Every free backend platform tier that clears our bar in 2026: 6 offers meet the criteria and 3 offers are demoted with a named reason. Our membership test: bundles a database with auth, functions or storage as one product. We could not confirm today's terms for 3 of them: on 1 the page we cite did not answer, and on 2 our own read did not confirm them. Each row says why.

AgentDeals › Best Of › Backend Platform

Best Free Backend Platform Tools

Every free backend platform tier that clears our bar today. Updated 2026-11-14. Our membership test: bundles a database with auth, functions or storage as one product.

6 offers meet our criteria on this page. Of those, 3 carry no recorded change to the terms we publish, and 3 a recorded narrowing. The Durability column below says which offer is in which group, and links the dated record behind every change. We do not rank these by how much you get, because the limits are not comparable without reading each vendor's page. They are listed in an order that rotates daily. Here is how that order is derived. There is no top slot here to sell.
Why trust this data? Every free tier is verified against the vendor's pricing page with dates tracked. We monitor 513 pricing changes and flag vendors that have reduced or removed free tiers. Rankings start every offer at zero and can only demote. There is no signal a vendor can acquire, lobby for, or buy — there is nothing to add. A record reaches a function page when its category names the function or when it carries a subtype label that names the function. Adding a label to a record publishes it here; removing one withdraws it. No page holds a list of vendors. See all 45 databases offers →
1
codehooks.io caution effective between 2026-07-11 and 2026-08-28 reduced
Free

The free plan includes 1 Developer, API/Functions: 1/sec, 500/day, 1 Worker per queue, Worker timeout 30s, 150 MB Database Storage, 1 GB File Storage, 1 Space Chat and Email Support. No Credit Card Required. Note — effective between 2026-07-11 and 2026-08-28: The free tier now has significantly reduced API call limits (1/sec, 500/day). Previously 60/minute. Source ↗

Listed in Databases, and on this page because we labelled it backend_platform. We read that on 2026-08-31 from https://codehooks.io/docs, where it says: “Codehooks.io is the complete backend for webhooks and automations. Receive, store, process, and deliver webhooks with a built-in database, queues, cron, and retries behind every endpoint.”. How we use this

Recorded, but does not affect rank:
  • discovered 2026-08-28 · effective date unknown — limits reduced: The free tier now has significantly reduced API call limits (1/sec, 500/day). Previously 60/minute. Source ↗
  • discovered 2026-04-12 · effective date unknown — limits reduced: Storage reduced from 5GB to 150MB database + 1GB file storage. Developer seats reduced from 2 to 1. Source ↗
Full profile Alternatives codehooks.io ↗
2
Neon stable
Free

Serverless Postgres with branching — free tier includes 100 CU-hours/month per project, 1 GB of Postgres storage per project (20 GB total across all projects), 5 GB of public network transfer per project per month, up to 100 projects, 10 branches per project, Neon Auth (60K MAU), auto-scaling up to 2 CU, scale-to-zero, 5 GB of Object Storage, and Functions (10 active capacity-hours, 400 waiting capacity-hours, 1M invocations). No credit card is required. The AI Gateway (one Neon credential for models from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and others) is available on every plan, including Free. It requires a card and a $5 minimum purchase of prepaid credits in the Neon Console. The Free plan otherwise remains unchanged. Model prices match each provider's list price with no markup.

