desktop and mobile apps, single-server web apps, tests and prototypes.
Trade-offOne writer at a time and no network access of its own; backups and replication need extra tools (Litestream, or a host like Turso).
No maker product tracked for this yet
Best forA serverless SQLite database for apps running on Cloudflare Workers or Pages, with a free tier and no egress fees.
Trade-offEach database is capped at 10 GB, writes go through a single primary, and it's reached from Workers rather than from any server.
No maker product tracked for this yet
Free tierFrom $0.625 per million writes, $0.125 per million reads (on-demand, us-east-1)
Best forA serverless key-value and document database on AWS that scales with no servers to manage, with an always-free tier.
Trade-offNo joins or ad-hoc queries; you design tables around your queries in advance, and changing them later is costly.
No maker product tracked for this yet
Open sourceFree tier
Best forA MySQL-compatible open-source database, the default MySQL on many Linux distributions and hosts.
Trade-offHas drifted from MySQL over the years, so some newer MySQL features and tools don't carry over exactly.
No maker product tracked for this yet
For file storage
The whole decision →Raw object storage or an upload service. Buckets (S3 and the S3-compatible clones) are cheap and portable but leave uploads, validation and access rules to you; upload services and platform-bundled storage hand you a working upload flow and pick the bucket for you.
Firebase (Bundled with your platform): Mobile and web apps on Firebase — Cloud Storage uploads straight from the client SDK, guarded by security rules. Trade-off: Access rules are written in Firebase's own rules language; storage and download bandwidth follow Google Cloud pricing.
Best forFiles that get downloaded often — the S3 API without egress fees.
Trade-offFewer storage tiers and event features than S3.
Used by 4 makers' products for this
Best forApps already on Supabase — storage access follows the same row-level security policies as your data.
Trade-offOnly worth it if the rest of your backend is on Supabase.
Used by 3 makers' products for this · Firebase vs Supabase →
From Pay as you goIn Lovable
Best forApps already on AWS, or ones that need lifecycle rules, storage tiers and event triggers.
Trade-offEgress fees add up when files are downloaded a lot, and IAM setup is fiddly for one person.
No maker product tracked for this yet
Free tierFrom $10/mo
Best forTypeScript apps that want typed upload endpoints and drop-in upload components instead of wiring presigned URLs.
Trade-offFiles live in UploadThing's storage; moving away means migrating them.
No maker product tracked for this yet
Best forNext.js apps hosted on Vercel that need simple uploads with no extra account.
Trade-offTies storage to your Vercel bill; usage-based transfer costs grow with traffic.
No maker product tracked for this yet
Best forAn open-source upload widget with drag-and-drop, progress, resumable uploads and direct-to-S3, in front of whatever bucket you choose.
Trade-offYou still set up presigned URLs or a companion server, and the bucket rules, yourself.
Used by 2 makers' products for this
Open sourceFree tierFrom Contact sales (AIStor Enterprise)
Best forThe long-standing S3-compatible server for self-hosting, with many existing guides, Docker setups and client SDKs.
Trade-offThe open-source community edition is AGPL, ships as source only, and its repository was archived in 2026; new features go into the commercial AIStor editions.
Used by 1 makers' products for this
Backblaze B2
Object storageBest forLarge volumes of files kept for a long time — backups, archives, media libraries — at low storage cost.
Trade-offFree egress is capped relative to what you store; fewer regions and integrations than the big clouds.
No maker product tracked for this yet
Open sourceFree tierFrom $2/TB/mo
Best forRunning your own S3-compatible storage for lots of files, from one server up to a cluster.
Trade-offSeveral components (master, volume, filer, S3 gateway) to learn; durability and backups are yours to get right.
No maker product tracked for this yet
Open sourceFree tier
Best forA small, single-binary S3-compatible store for a few self-hosted machines, even in different locations.
Trade-offImplements the common S3 calls but not every feature (such as versioning or object lock); built for small deployments rather than huge throughput.
No maker product tracked for this yet
For hosting
The whole decision →What shape is your app? A frontend or serverless app fits a frontend cloud. Long-running servers, background workers and databases fit a PaaS or container platform. A hyperscaler cloud has every building block but leaves you to assemble them; a platform or framework that deploys into your own cloud account sits between, with platform-style deploys and the resources on your own cloud bill.
