Supabase vs CockroachDB: In-Depth Comparison

Supabase and CockroachDB both work in the PostgreSQL ecosystem, but they serve different purposes. Supabase gives you a managed Postgres setup with built-in auth, storage, and real-time APIs. CockroachDB provides a distributed SQL database that runs as a cluster and keeps working when individual nodes or regions go offline.

Let’s compare their architectures, use cases, and differences so you can see which fits your needs.

What are Supabase and CockroachDB?

Supabase is an open-source Firebase alternative built on PostgreSQL. It bundles database access with authentication, storage, real-time subscriptions, and auto-generated APIs. Think of it as a backend-in-a-box for web and mobile applications.

CockroachDB is a distributed SQL database designed for global deployments. It replicates data across multiple regions while maintaining ACID guarantees and PostgreSQL wire protocol compatibility. The focus here is resilience and horizontal scalability at the database layer.

Why compare them?

Both platforms attract teams building modern applications that need PostgreSQL's power. Supabase appeals to developers wanting rapid iteration with minimal backend infrastructure. CockroachDB targets teams requiring distributed architectures, multi-region deployments, or extreme fault tolerance. 

Overview of Each Platform

Supabase:

Supabase started in 2020 as an open-source alternative to Firebase. It runs on standard PostgreSQL and brings together several open-source tools: PostgREST for auto-generated REST APIs, GoTrue for JWT-based authentication, Realtime (an Elixir server) for WebSocket subscriptions, pg_graphql for GraphQL APIs, and S3-compatible storage that uses Postgres permissions.

You can self-host everything or use Supabase’s managed cloud service. It’s especially popular in the JavaScript ecosystem, with Next.js and React developers making up a large portion of the community. 

Recent updates added support for embeddings and vector search, which can help if you’re building ML-driven features. 

CockroachDB:

CockroachDB launched in 2015 with a mission to bring Google Spanner's distributed SQL capabilities to any infrastructure. The database uses a modified PostgreSQL parser and adds distributed consensus via Raft protocol, automatic sharding, and multi-region replication built on a transactional key-value store.

While it speaks the PostgreSQL wire protocol and supports most SQL features, CockroachDB implements its own storage engine optimized for distribution. You can run it self-hosted, on CockroachDB Serverless (their managed offering with a free tier), or as dedicated clusters. 

Note that versions released after November 2024 use the CockroachDB Software License rather than a fully open-source license.

Key Feature Comparison

Architecture & scalability

Supabase deploys PostgreSQL as a single-region instance. You get vertical scaling (bigger machines) and read replicas, but the primary database runs on one node. This architecture works well for most applications, but you're limited by single-region latency and vertical scaling constraints.

CockroachDB distributes data across multiple nodes and regions from the start. The system automatically shards tables, replicates data (typically 3x), and handles node failures without manual intervention. Writes go to a consensus quorum, which adds latency compared to single-node PostgreSQL but enables true active-active deployments across continents. The architecture survives disk, machine, rack, and datacenter failures with minimal latency disruption.

For a typical CRUD application serving one geographic region, Supabase's architecture is simpler and faster. For fintech platforms or SaaS products serving global users with data locality requirements, CockroachDB's distribution becomes essential.

Data model & SQL compatibility

Both platforms use SQL and support PostgreSQL syntax for most operations. Supabase gives you standard PostgreSQL with all its extensions (PostGIS, pgvector for AI workloads, TimescaleDB for time-series, etc.) and behavior.

CockroachDB maintains wire protocol compatibility, but implements distributed transactions differently. You'll notice differences in transaction isolation levels (serializable by default), lack of some PostgreSQL features (like certain index types), and different performance characteristics for complex joins. The system uses a strongly-consistent transactional model to order distributed operations, which can affect transaction retry logic in your application code.

If you're migrating an existing PostgreSQL application, Supabase requires minimal changes. CockroachDB needs careful testing of transaction patterns and query performance.

