Amazon RDS vs Supabase

Managed databases for people who'd rather not manage databases meets postgres + auth + storage + realtime. Here's our take.

Amazon RDS

Managed databases for people who'd rather not manage databases. It's like having a DBA on retainer, but cheaper and less opinionated.

Pros

• Automates backups, patching, and scaling, so you can focus on your app instead of babysitting servers
• Supports multiple engines like PostgreSQL and MySQL, making it easy to switch or standardize
• Built-in high availability with Multi-AZ deployments, because downtime is for amateurs

Cons

• Costs can sneak up on you with instance sizes and storage, especially if you forget to turn things off
• Limited control over the underlying OS and some database settings, which can be frustrating for power users

Supabase

Nice Pick

Postgres + auth + storage + realtime. The Firebase that doesn't lock you in.

Pros

• Open source
• Generous free tier
• Full Postgres
• Auth built-in
• Realtime

Cons

• Newer ecosystem
• Less documentation
• Some rough edges

The Verdict

These tools serve different purposes. Amazon RDS is a hosting & deployment while Supabase is a databases. We picked Supabase based on overall popularity, but your choice depends on what you're building.

The Bottom Line

Supabase wins

Based on overall popularity. Supabase is more widely used, but Amazon RDS excels in its own space.