AWS approaches the same need as a menu. You pick an EC2 instance — t4g.micro at $0.0084 per hour, t3.micro at $0.0104, t2.micro $0.0116 in us-east-1 on Linux, billed by the second — or skip virtual machines entirely and assemble the backend from managed pieces: a relational database, object storage, an authentication service, a function runtime, a CDN, each with its own price and its own limits. The company counts more than 240 services, keeps 30-plus of them free within monthly usage limits and credits new accounts with up to $200. Nothing is wrong with that approach; it simply means that a working backend is a design exercise with a bill attached.
TL;DR
AWS rents you the parts: t4g.micro at $0.0084/hr in us-east-1, per-second billing, and a managed database, storage, auth and functions you switch on and pay for individually inside a 240-service account. Supabase sells the assembled thing: a Postgres database with auth, storage, realtime, edge functions and row-level security, free at $0 for 500MB of data and 50,000 monthly active users, $25/mo on Pro for 8GB per project plus $10 of compute credit, and $599/mo on Team for SOC 2 and ISO 27001. Supabase is a product you buy; AWS is a kit you build from. Start on Supabase if the app is a Postgres-shaped product with users, and use AWS when the data layer is one part of a larger system.
Supabase starts from Postgres and wraps the rest around it. The free tier runs a 500MB database on shared CPU with 500MB of RAM, 50,000 monthly active users, 5GB of egress, 1GB of file storage, two active projects and unlimited API requests, with the caveat that free projects pause after one week of inactivity. Pro is $25 per month per organization and includes 8GB of disk per project ($0.125/GB after that), $10 of compute credit covering one Micro instance, 100,000 monthly active users then $0.00325 each, 250GB of egress then $0.09 per GB, email support and daily backups retained for seven days. Team is $599/mo and adds SOC 2 and ISO 27001, dashboard SSO, priority support with SLAs and 14-day backups; Enterprise is quoted, with 24x7 support and AWS PrivateLink. Billing is per organization, and each project carries its own compute instance on top of the plan.
The comparison turns on how much of the backend you want to own. Supabase gives you the schema, the API, the auth rules and the storage bucket as one product with one invoice, and its own documentation shows the arithmetic plainly: a Pro organization running two Micro projects costs $25 plus $10 plus $10 minus the $10 credit, or $35 a month. AWS will produce the same capabilities only after you have chosen and wired together four separate services — which is exactly the work some teams want to avoid and exactly the control others need.
| Feature | AWS | Supabase |
|---|---|---|
| Entry price | t4g.micro $0.0084/hr; t3.micro $0.0104/hr (us-east-1, Linux) | Free: 500MB database, 50,000 monthly active users, $0 |
| Main paid tier | Each service metered separately as it is used | Pro $25/mo: 8GB disk per project, $10 compute credit |
| Database | Managed Postgres priced by instance and storage | Postgres included in every plan, 500MB free / 8GB on Pro |
| Auth and users | Identity service metered per monthly active user | 50,000 MAU free, 100,000 on Pro then $0.00325 each |
| Egress | Charged per GB by region | 5GB free, 250GB on Pro then $0.09 per GB |
| Inactivity rule | Idle resources keep billing until deleted | Free projects pause after one week; paid projects keep running |
| Compliance tier | Region and account controls, enterprise agreements via sales | Team $599/mo with SOC 2, ISO 27001 and dashboard SSO |
| Scale ceiling | 240-plus services and no published maximum | Enterprise plan with 24x7 support and AWS PrivateLink |
Pick AWS if
If the application needs containers, background workers, private networking, several data stores or an existing cloud estate, AWS is the coherent home: the database joins the rest of the bill and scales on its own axis. The t4g.micro rate of $0.0084/hr shows how cheap the compute is; the real work is designing what surrounds it.
Pick Supabase if
For the typical CRUD product — accounts, rows, files, a client that talks to an API — Supabase removes the assembly work. Free covers 500MB and 50,000 monthly active users, and $25/mo on Pro buys 8GB of disk plus the compute credit that runs the database. You accept a fixed product boundary in exchange for not running infrastructure.
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Supabase's own documentation describes its paid infrastructure on AWS, and Enterprise plans offer AWS PrivateLink. The choice is between operating the services yourself on an AWS account and buying Supabase's managed layer on top.
Supabase's free tier holds 500MB of database, 50,000 monthly active users and 5GB of egress at $0. AWS stays cheap too — t4g.micro bills $0.0084/hr — but a full backend there usually means paying for a database, storage and egress separately, and free-tier limits apply per service.
It pauses after one week of inactivity and the organization is limited to two active projects. Data is retained, and the project resumes when you return; this is the trade for hosting at no cost.
Compute is billed per project on top of the subscription. Pro and Team include $10 of compute credit, enough for one Micro instance, so a single Pro project can sit at $25/mo while a second project adds its own compute line.
Yes, but as separate pieces: authorization rules live in your application or in an API gateway policy rather than in the database. Supabase puts those rules in Postgres policies that ship with the schema.
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