Real-time capabilities, APIs & integrations

Supabase includes built-in real-time subscriptions. The Realtime server listens to Postgres replication changes, converts them to JSON, and pushes them over WebSockets to clients. You can subscribe to table updates directly via client libraries, and the platform handles connections, authorization, and routing. Auto-generated REST and GraphQL APIs reduce the need to write boilerplate code.

CockroachDB doesn’t include a real-time layer or application APIs. You need to build this yourself using tools like Socket.io, Pusher, or a separate service like Supabase Realtime. This gives flexibility but requires extra work.

Authentication, security & row-level access control

Supabase ships with GoTrue, a full JWT-based authentication system. It supports email/password, OAuth providers (Google, GitHub, etc.), magic links, and phone authentication. Row-level security (RLS) policies are enforced in Postgres, and Supabase APIs respect these rules automatically.

CockroachDB expects you to integrate authentication externally, using services like Auth0 or Okta. It supports Postgres role-based access control and RLS, but the application must handle token management and authorization flows.

Multi-region / distributed deployments

Supabase runs in a single AWS region by default. You can add read replicas in other regions for lower-latency reads, and geo-routing directs API requests to the nearest database. These features help with availability and read performance, but multi-region writes still require application-level coordination.

CockroachDB was built for multi-region from the start. It handles data placement, replication, and rebalancing automatically across a single logical cluster. You can pin tables to specific regions for compliance, and the system provides strong consistency, high availability, and near-zero recovery time for regional failures.

Use-Case Fit & Audience

When is Supabase a good choice?

Supabase shines for teams that want to ship quickly without managing infrastructure. If you're building an MVP, internal tool, or product in a single market, Supabase handles authentication, storage, and real-time features out of the box. The generous free tier and simple pricing make it attractive for startups.

It works particularly well for applications where developer experience matters more than distributed architecture. Projects using Next.js, React, Vue, Flutter, or Swift benefit from Supabase's official client libraries and type generation. You can add real-time features to your app with a few lines of code rather than operating a separate WebSocket infrastructure.

When is CockroachDB a better fit?

CockroachDB is a strong choice when your application needs distributed SQL guarantees. Teams building financial systems, global SaaS platforms, or anything with strict data residency rules benefit from its design.

It’s also a good fit if you expect heavy growth and need the system to stay available even during hardware issues or regional outages. The database handles node and region failures on its own with very little interruption. The tradeoff is that your team should be comfortable with distributed systems and ready to maintain the tooling and observability that come with them.

Pricing & Cost Advice

Supabase pricing model:

Free Tier:

• 500MB database storage

• 5GB bandwidth, 5GB cached egress

• 1GB file storage

• 50,000 monthly active users

• Unlimited API requests

• Community support

• Pauses after 1 week of inactivity

Pro Plan ($25/month):

• Includes $10 in compute credits

• 8GB database storage (then $0.125/GB)

• 250GB bandwidth (then $0.09/GB)

• 100GB file storage (then $0.021/GB)

• 100,000 monthly active users (then $0.00325/MAU)

• Email support

• Daily backups (7-day retention)

Team Plan ($599/month):

• Everything in Pro

• SOC2 compliance

• SSO for Dashboard

• HIPAA available as add-on

• Priority support

• 14-day backup retention

Enterprise: Custom pricing with dedicated support, uptime SLAs, and bring-your-own-cloud options.

CockroachDB pricing model:

Tier	Starting Price	Key Features
Basic	$0/month	50M request units + 10GB storage free monthly, scales to zero, up to 30K RU/sec, 99.99% availability
Standard (Preview)	$0.18/hr (2 vCPUs)	Provisioned compute up to 200 vCPUs, private connectivity, metrics export, 99.99% availability
Advanced	$0.60/hr (4 vCPUs)	Unlimited scaling, all cloud regions (AWS/GCP/Azure), up to 99.999% availability, CMEK for PCI/HIPAA

New accounts get $400 in free credits. No credit card required for Basic and Standard tiers.

