Firebase Studio shut down March 2026 and Spark plan forced migrations to pay-as-you-go Blaze. Compare free alternatives with exact tier limits: Supabase, Appwrite, PocketBase, Nhost, Convex, Back4App, Hasura.
Firebase — Google's all-in-one Backend-as-a-Service — is facing developer trust issues in 2026. Firebase Studio was shut down on March 19, 2026 (accessible until March 2027 for migration). In February 2026, Spark plan projects using legacy *.appspot.com Cloud Storage buckets were forced to upgrade to Blaze (pay-as-you-go) or lose access — with no hard billing caps to prevent runaway charges.
Developer sentiment is increasingly negative: "building on Google products is always a gamble." The Spark free tier still exists for new projects, but the pattern of forced migrations and product shutdowns is driving developers to open-source, self-hostable alternatives.
Below are the best free Firebase alternatives, compared by what you actually get for free — exact storage, MAU, bandwidth, and function limits. Not marketing copy.
Limits Reduced
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 ↗
Before: Spark plan included Cloud Storage with a *.appspot.com default bucket and no card required: 5 GB stored, 1 GB downloaded/day, 20,000 uploads/day, 50,000 downloads/day After: Any Cloud Storage access requires the Blaze plan and a billing account. No-cost usage continues on Blaze: a legacy *.appspot.com default bucket keeps 5 GB stored, 1 GB downloaded/day, 20,000 uploads/day, 50,000 downloads/day; default buckets created after September 2024 are *.firebasestorage.app and follow Google Cloud Storage pricing with its Always Free tier in US-CENTRAL1, US-EAST1 and US-WEST1. Other Spark limits unchanged (Firestore, Auth, Functions, Hosting)
Superseded: As of 2026-09-03, supabase.com/pricing reads: The free tier includes unlimited API requests, 50,000 monthly active users, 500 MB database size, 5 GB egress, 1 GB file storage. Free projects are paused after 1 week of inactivity. Paid plans include $10/mo in compute credits. We are not publishing our stored Supabase terms beside it — our own pricing change record, discovered 2026-09-03, names them as the previous ones. Read what we recorded ↓
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
Instant GraphQL API engine over any database — Hasura DDN Free plan: unlimited API requests and unlimited concurrent users, unlimited models at any scale. 1 supergraph developer, 15-minute observability retention. Auto-generates GraphQL APIs from Postgres, SQL Server, BigQuery via database/code/API connectors
What you actually get for free on each platform. Firebase Spark is generous on paper but lacks billing caps on Blaze — one misconfigured query can cost hundreds.
PocketBase limits are "unlimited" because it's self-hosted — actual limits depend on your server hardware. Hasura is a GraphQL engine that sits on top of your own Postgres database. Appwrite projects pause after 1 week of inactivity on the free tier. Firebase Spark has no billing caps if you upgrade to Blaze.
As of 2026-09-03, supabase.com/pricing reads: The free tier includes unlimited API requests, 50,000 monthly active users, 500 MB… Our stored Supabase terms are superseded and withheld.
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