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Verified Free / Data & APIs

Is Supabase actually free?

Free Forever
How free76/100
Value8/10
How these scores work
Free Score (0–100) follows a fixed rubric: cards up front, auto-billing, hard time cutoffs, withheld core features, and paying with your data or attention all deduct points. 90–100 truly free · 70–89 free forever · 45–69 squeezed · 15–44 trial mechanics · under 15 fake or gone. Value (0–10) is editorial: real-world worth of the free offering measured against its paid equivalent. Full rubric on the methodology page.

Yes — a genuinely usable free tier with a real Postgres database, no card required. The limits that matter are two active projects and a pause after a week of inactivity.

What it’s worth

A managed Postgres instance with auth and storage is otherwise $15–25/month at the low end.

What you get free

  • A real hosted Postgres database with an auto-generated API
  • Authentication, file storage and realtime subscriptions
  • Unlimited API requests
  • Two active projects at once

In practice: a full backend for prototypes and small tools, free, provided nothing depends on it being awake.

Drawbacks

  • Idle projects pause, which rules out low-traffic production use
  • Only two active projects
  • No automatic backups on the free plan

Also paywalled

  • More than two active projects
  • Databases beyond the free size and no idle pausing
  • Daily backups, log retention and support

What the free tier actually gives you

Card requiredNo
Free ceilingMonthly quota
API key neededYes
Bulk downloadYes
Commercial useAllowed
Self-hostableYes
Sleeps when idleYes

Same questions, same order, for every listing in Data & APIs — so you can compare them side by side. Deliberately no exact allowances: those change monthly, the shape of the limit doesn't.

Free facts

VerdictFree Forever
Card requiredNo
Auto-bills—
AccountRequired
Limits2 active projects; 500MB database; pauses after a week idle
The real costAn account, and the pausing rule. No card for the free plan.

The catch

Free projects pause after about a week with no activity. Nothing is deleted and you can wake it up, but a side project you visit monthly will greet you asleep — and so will your users.

The smart play

  • Anything with real users needs the paid tier — the pause rule alone makes free unsuitable for production
  • Two active projects is the real ceiling; archive rather than accumulate
  • Take your own backups on free — daily backups are a paid feature

Common questions

Does Supabase require a credit card?
No — Supabase does not ask for a card to use the free version. Auto-billing: —.
What are the limits of Supabase's free plan?
2 active projects; 500MB database; pauses after a week idle. Free projects pause after about a week with no activity. Nothing is deleted and you can wake it up, but a side project you visit monthly will greet you asleep — and so will your users.
How do I use Supabase without paying?
Anything with real users needs the paid tier — the pause rule alone makes free unsuitable for production Two active projects is the real ceiling; archive rather than accumulate Take your own backups on free — daily backups are a paid feature
What does Supabase really cost?
An account, and the pausing rule. No card for the free plan.
Why is Supabase free?
An account, and the pausing rule. No card for the free plan. A managed Postgres instance with auth and storage is otherwise $15–25/month at the low end.
Is Supabase still free?
As of our last check, yes. Yes — a genuinely usable free tier with a real Postgres database, no card required. The limits that matter are two active projects and a pause after a week of inactivity. Free tiers change without notice, which is why every page here carries the date it was checked.

More info — tap to expand

The pause rule, plainly
A week without activity and the project suspends. You can restore it from the dashboard and the data is intact, but the first visitor after a quiet week meets an error rather than your app. For learning, prototyping and internal tools that's fine. For anything a stranger might load, it isn't.

Last checked: August 2026site-wide date · Verdict: Free Forever — a real permanent free plan. signup and fair limits — but no clock and no card.

Visit Supabase →

Was this verdict right?

Free tiers change without notice. If you have just used it, you know something we don't.

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