  • Neon's Free plan needs no credit card. (From neon.com/pricing, read 2026-10-22.)
  • An agent can create a Neon Postgres project without a Neon account. Unclaimed projects expire in 72 hours and are limited to 100 MB storage and 1 GB transfer. A person claims the project to keep it. (From neon.com/docs/reference/claimable-neon, read 2026-10-22.)
  • On the Free plan, scale to zero can't be disabled: computes suspend after 5 minutes of inactivity. (From neon.com/docs/introduction/plans, read 2026-10-04.)
  • Neon doesn't pause Free projects for inactivity: an idle database starts again on the next query, with no restore step. (From neon.com/pricing, read 2026-11-01.)
  • Running out of CU-hours or network transfer suspends the compute until the next billing period or an upgrade. (From neon.com/docs/introduction/plans, read 2026-10-04.)
  • Neon's Free plan provides 100 CU-hours per project per month. One CU allocates about 4 GB of RAM, and 100 CU-hours is enough to run a 0.25 CU compute (about 1 GB of RAM) for 400 hours, about 17 days of continuous running. All computes in a project count toward usage, including those for each branch and any read replicas. (From neon.com/docs/introduction/plans, read 2026-11-03.)
  • At the storage cap, inserts, updates and deletes fail until space is freed or the plan is upgraded. (From neon.com/docs/introduction/plans, read 2026-10-04.)
  • Neon's Azure East US 2, West US 3, and Germany West Central regions no longer accept new projects as of April 7, 2026; Free-plan projects there inactive for 90+ days may be deleted after October 5, 2026. (From neon.com/docs/import/azure-regions-deprecation, read 2026-10-07.)
  • Platforms that create databases for their users can apply for the Agent Plan. You must have a Neon Scale plan with a credit card on file and get Neon's approval. Neon sponsors the databases for your free-tier users. Paid usage gets up to $25,000 in credits and compute at $0.106 per compute-unit hour. (From neon.com/docs/introduction/agent-plan.md, read 2026-10-11.)
  • Neon gives $20 in free credits to try paid features, claimed through a promo link in the Neon Console. (From neon.com/pricing.md, read 2026-10-11.)
  • Neon's pricing page offers startups up to $100k in credits. The startup page describes the Databricks Startup Program, up to $200K in credits for Neon and Databricks for qualifying startups. (From neon.com/startups, read 2026-10-11.)
  • Neon's open source programme: Neon reviews each application and decides per project whether to support it with a monthly cash sponsorship through GitHub Sponsors, Neon credits, or both, and how much. Cash sponsorships come from a pool of at least $200,000 a year and run for six-month terms that do not renew automatically. Supported projects can receive up to $5,000 in Neon credits and up to $5,000 in Neon AI Gateway credits. It requires an OSI-approved license and a GitHub Sponsors profile. (From neon.com/programs/open-source.md, read 2026-10-29.)
  • After the free plan, Neon's paid plans bill only for usage, with no monthly minimum: Launch charges $0.106 per CU-hour of compute and Scale $0.222, both charge $0.35 per GB-month of storage, extra branches cost $1.50 per branch-month, and network transfer beyond 500 GB per project costs $0.10 per GB. (From neon.com/pricing.md, read 2026-10-15.)
  • Neon Realtime has been in public beta since 2026-10-15. It provides live updates from SQL queries without polling and is free during the beta. Compute and egress are billed under the plan; beta runs in four AWS regions: us-east-1, us-east-2, eu-central-1 and ap-southeast-1. (From neon.com/docs/realtime/overview, read 2026-10-16.)
  • Neon archives branches older than 14 days and not accessed for 24 hours. Unarchiving happens automatically when a branch is connected to or queried. Branches with large amounts of data may connect and query slower while unarchiving. (From neon.com/docs/guides/branch-archiving, read 2026-10-29.)

Listed in Databases, and on this page because we labelled it backend_platform. We read that on 2026-08-31 from https://neon.com/, where it says: “The backend for apps and agents. Build with Lakebase Postgres, Auth, Functions, Storage, and an AI Gateway: instant, branchable, serverless.”. How we use this

Full profile Alternatives Compare Compare neon.com/pricing ↗
3
Convex stable
Free

Reactive backend — 1M function calls/month, 0.5 GB database + vector storage, 1 GB file storage, real-time sync

Listed in Databases, and on this page because we labelled it backend_platform. We read that on 2026-08-31 from https://www.convex.dev/, where it says: “Convex is the reactive backend platform that keeps up with you and your agents.”. How we use this

Full profile Alternatives www.convex.dev/plans ↗
4
Nhost stable
Free

Open-source backend with Postgres and Hasura GraphQL, plus Auth, Storage and Functions. The Starter plan is $0 a month: 1 GB database, 1 GB storage and 5 GB egress, with functions, realtime APIs and unlimited users. It is limited to 1 project, and the project is paused after 1 week of inactivity. Pro starts at $25 a month with $15 of compute credits, a 10 GB database, 50 GB storage and 50 GB egress.