Additional options:

• Bring Your Own Cloud (BYOC): Deploy in your AWS, GCP, or Azure account with Cockroach Labs management (custom pricing)

• Self-Hosted: Enterprise license with full on-premises or private cloud control (custom pricing)

Cost considerations and scaling implications

Supabase is cheaper upfront and predictable for single-region workloads. The $25/month Pro plan handles most small to medium applications. Bundled features (auth, storage, real-time) eliminate separate service costs that would add up with other providers.

CockroachDB's Basic tier works for development and testing, but production deployments typically require Standard or Advanced tiers. A multi-region setup with provisioned compute can cost hundreds to thousands monthly. The pricing reflects distributed architecture costs: data replication, consensus protocols, and global availability.

Choose Supabase if you're optimizing for development speed and cost in a single region. Choose CockroachDB if you need distributed guarantees and can justify the infrastructure investment.

Pros & Cons

Supabase:

Supabase delivers a complete backend platform that prioritizes developer experience and rapid deployment. The tradeoff comes in architectural limitations for global scale.

Key Advantages	Limitations
Complete backend platform with minimal setup	Single-region architecture only
Auto-generated APIs and type-safe clients	Limited backend customization
Built-in auth and real-time subscriptions	Vendor lock-in with managed features
Strong PostgreSQL extension support (AI/vector)	Vertical scaling constraints
Official SDKs for major languages

CockroachDB:

CockroachDB excels at distributed architecture and fault tolerance but requires more infrastructure expertise and investment.

Key Advantages	Limitations
Multi-region distribution with automatic failover	Steep learning curve for distributed systems
PostgreSQL wire protocol compatible	Higher complexity and costs
Survives datacenter outages automatically	Some PostgreSQL features unsupported
Horizontal scalability via auto-sharding	Requires transaction retry logic
Strong consistency across regions	Proprietary license (recent versions)

Documentation and Ecosystem

Supabase offers practical developer-focused documentation with clear examples for common workflows. Its SDKs cover the major web and mobile languages, which helps teams integrate quickly.

CockroachDB’s documentation leans toward system design, deployment models, and operational details. It works with standard PostgreSQL drivers and most popular ORMs, and it fits well into Kubernetes and Terraform-driven environments. The ecosystem is more infrastructure oriented, which reflects the database’s focus.

How to Choose: Decision Framework

Checklist of questions to ask

Ask yourself these questions:

• Do you need data to live in multiple regions with local read/write access?

• Are you comfortable managing backend infrastructure yourself?

• Does your team have distributed systems experience?

• Is your application primarily in one geographic region?

• Do you need built-in authentication and real-time subscriptions?

• What's your tolerance for operational complexity?

• Will you benefit from PostgreSQL extensions like pgvector or PostGIS?

Match your project to the right database

Choose Supabase if: You're building an MVP or product in a single region, want rapid development with minimal infrastructure, need built-in auth and real-time features, value excellent developer experience, and have a small engineering team focused on shipping features.

Choose CockroachDB if: You're building globally distributed applications, need multi-region active-active deployments, have compliance requirements for data locality, can invest in distributed systems expertise, require extreme availability guarantees, and have infrastructure specialists on your team.

Consider starting with Supabase for MVPs, then migrating to CockroachDB when global scale becomes a real requirement rather than a hypothetical one. Both offer free tiers for prototyping.

Alternatives & Comparison Table

Comparison table at a glance:

Feature	Supabase	CockroachDB
Architecture	Single-region PostgreSQL	Distributed multi-region
Pricing (starting)	Free tier, $25/mo Pro	Free tier, usage-based
Ease of use	Excellent (full platform)	Moderate (database only)
Built-in auth	Yes	No
Real-time	Yes (WebSockets)	No (requires external)
Auto-generated APIs	Yes (REST/GraphQL)	No
Multi-region	No (planned)	Yes (native)
PostgreSQL extensions	Full support	Limited support
Open source	Yes (MIT/Apache 2)	Proprietary (CSL)
Best for	MVPs, startups, single-region apps	Enterprise, fintech, global SaaS

Other database options worth considering:

Firebase remains popular for mobile apps and real-time features, though it uses NoSQL rather than SQL. Good for quick prototypes but less flexible than Supabase for complex queries.

