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Firebase Authentication VS Google App Engine

Compare Firebase Authentication VS Google App Engine and see what are their differences

Note: These products don't have any matching categories. If you think this is a mistake, please edit the details of one of the products and suggest appropriate categories.

Firebase Authentication logo Firebase Authentication

Application and Data, Application Utilities, and User Management and Authentication

Google App Engine logo Google App Engine

A powerful platform to build web and mobile apps that scale automatically.
  • Firebase Authentication Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-08-19
  • Google App Engine Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-17

Firebase Authentication features and specs

  • Ease of Use
    Firebase Authentication provides a seamless and user-friendly way to integrate authentication into your application with minimal coding.
  • Multiple Providers
    Supports various authentication methods including email/password, phone, Google, Facebook, Twitter, GitHub, and more.
  • Security
    Firebase Authentication employs industry-standard practices and measures to secure user data, including automatic protection against common vulnerabilities.
  • Cross-Platform Support
    Compatible with both mobile and web platforms, making it versatile for different types of applications.
  • Scalability
    Built on Google's infrastructure, ensuring robust performance and ability to scale as your user base grows.
  • Integration with Firebase Services
    Easily integrates with other Firebase services like Firestore, Realtime Database, and Firebase Analytics for a more comprehensive development experience.
  • Customizable UI
    Provides templates and options to customize the authentication UI to match your application's look and feel.
  • Cost-Effective
    Offers a free tier that is suitable for many small to medium-sized applications, with paid options available for larger-scale needs.

Possible disadvantages of Firebase Authentication

  • Vendor Lock-In
    Depending on Firebase Authentication means your project is tightly connected with Google's ecosystem, making it harder to switch to another provider.
  • Limited Customization
    While offering various authentication methods, deep customization options can be somewhat limited compared to building your own authentication system.
  • Region Support
    Some Firebase services, including Authentication, may not be available in all geographical regions, which can impact global applications.
  • Feature Limitations
    Advanced features that are sometimes necessary for enterprise applications may not be available in Firebase Authentication.
  • Regulatory Compliance
    Handling specific regulatory requirements (e.g., GDPR, HIPAA) may require additional customizations and considerations.
  • Dependency on Internet Connectivity
    As a cloud-based service, it requires a stable internet connection for both development and end-user interaction, which can be a limitation in areas with poor connectivity.
  • Pricing Complexity
    While the free tier is generous, costs can escalate quickly with a growing user base, and understanding the pricing model can be complex.
  • Learning Curve
    Although generally user-friendly, there is still a learning curve involved, particularly for developers new to Firebase or cloud services.

Google App Engine features and specs

  • Auto-scaling
    Google App Engine automatically scales your application based on the traffic it receives, ensuring that your application can handle varying workloads without manual intervention.
  • Managed environment
    App Engine provides a fully managed environment, covering infrastructure management tasks like server provisioning, patching, monitoring, and managing app versions.
  • Integrated services
    Seamlessly integrates with other Google Cloud services such as Datastore, Cloud SQL, Pub/Sub, and more, offering a comprehensive ecosystem for building and deploying applications.
  • Multiple languages support
    Supports multiple programming languages including Java, Python, PHP, Node.js, Go, Ruby, and .NET, giving developers flexibility in choosing their preferred language.
  • Security
    Offers robust security features including Identity and Access Management (IAM), Cloud Identity, and automated security updates, which help protect your applications from vulnerabilities.
  • Developer productivity
    App Engine allows rapid development and deployment, letting developers focus on writing code without worrying about infrastructure management, thus boosting productivity.
  • Versioning
    Supports versioning of applications, allowing multiple versions of the application to be hosted simultaneously, which helps in A/B testing and rollback capabilities.

Possible disadvantages of Google App Engine

  • Cost
    While you pay for what you use, costs can escalate quickly with high traffic or resource-intensive applications. Detailed cost prediction can be challenging.
  • Vendor lock-in
    Relying heavily on Google App Engine's proprietary services and APIs can make it difficult to migrate applications to other platforms, leading to vendor lock-in.
  • Limited control
    Being a fully managed service, App Engine provides limited control over the underlying infrastructure which might be a limitation for certain advanced use cases.
  • Environment constraints
    Certain restrictions and limitations are imposed on the runtime environment, such as request timeout limits and specific resource quotas, which can affect application performance.
  • Complex debugging
    Debugging issues in a highly abstracted managed environment can be more complex and difficult compared to traditional server-hosted applications.
  • Cold start latency
    Serverless environments like App Engine can suffer from cold start latency, where the initial request triggers a delay as the environment spins up resources.
  • Configuration complexity
    Despite its benefits, configuring and optimizing App Engine for specific scenarios can be more complex than expected, requiring a steep learning curve.