Listed in Databases, and on this page because we labelled it backend_platform. We read that on 2026-08-31 from https://nhost.io/, where it says: “Nhost is a managed backend platform with Postgres, GraphQL, Auth, Storage, and serverless Functions.”. How we use this

Full profile Alternatives nhost.io/pricing ↗
5
Firebase caution 2026-12-01 reduced
Spark

Spark plan, no payment method needed: Auth (50K MAU), Firestore Standard edition (1 GiB stored, 50K reads/day, 20K writes/day, 20K deletes/day), Realtime Database (100 simultaneous connections, 1 GB stored, 10 GB/month downloaded), Hosting (10 GB storage, 360 MB/day transfer), and no-cost Analytics, Crashlytics and Cloud Messaging. Firestore Enterprise on Spark includes 1 GiB stored, 10 GiB/month network egress, 40K write units/day, 50K read units/day, 50K real-time update units/day. Cloud Functions and Cloud Storage need the Blaze plan. Note — 2026-12-01: Firebase Spark projects that enabled Remote Config before September 1, 2026 can use it under the old terms until December 1, 2026. From December 1, 2026, the 100,000-fetches-a-day limit applies to them, with 30 days of full service from the first day they go over, then throttling unless they upgrade to Blaze. A Spark project that upgrades to Blaze before November 15, 2026 is not billed for Remote Config until February 1, 2027. Blaze projects from before September 1, 2026 start Remote Config billing on February 1, 2027. Source ↗

  • If a Spark project exceeds a no-cost quota, that product is shut off for the project (all its apps) for the rest of the calendar month, unless you upgrade to Blaze. (From firebase.google.com/docs/projects/billing/firebase-pricing-plans, read 2026-10-05.)
  • A Spark account can create a small number of projects, usually about 5-10. (From firebase.google.com/support/faq, read 2026-10-05.)
  • Linking a Cloud Billing account to a Spark project, including one with $300 Google Cloud free trial credits, automatically upgrades it to the pay-as-you-go Blaze plan. (From firebase.google.com/docs/projects/billing/firebase-pricing-plans, read 2026-10-05.)
  • On Spark, email-link sign-in is limited to 5 emails a day; sending more needs a billing account (Blaze). (From firebase.google.com/docs/auth/limits, read 2026-10-07.)
  • Phone (SMS) sign-in is not available on the Spark plan; on Blaze each SMS sent is billed. (From firebase.google.com/pricing, read 2026-10-20.)
  • Since September 1, 2026, Remote Config allows up to 100,000 fetch requests a day per Spark project at no cost. A Spark project that exceeds this limit gets 30 days of normal service, then is throttled unless it upgrades to Blaze. Blaze projects pay $0.06 per 10,000 requests above 100,000 a day, up to 10,000,000, and $0.01 per 10,000 above that. (From firebase.google.com/docs/remote-config/pricing, read 2026-10-17.)
  • Spark projects that used Remote Config before September 1, 2026 are subject to the 100,000-fetches-a-day limit from December 1, 2026 until they upgrade to Blaze. Blaze projects that used Remote Config before September 1, 2026 start Remote Config billing on February 1, 2027. A Spark project that used Remote Config before September 1, 2026 and upgrades to Blaze before November 15, 2026 starts Remote Config billing on February 1, 2027. (From firebase.google.com/docs/remote-config/pricing, read 2026-10-17.)
  • On the Blaze plan, all Gemini Developer API usage, including calls through Firebase AI Logic, is pay-as-you-go, and most projects must prepay. A project with no billing account (on Spark) can use the Gemini Developer API's free tier with no payment method. (From firebase.google.com/docs/ai-logic/pricing, read 2026-10-21.)
  • From November 2, 2026, Firebase AI Logic requires App Check enforcement. (From firebase.google.com/docs/ai-logic/pricing, read 2026-10-21.)
  • Firebase's Spark plan needs no credit card or other payment method. (From firebase.google.com/pricing, read 2026-10-22.)