Firebase (Frontend cloud): Static sites and SSR apps (App Hosting) deployed next to Firebase Auth, Firestore and Cloud Functions. Trade-off: Server-side parts run on Google Cloud under the hood, with Google Cloud billing and limits.
Free tierFrom Pay as you go
Best forThe widest catalog of building blocks — Lambda, containers, managed databases, queues — to assemble your own infrastructure.
Trade-offYou wire up networking, permissions and deploys yourself; billing is per service and hard to predict.
Used by 386 makers' products for this
Best forCheap global hosting with Workers, plus database (D1) and storage (R2) on the same platform.
Trade-offThe Workers runtime isn't full Node.js; some libraries need adapting.
Used by 374 makers' products for this
Best forStatic sites and JAMstack apps on any framework.
Trade-offServer-side features run as functions with time limits; long-running work needs another host.
Used by 239 makers' products for this
Best forA Heroku-style platform for web services, cron jobs and Postgres.
Trade-offFree instances sleep when idle and wake slowly; paid instances are billed whether busy or not.
Used by 127 makers' products for this
Best forServers, workers and databases deployed together, with almost no configuration.
Trade-offUsage-based billing needs watching; fewer regions and compliance options than a hyperscaler.
Used by 112 makers' products for this
Best forA lot of CPU and RAM per euro, in European, US and Singapore regions.
Trade-offFewer managed services than big clouds, and account verification can be strict.
Used by 100 makers' products for this
From $1.94/mo (shared-cpu-1x)llms.txt
Best forDocker apps that should run close to users in many regions.
Trade-offMore operations work than a PaaS.
Used by 66 makers' products for this
Best forA Heroku- or Vercel-style dashboard on your own server, with many one-click services.
Trade-offThe dashboard itself runs on your server and needs updates.
Used by 23 makers' products for this
Best forNext.js apps — zero-config deploys and preview URLs.
Trade-offThe Hobby plan is non-commercial; costs grow with usage.
No maker product tracked for this yet
Free tierFrom Pay as you go
Best forContainers on Cloud Run that scale to zero, next to BigQuery, Firebase and Google's AI services.
Trade-offMore setup than a PaaS, and IAM and billing take learning.
Used by 184 makers' products for this
Best forApp Platform deploys from git next to DigitalOcean's managed databases, storage and droplets.
Trade-offFewer built-in extras than Vercel or Railway, and instances are billed per size, not per request.
Used by 141 makers' products for this
Best forFree hosting for static sites, docs and landing pages published straight from a repo.
Trade-offStatic files only — no server code, no preview URLs for pull requests, and soft bandwidth limits.
Used by 113 makers' products for this
Best forApp Service, Functions and Container Apps alongside Azure OpenAI and Microsoft's identity and enterprise tooling.
Trade-offA large, enterprise-shaped console with more configuration than a PaaS.
Used by 70 makers' products for this
Best forA long-established git-push platform with managed Postgres, Redis and a large add-on marketplace.
Trade-offNo free tier, and since March 2026 Heroku runs as a sustaining-engineering platform focused on stability rather than new features.
Used by 53 makers' products for this
From $6/GB RAM + $13/vCPU per monthllms.txt
Best forA Heroku-style dashboard that runs your apps on Kubernetes in your own AWS, Google Cloud or Azure account.
Trade-offTwo bills (Porter plus the cloud), and a managed Kubernetes cluster costs more at the low end than a PaaS.
Used by 13 makers' products for this
From Pay as you goCLI
Best forGit-connected hosting for static and SSR frontends inside your AWS account, with an optional AWS-backed backend.
Trade-offFramework support and build settings lag the frontend clouds, and debugging leads into CloudWatch and IAM.
Used by 9 makers' products for this
Best forDefining an app and its AWS or Cloudflare infrastructure — functions, containers, queues, databases — in TypeScript, and deploying it with one command.
Trade-offYou still own an AWS account's billing, limits and permissions; mistakes in config create real resources.
Used by 7 makers' products for this
Zeabur
Your own serverFrom $5/mo
Best forA PaaS-style dashboard that deploys apps, databases and one-click templates onto servers bought through Zeabur or connected from your own cloud.
Trade-offTwo bills, the plan plus the servers, and its earlier shared, usage-billed cluster stopped taking new services in April 2026, so older guides describe a different setup.
Used by 3 makers' products for this