PlanetScale offers a serverless MySQL platform with branching workflows. Strong developer experience but based on MySQL rather than PostgreSQL, limiting extension support.

Neon provides serverless PostgreSQL with branching and auto-scaling. Similar single-region limitations to Supabase, but focuses purely on database without additional platform features.

YugabyteDB competes directly with CockroachDB as a distributed PostgreSQL-compatible database. Worth evaluating if you need distributed SQL with stronger PostgreSQL compatibility.

AWS Aurora offers managed PostgreSQL with multi-region replication. More AWS-native integration, but less portable than CockroachDB and requires more infrastructure knowledge.

Getting Started

Neither platform wins universally. Supabase gets you to production faster for single-region apps with its integrated backend. CockroachDB handles multi-region distribution and extreme fault tolerance but costs more and needs infrastructure expertise. Pick based on where your users are and what your team can manage.

Start with Supabase unless you need multi-region from day one. Most teams don't, and you can migrate later when scale justifies it. 

Both have free tiers, so test with your actual use case instead of deciding on paper. An hour of prototyping beats any comparison article.

You can also connect to us for consultation and hands-on support to evaluate, prototype, or optimize your database setup.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I migrate from Supabase to CockroachDB (or vice versa)?

Migrating between these platforms requires exporting your schema and data. Use pg_dump to export from Supabase, then import into CockroachDB using cockroach sql. Test transaction patterns carefully since CockroachDB's serializable isolation and distributed architecture may require application changes, particularly around transaction retry logic.

Moving from CockroachDB to Supabase follows similar steps but loses distributed capabilities. You'll need to rebuild authentication using Supabase's GoTrue system and implement real-time features using their Realtime server if you were handling these separately.

How do I connect Supabase/CockroachDB to Next.js, React, Vue?

Supabase provides official client libraries that work with any JavaScript framework. Install @supabase/supabase-js and initialize with your project URL and API key. The library includes TypeScript types and works seamlessly with React hooks, Vue composables, or Next.js server components.

CockroachDB uses standard PostgreSQL connection strings. Use libraries like pg for Node.js or ORMs like Prisma, Drizzle, or TypeORM. Both Next.js API routes and serverless functions work well with connection pooling services. CockroachDB's documentation includes example apps for various frameworks.

What are the query optimization differences between them?

Supabase optimization follows standard PostgreSQL practices: create appropriate indexes, use EXPLAIN ANALYZE to check query plans, and optimize joins. Single-node PostgreSQL is well-understood, and most online resources apply directly.

CockroachDB requires understanding distributed query execution. Queries might scan multiple nodes, and you should pay attention to data locality when designing table schemas. Use EXPLAIN (DISTSQL) to see distributed query plans and understand network hops. Indexes work similarly but consider locality when creating them. Join operations across regions add latency, so schema design matters more for performance.

How many engineers do I need to maintain each?

Supabase can be managed by one or two developers for small to mid-size teams. The managed service handles database operations, backups, and scaling. Self-hosted deployments need someone comfortable with PostgreSQL administration and container orchestration.

CockroachDB typically requires a dedicated infrastructure or database specialist for production deployments, especially multi-region setups. The distributed nature adds monitoring, performance tuning, and troubleshooting complexity. Small teams using CockroachDB Serverless can start with less infrastructure expertise, but you'll still need someone who understands distributed systems concepts.

Which has better support for time-series data?

Supabase supports PostgreSQL extensions like TimescaleDB for optimized time-series operations, including automatic partitioning and retention policies. This works well for moderate-scale time-series workloads.

CockroachDB handles time-series workloads through standard PostgreSQL approaches but doesn't have native TimescaleDB support. Its distributed architecture can handle large-scale time-series data across regions, but you'll implement partitioning strategies manually. For specialized time-series needs at massive scale, consider dedicated solutions like InfluxDB or TimescaleDB Cloud instead.