Listed in Databases, and on this page because we labelled it backend_platform. We read that on 2026-08-31 from https://firebase.google.com/docs/firestore, where it says: “Use the flexible, scalable NoSQL cloud database from Google Cloud to store and sync data for client and server-side development.”. How we use this

Recorded, but does not affect rank:
  • effective 2026-12-01 — limits reduced: Firebase Spark projects that enabled Remote Config before September 1, 2026 can use it under the old terms until December 1, 2026. From December 1, 2026, the 100,000-fetches-a-day limit applies to them, with 30 days of full service from the first day they go over, then throttling unless they upgrade to Blaze. A Spark project that upgrades to Blaze before November 15, 2026 is not billed for Remote Config until February 1, 2027. Blaze projects from before September 1, 2026 start Remote Config billing on February 1, 2027. Source ↗
  • effective 2026-09-01 — limits reduced: From September 1, 2026, Firebase limits Remote Config on the no-cost Spark plan to 100,000 fetch requests a day per project. A Spark project over the limit keeps full service for 30 days from the first day it goes over, and after that requests above the limit are throttled unless it upgrades to Blaze. Blaze has the same 100,000 a day at no cost and then $0.06 per 10,000 requests. Firebase's pricing page had listed Remote Config as no-cost before. This applies to projects that enable Remote Config on or after September 1, 2026. Older Spark projects follow on December 1, 2026. Source ↗
  • effective 2026-02-03 — restriction: Cloud Storage for Firebase now requires the pay-as-you-go Blaze plan, in effect from February 3, 2026. Projects on the no-cost Spark plan lose access to all Cloud Storage buckets, including default buckets; console access redirects to an upgrade page and API calls return 402 or 403. Provisioning a new default bucket also requires Blaze. Source ↗
Full profile Alternatives Compare Compare firebase.google.com/pricing ↗
6
Supabase stable
Free

Postgres development platform: database, Auth, Storage, Realtime and Edge Functions. The Free plan is $0: unlimited API requests, 50,000 monthly active users, a 500 MB database on a shared CPU with 500 MB RAM, 5 GB egress plus 5 GB cached egress, 1 GB file storage, 500,000 Edge Function invocations, and Realtime with 200 concurrent connections and 2 million messages a month. Free projects are paused after 1 week of inactivity, with a limit of 2 active projects. Pro starts at $25 a month for the first project and includes $10 a month of compute credits, enough for one Micro instance.

  • Supabase makes daily backups only for Pro, Team and Enterprise projects, so a free project has none, and Supabase recommends exporting it yourself with the CLI's db dump command. (From supabase.com/docs/guides/platform/backups, read 2026-10-05.)
  • A paused project can be restored from the dashboard for 1 year. After that, only its backup file and Storage objects can be downloaded. (From supabase.com/docs/guides/platform/upgrading, read 2026-10-05.)
  • Supabase notifies you when you exceed the Free Plan quota. Continued overuse brings restrictions that can include a read-only database, 402 responses to every API request, or paused projects. They lift when the quota refills next billing cycle or on upgrade to Pro. (From supabase.com/docs/guides/platform/billing-faq, read 2026-10-05.)
  • Supabase's Free Plan needs no credit card; paid plans require one on file. (From supabase.com/docs/guides/platform/get-set-up-for-billing, read 2026-10-22.)

Listed in Databases, and on this page because we labelled it backend_platform. We read that on 2026-08-31 from https://supabase.com/, where it says: “Build production-grade applications with a Postgres database, Authentication, instant APIs, Realtime, Functions, Storage and Vector embeddings.”. How we use this

Full profile Alternatives Compare Compare supabase.com/pricing ↗

Demoted — and exactly why

These offers reach this page too and rank below the list above. Each one names the recorded fact behind it. A recorded limit reduction, pricing restructure or new restriction is shown on every surface where the offer appears, with its date and summary — but it does not move rank. We have change records for only 16% of vendors, and disproportionately for well-known ones, so ranking on them would demote the vendors we happen to watch most closely.

