Supabase $30m Series A

Summary

Supabase announced a $30 million Series A funding round led by Coatue, bringing its total funding to $36 million. The company aims to provide an open source alternative to Firebase while addressing the scalability limitations typical of abstracted database platforms. Rather than building a compatibility layer, Supabase provisions a full PostgreSQL database for every project alongside integrated authentication, storage, RESTful APIs, and realtime data streaming. Platform features rely directly on core PostgreSQL primitives, including Row Level Security policies, database triggers, and logical replication streams. Funding will support long-term development of a cloud-native PostgreSQL platform offering database branching, distributed read-write nodes, scalable storage, and ephemeral compute that scales down to zero.

Context

While platforms like Firebase offer rapid application development tools, they suffer from scalability constraints, whereas traditional PostgreSQL lacks modern cloud-native capabilities like automatic scaling and usage-based ephemeral compute.

Approach / What changed

Supabase provisions a full, unabstracted PostgreSQL database per project, leveraging existing open source projects like PostgREST and PostgreSQL, and exposing native database features like Row Level Security and logical replication.

Takeaways

• Supabase provisions a full PostgreSQL database per project without abstraction layers to maintain native scalability.
• Platform features like RESTful APIs, authentication, and realtime streams directly utilize PostgreSQL capabilities such as PostgREST, Row Level Security, and logical replication.
• The long-term roadmap focuses on cloud-native PostgreSQL features including database branching, globally distributed read-write nodes, scalable storage, and scale-to-zero compute.

Related reading

• Supabase · Apr 6, 2021

  Supabase Beta March 2021

  Supabase announced a series of platform updates for March 2021, headlined by the launch of Supabase Storage and new local development capabilities. The new storage offering integrates an open-source Fastify and TypeScript API backed by S3, while direct database connections now bundle PgBouncer for connection pooling. Developers can run the platform locally via the Supabase CLI, utilize Docker tooling for self-hosting, and access the open-sourced Supabase UI component library. Community contributions brought OAuth scopes to Supabase Auth for requesting elevated third-party provider permissions, alongside newly published free and pro pricing tiers. In addition, development is underway on an Elixir-based workflow engine compatible with the Amazon States Language for automated event handling.

  Paul Copplestone

• Supabase · Jun 2, 2021

  Supabase Beta May 2021

  Supabase published its May 2021 beta updates covering authentication, regional infrastructure, and tooling. Developers can now implement Apple and Twitter authentication via Supabase Auth, addressing App Store requirements and expanding third-party login options. The platform introduced a Policy Editor with templates to configure Row Level Security for Storage, alongside CSV data retrieval capabilities. Infrastructure expanded with a new Tokyo region to support developers in Japan and China, while Supabase Grid was publicly released as part of an effort to open-source the dashboard. Additionally, community contributors advanced client libraries, completing postgrest-go and progressing development on Swift libraries including gotrue-swift, realtime-swift, and storage-swift.