Pricing: PocketBase Cloud vs Supabase
PocketBase Cloud and Supabase price very differently: Supabase charges per project (each project needs its own compute instance), while PocketBase Cloud charges per plan — and on Pro, per server, no matter how many instances run on it. This page compares real monthly costs across the dimensions that matter.
Prices below are as of September 2026 — check the Supabase pricing page and the PocketBase Cloud pricing section for current numbers.
Summary
| PocketBase Cloud | Supabase | |
|---|---|---|
| Free tier | $0 — 1 instance + 5 frontends | $0 — 2 projects, paused after 1 week inactive |
| First paid tier | $10/mo (Starter) | $25/mo (Pro) |
| Each additional project | +$5/mo (Starter add-on) or included on Pro compute | +~$10/mo (Micro compute per project) |
| 10 projects | $25/mo flat (one Pro compute) | ~$115/mo ($25 + 9 × $10 compute) |
| Frontend hosting | Included (5 on Free/Starter, unlimited on Pro) | Not offered |
| Functions / hooks | Included on every plan, no invocation fees | 2M Edge Function invocations on Pro, then $2/million |
| Monthly active users | Included — no per-user pricing | 50k Free / 100k Pro, then $0.00325/MAU |
| Realtime | SSE subscriptions included | 500 peak connections on Pro, then $10/1,000 |
| Dedicated backend containers | Pro — runs on your dedicated compute, flat price | Not offered |
| Bandwidth | Included with your dedicated compute | 250 GB egress on Pro, then $0.09/GB |
| Database storage | 50MB Free / 3GB Starter / dedicated compute on Pro | 500MB Free / 8GB Pro, then $0.125/GB |
Free tier
Supabase Free includes 2 projects with a 500 MB database, 1 GB file storage, and 50,000 monthly active users — genuinely generous. The catch: free projects pause after one week of inactivity and must be manually restored, so they’re not suitable for anything that needs to stay up.
PocketBase Cloud Free includes 1 PocketBase instance (50 MB storage) plus 5 frontend deployments. Instances stay running — no hibernation, no cold starts — though instances inactive for 30 days are removed. A $0 Stripe subscription is required (you’re never charged).
If you want a bigger free database for a project you rarely touch, Supabase wins. If you want a small app that’s actually always on, plus somewhere to host its frontend, PocketBase Cloud wins.
A single project
PocketBase Cloud Starter is $10/month: 1 PocketBase instance with 3 GB storage on a dedicated server cluster, your choice of 6 locations, a custom domain, and 5 frontend deployments included.
Supabase Pro is $25/month: it includes $10 in compute credits (covering one Micro instance for one project), an 8 GB database, 100 GB file storage, and 100,000 MAUs.
Supabase’s Pro tier includes bigger raw quotas — but at 5× the price, and you still need to host your frontend elsewhere. For a typical small production app, $10/month on PocketBase Cloud covers the database, auth, file storage, and the frontend.
Multiple projects — where the models diverge
This is the biggest pricing difference between the two platforms.
On Supabase, every project needs its own compute instance. The Pro plan’s $10 credit covers the first project; each additional project adds a Micro instance at ~$10/month (billed hourly):
| Projects | Supabase (Pro + Micro each) |
|---|---|
| 1 | $25/mo |
| 3 | ~$45/mo |
| 5 | ~$65/mo |
| 10 | ~$115/mo |
On PocketBase Cloud, you have two cheap paths:
- Starter add-ons — +1 PocketBase instance for $5/month each. Three projects: $10 + 2 × $5 = $20/month.
- Pro dedicated compute — a flat $25/month for your own 2 vCPU compute that hosts effectively unlimited PocketBase instances. Twenty projects, fifty projects: still $25/month, because you pay for the compute, not per project.
| Projects | PocketBase Cloud | Supabase |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | $10/mo (Starter) | $25/mo |
| 3 | $20/mo (Starter + add-ons) | ~$45/mo |
| 10 | $25/mo flat (one Pro compute) | ~$115/mo |
For agencies, indie hackers with a portfolio of apps, or anyone running per-client deployments, this difference dominates everything else on the page.
Frontend hosting
Supabase doesn’t host frontends — you’ll pair it with Vercel, Netlify, or Cloudflare Pages, which adds another bill (or another free tier with its own limits) and another dashboard.
PocketBase Cloud includes static site hosting on every plan: 5 frontends on Free and Starter (+5 for $5/month as an add-on), unlimited on Pro. Frontend, database, and backend live in one project on one bill — see Deploying a Frontend.
Functions: hooks vs Edge Functions
Both platforms let you run custom server-side logic — routes, event handlers, scheduled jobs — but they bill it very differently.
Supabase Edge Functions are billed per invocation: 2 million included on Pro, then $2 per million. Costs scale with traffic.
PocketBase Cloud includes JavaScript hooks on every plan — Free included. Hooks cover the same ground as Edge Functions (custom API routes, record event handlers, cron jobs, outbound HTTP calls) and run inside your instance, right next to your data. There’s no invocation counter and no per-call billing — a hook that fires a million times costs the same as one that fires once.
Dedicated backends
For workloads that outgrow functions — long-running jobs, websockets, large dependencies, a full Next.js app — PocketBase Cloud Pro runs full backend containers (Node.js, Next.js, Deno, Bun) on your dedicated compute at a flat monthly price, with no per-request billing. See Deploying a Backend.
Supabase has no equivalent — anything beyond the edge-function model means renting a separate service (Fly.io, Railway, a VPS) with its own bill.
Storage and bandwidth
Supabase meters overages on Pro: database beyond 8 GB at $0.125/GB, file storage beyond 100 GB at $0.021/GB, monthly active users beyond 100,000 at $0.00325 each, realtime peak connections beyond 500 at $10 per 1,000 — and the one that surprises people, egress beyond 250 GB at $0.09/GB. A traffic spike or a popular file download shows up on your bill (spend caps can stop the overage — by cutting the service off instead).
PocketBase Cloud ties storage to your plan (50 MB Free, 3 GB Starter, your dedicated compute’s disk on Pro) and includes bandwidth with the compute — there is no per-GB egress meter. If you need more headroom for files, PocketBase also supports S3-compatible storage, so you can plug in any bucket at commodity prices.
When to choose which
Choose Supabase when:
- You need full PostgreSQL — complex SQL, PostGIS, pgvector, and the extension ecosystem (see PocketBase vs Supabase).
- Your workload is write-heavy at high concurrency, or you need presence and broadcast channels, SAML SSO, or a compliance-heavy plan.
- You want a large free database for a prototype you rarely touch, and a one-week pause is acceptable.
- You only ever run one or two projects and value Supabase’s raw quotas — 8 GB database, 100 GB storage, 100,000 MAUs — enough to justify $25/mo.
Choose PocketBase Cloud when:
- You run several apps and want one flat bill: $25/mo on Pro hosts effectively unlimited instances, so cost stops scaling with project count.
- You want the frontend, database, and backend hosted together, on one invoice and one CLI.
- Your apps are read-heavy CRUD — which is most freelancer, agency, and indie apps.
- You want no egress, invocation, MAU, or realtime meters on the bill.
The honest bottom line
- One project with Postgres-class needs — Supabase Pro’s $25/mo is a fair deal, and its quotas are generous.
- Several apps, or a fixed budget — PocketBase Cloud wins on price and bundling: $10/mo for the first app with the frontend included, $25/mo flat for effectively unlimited projects versus ~$115/mo for ten on Supabase.