−1
Appwrite Cloud caution 2026-06-29 reduced
Free

Open-source BaaS — 75K MAU, 2 GB storage, 750K function executions/month, 5 GB bandwidth, 1 database, 1 bucket and 2 functions per project, 500K database reads and 250K writes a month. Limit of 2 projects. Note — 2026-06-29: Appwrite began deleting Free projects that stay paused for 90 days, with all their resources. Owners get email alerts before anything is deleted. Source ↗

  • The Free plan's resources are shared across the account's 2 projects, which draw on one allowance. Paid plans give each project its own resources. (From appwrite.io/docs/advanced/billing/free, read 2026-10-11.)
  • A Free project with no development activity in the Appwrite Console for 7 days is paused. User traffic does not prevent pausing. The project becomes inaccessible to users and stops running backups, cron jobs, and scheduled functions until reactivated in the Console. (From appwrite.io/changelog/entry/2026-02-20-1, read 2026-10-11.)
  • Free projects are deleted after 90 days paused. (From appwrite.io/changelog/entry/2026-06-29, read 2026-10-05.)
  • From October 19, 2026, cron schedules for functions on Appwrite Cloud need a paid plan. On the Free and Education plans, functions run only on an interval of 60 minutes or longer. Existing cron schedules become intervals close to how often they ran. (From appwrite.io/changelog/entry/2026-10-15-1, read 2026-10-19.)
  • If a Free project reaches any resource limit, such as function executions or monthly active users, it freezes and the Console becomes read-only until the next billing cycle, or the owner upgrades to Pro or removes the resources over the limit. (From appwrite.io/pricing, read 2026-10-05.)
  • From November 5, 2026, Appwrite Cloud deletes inactive function and site deployments more than 30 days old by default. A deployment's age counts from the day it was created. The active deployment and any deployment a custom domain points to are kept. On the Free plan, retention can be raised to at most 90 days and each function or site keeps at most its 100 newest inactive deployments. (From appwrite.io/blog/post/default-deployment-retention, read 2026-10-22.)
  • On the Free plan, inactive deployments count toward the same 2 GB of storage as files and databases. (From appwrite.io/blog/post/default-deployment-retention, read 2026-10-22.)
  • Pro starts at $25 a month. It includes one project with 2TB bandwidth, 150GB storage, 3.5M executions and 200K monthly active users. Each additional project costs $15. (From appwrite.io/pricing, read 2026-10-29.)
  • Additional API bandwidth costs $15 per 100GB a month. Additional storage costs $2.8 per 100GB. Additional executions cost $2 per 1m. Additional users cost $3 per 1,000 users. Additional reads cost $0.060 per 100k and writes $0.10 per 100k. (From appwrite.io/pricing, read 2026-10-29.)
  • On Pro, Appwrite automatically buys extra resources when an organization exceeds its limits. The budget cap limits how much it can scale. (From appwrite.io/docs/advanced/billing/pro, read 2026-10-29.)

Listed in Databases, and on this page because we labelled it backend_platform. We read that on 2026-08-31 from https://appwrite.io/docs, where it says: “Ship faster with Appwrite. Quick starts and deep guides for web and mobile: Authentication, Databases, Storage, Functions, Messaging, and hosting.”. How we use this

  • −1 stale_verification We cannot confirm this offer: 1 consecutive re-check attempt has failed (most recently 2026-11-02 — The pricing page text is truncated and focuses on database compute pricing and FAQ; it does not include the Free plan's specific limits (MAU, storage, function executions, bandwidth, database/bucket/function counts, reads/writes, or project limit), so the stored free-tier details cannot be verified against it.), never confirmed since it was indexed. This is our inability to verify, not a change by the vendor. (a limit of ours, not a change by the vendor)
Recorded, but does not affect rank:
  • effective 2026-06-29 — limits reduced: Appwrite began deleting Free projects that stay paused for 90 days, with all their resources. Owners get email alerts before anything is deleted. Source ↗
  • effective 2026-04-30 — limits reduced: Appwrite began enforcing Realtime limits on 2026-04-30, with the Free plan at 2 million messages a month, down from the 3 million its pricing page had listed, and a new 256 KB maximum message size. It announced the enforcement on 2026-03-23. Source ↗
  • effective 2026-02-20 — limits reduced: Appwrite began pausing Free projects after 7 consecutive days with no development activity. Its pricing page had said Free projects were "Never paused" until January 2026, and users reported pauses from 2026-03-09. Source ↗
  • effective 2026-01-08 — limits reduced: Appwrite cut its Free plan from five functions per project to two. Projects that already had more keep them, but cannot create new functions until they are under the limit. Source ↗
Full profile Alternatives appwrite.io/pricing ↗
−1
PocketBase
Free

Open-source backend in a single Go binary — SQLite database, real-time subscriptions, built-in auth (email, OAuth2), file storage (S3-compatible), REST API. Completely free and self-hosted, no vendor lock-in. Single executable, no dependencies. The page we cite for this offer states no amount, tier or rate we can read when we last looked, on 2026-10-30, so we cannot confirm these terms today.