Firebase Authentication videos

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Google App Engine videos

Get to know Google App Engine

More videos:

  • Review - Developing apps that scale automatically with Google App Engine

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Firebase Authentication and Google App Engine)
Identity Provider
100 100%
0% 0
Cloud Computing
0 0%
100% 100
Identity And Access Management
Cloud Hosting
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Firebase Authentication and Google App Engine

Firebase Authentication Reviews

Textverified Alternatives – Nonvoipusapp.com & 6 more
Firebase Authentication, a part of Google’s Firebase platform, provides a comprehensive suite of authentication services, including phone number verification. It allows developers to add seamless authentication and verification processes to their applications, enhancing both security and user experience. Firebase’s integration with other Google services can be advantageous...

Google App Engine Reviews

Top 5 Alternatives to Heroku
Google App Engine is fast, easy, but not that very cheap. The pricing is reasonable, and it comes with a free tier, which is great for small projects that are right for beginner developers who want to quickly set up their apps. It can also auto scale, create new instances as needed and automatically handle high availability. App Engine gets a positive rating for performance...
AppScale - The Google App Engine Alternative
AppScale is open source Google App Engine and allows you to run your GAE applications on any infrastructure, anywhere that makes sense for your business. AppScale eliminates lock-in and makes your GAE application portable. This way you can choose which public or private cloud platform is the best fit for your business requirements. Because we are literally the GAE...

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Firebase Authentication should be more popular than Google App Engine. It has been mentiond 50 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Firebase Authentication mentions (50)

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Google App Engine mentions (31)

  • Guide to modern app-hosting without servers on Google Cloud
    If Google App Engine (GAE) is the "OG" serverless platform, Cloud Run (GCR) is its logical successor, crafted for today's modern app-hosting needs. GAE was the 1st generation of Google serverless platforms. It has since been joined, about a decade later, by 2nd generation services, GCR and Cloud Functions (GCF). GCF is somewhat out-of-scope for this post so I'll cover that another time. - Source: dev.to / 4 months ago
  • Security in the Cloud: Your Role in the Shared Responsibility Model
    As Windsales Inc. expands, it adopts a PaaS model to offload server and runtime management, allowing its developers and engineers to focus on code development and deployment. By partnering with providers like Heroku and Google App Engine, Windsales Inc. Accesses a fully managed runtime environment. This choice relieves Windsales Inc. Of managing servers, OS updates, or runtime environment behavior. Instead,... - Source: dev.to / 6 months ago
  • Hosting apps in the cloud with Google App Engine in 2024
    Google App Engine (GAE) is their original serverless solution and first cloud product, launching in 2008 (video), giving rise to Serverless 1.0 and the cloud computing platform-as-a-service (PaaS) service level. It didn't do function-hosting nor was the concept of containers mainstream yet. GAE was specifically for (web) app-hosting (but also supported mobile backends as well). - Source: dev.to / 7 months ago
  • Fixing A Broken Deployment to Google App Engine
    In 2014, I took a web development on Udacity that was taught by Steve Huffman of Reddit fame. He taught authentication, salting passwords, the difference between GET and POST requests, basic html and css, caching techniques. It was a fantastic introduction to web dev. To pass the course, students deployed simple python servers to Google App Engine. When I started to look for work, I opted to use code from that... - Source: dev.to / 10 months ago
  • Next.js Deployment: Vercel's Charm vs. GCP's Muscle
    GCP offers a comprehensive suite of cloud services, including Compute Engine, App Engine, and Cloud Run. This translates to unparalleled control over your infrastructure and deployment configurations. Designed for large-scale applications, GCP effortlessly scales to accommodate significant traffic growth. Additionally, for projects heavily reliant on Google services like BigQuery, Cloud Storage, or AI/ML tools,... - Source: dev.to / 10 months ago
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What are some alternatives?

When comparing Firebase Authentication and Google App Engine, you can also consider the following products

Auth0 - Auth0 is a program for people to get authentication and authorization services for their own business use.

Salesforce Platform - Salesforce Platform is a comprehensive PaaS solution that paves the way for the developers to test, build, and mitigate the issues in the cloud application before the final deployment.

Spring Security - The Spring portfolio has many projects, including Spring Framework, Spring IO Platform, Spring Cloud, Spring Boot, Spring Data, Spring Security...

Dokku - Docker powered mini-Heroku in around 100 lines of Bash

OAuth2 - Application and Data, Application Utilities, and User Management and Authentication

Heroku - Agile deployment platform for Ruby, Node.js, Clojure, Java, Python, and Scala. Setup takes only minutes and deploys are instant through git. Leave tedious server maintenance to Heroku and focus on your code.