Listed in Databases, and on this page because we labelled it backend_platform. We read that on 2026-08-31 from https://pocketbase.io/, where it says: “Open Source backend in 1 file with realtime database, authentication, file storage and admin dashboard”. How we use this

  • −1 stale_verification Our last read of the vendor's pricing page, on 2026-10-30, could read no amount, tier or rate on the page. This is our confidence in the record, not a change by the vendor. (a limit of ours, not a change by the vendor)
Full profile Alternatives Compare Compare pocketbase.io/docs/ ↗
−1
8base.com
Free

8base is a full-stack low-code development platform built for JavaScript developers built on top of MySQL and GraphQL and serverless backend-as-a-service. It allows you to start building web applications quickly using a UI app builder and scale quickly, The Free tier includes rows: 2,500, Storage: 500, Serverless computing: 1Gb/h, and client app users: 5. When we last read the page we cite for this offer, on 2026-11-08, we found a change we could not reconcile with the terms we publish, so we cannot confirm these terms today.

Listed in Databases, and on this page because we labelled it backend_platform. We read that on 2026-08-31 from https://www.8base.com/product, where it says: “Serverless graphql backend-as-a-service”. How we use this

  • −1 stale_verification Our last read of the vendor's pricing page, on 2026-11-08, found the page different from the terms we hold. This is our confidence in the record, not a change by the vendor. (a limit of ours, not a change by the vendor)
Full profile Alternatives www.8base.com/pricing ↗
Recompute today's order yourself. The order above is a permutation seeded only on the UTC date and the query key — no vendor name, slug, id or offer field is an input. The algorithm is published, so anyone can reproduce this page's order without asking us.
date
2026-11-14
query_key
best-of:backend_platform
seed
577613c9f8ae3c6c7268ed4069122465b88d35b0589eb357e9efae7f825add21
tie_count
6

Quick Comparison

Vendor Free Tier Key Limits Durability Read / catalogue date
codehooks.io Free The free plan includes 1 Developer, API/Functions: 1/sec, 500/day, 1 Worker per queue, Worker timeout 30s, 150 MB Databa... volatile
effective between 2026-07-11 and 2026-08-28		 2026-11-12
Neon Free Serverless Postgres with branching — free tier includes 100 CU-hours/month per project, 1 GB of Postgres storage per pro... watch
effective 2026-10-01		 2026-10-28
Convex Free Reactive backend — 1M function calls/month, 0.5 GB database + vector storage, 1 GB file storage, real-time sync stable 2026-11-01
Nhost Free Open-source backend with Postgres and Hasura GraphQL, plus Auth, Storage and Functions. The Starter plan is $0 a month: ... stable 2026-11-03
Firebase Spark Spark plan, no payment method needed: Auth (50K MAU), Firestore Standard edition (1 GiB stored, 50K reads/day, 20K write...
read found the page different · 2026-10-26		 volatile
effective 2027-09-30		 2026-10-26 / 2026-10-03
Supabase Free Postgres development platform: database, Auth, Storage, Realtime and Edge Functions. The Free plan is $0: unlimited API ... stable 2026-11-02

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the best free backend platform tool in 2026?

We publish no ranking of these. Nothing we record measures popularity or generosity, so naming a best or a top few would be our preference rather than our data. We hold 6 free backend platform offers that clear our bar, each listed with the terms we publish and the date we last read them. Our ranking rule is published at /criteria.

Which of these free backend platform tiers have held their terms?

6 offers meet our criteria on this page. Of those, 3 carry no recorded change to the terms we publish, and 3 a recorded narrowing. The Durability column below says which offer is in which group, and links the dated record behind every change. We do not rank these by how much you get, because the limits are not comparable without reading each vendor's page.

More Best-Of Lists

Dev Utilities Design AI / ML Cloud Hosting Monitoring Email Storage Security Project Management Databases