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Supabase VS Ruby on Rails

Compare Supabase VS Ruby on Rails and see what are their differences

Supabase logo Supabase

An open source Firebase alternative

Ruby on Rails logo Ruby on Rails

Ruby on Rails is an open source full-stack web application framework for the Ruby programming...
  • Supabase Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-05-27
  • Ruby on Rails Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-23

We recommend LibHunt Ruby for discovery and comparisons of trending Ruby projects. Also, to find more open-source ruby alternatives, you can check out libhunt.com/r/rails

Supabase features and specs

  • Real-time capabilities
    Supabase offers real-time database features that allow you to subscribe to database changes and sync data with your frontend seamlessly.
  • PostgreSQL foundation
    Supabase is built on PostgreSQL, a robust, mature, and highly extensible SQL database, providing strong data integrity and reliability.
  • Open-source
    Supabase is open-source, which means you can inspect, modify, and contribute to the source code. This fosters community engagement and transparency.
  • Ease of use
    Supabase provides an intuitive dashboard and auto-generated APIs, making it easy for developers to manage databases without extensive backend knowledge.
  • Authentication and Authorization
    Supabase includes pre-built authentication and authorization modules, supporting various sign-in methods like email, OAuth, and more, simplifying user management.
  • Scalability
    Supabase is designed to scale with your application, offering plans that can handle from small to large-scale traffic and data operations.

Possible disadvantages of Supabase

  • New and evolving
    As a relatively new platform, Supabase is still evolving, which means it might lack some features found in more mature solutions and could have occasional bugs or stability issues.
  • Limited integration
    Currently, Supabase has fewer third-party integrations compared to other established backend-as-a-service (BaaS) providers, which might limit its utility in diverse tech stacks.
  • Learning curve
    Despite its user-friendly interface, there could be a learning curve for those unfamiliar with PostgreSQL or real-time database concepts.
  • Pricing for advanced features
    While Supabase offers a free tier, advanced features, and higher usage plans come with a cost. This might be limiting for startups or hobby projects with tight budgets.
  • Limited geographic presence
    Supabase's infrastructure might have limited geographic data centers compared to larger cloud providers, potentially affecting latency and performance for users in certain regions.

Ruby on Rails features and specs

  • Rapid Development
    Ruby on Rails uses conventions over configurations which allows developers to build applications quickly. It comes with a wealth of built-in tools and libraries that streamline the development process.
  • Community Support
    Rails has a vibrant and active community. This means a lot of third-party libraries (gems) are available, and you can easily find help and resources.
  • Convention over Configuration
    Rails emphasizes convention over configuration, which reduces the number of decisions developers need to make. This can increase productivity and consistency across projects.
  • Built-in Testing
    Rails comes with a strong built-in testing framework, making it easier to test your application and ensure that it works as expected.
  • Scalability Options
    Although it has a reputation for not being the most scalable framework, Rails can be made scalable with good architecture and the right tools.
  • RESTful Design
    Rails promotes RESTful application design, which means that it aligns well with best practices in web development and makes it easier to build APIs.

Possible disadvantages of Ruby on Rails

  • Performance
    Ruby on Rails can be slower than some other frameworks, particularly for applications that require a lot of computation or have high traffic.
  • Learning Curve
    While Rails makes many things easier with its conventions, this can create a steep learning curve for newcomers who need to understand the 'Rails way' of doing things.
  • Scalability Concerns
    Due to its monolithic nature, scaling Rails can be challenging, requiring significant architectural changes and optimizations.
  • Lesser Flexibility
    The conventions that make Rails easy to use can also be limiting. When you need to do something outside the typical Rails flow, it may be harder to implement.
  • Runtime Speed
    Ruby, the language that Rails is built on, is generally slower in terms of execution speed compared to other languages like Java or C++.
  • Memory Consumption
    Rails applications can consume a lot of memory, which can be a concern for large-scale applications or those with limited resources.

Supabase videos

Basic demo

More videos:

  • Review - Supabase in 100 Seconds by Fireship

Ruby on Rails videos

Ruby On Rails Biggest Waste Of Time In 2020 | Ruby on Rails Dead

More videos:

  • Tutorial - Ruby on Rails Tutorial | Build a Book Review App - Part 1

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Supabase and Ruby on Rails)
Developer Tools
59 59%
41% 41
Realtime Backend / API
100 100%
0% 0
Web Frameworks
20 20%
80% 80
Backend As A Service
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Supabase and Ruby on Rails

Supabase Reviews

10 Top Firebase Alternatives to Ignite Your Development in 2024
Supabase makes it incredibly easy to migrate from Firebase. Its data structure and APIs are designed to feel familiar, so you can switch without a major learning curve. Plus, the open-source nature means you have complete control over your code and data.
Source: genezio.com
Top 7 Firebase Alternatives for App Development in 2024
Community Support and Longevity: Investigate the size and activity of the platform's community. A larger, more active community can provide better support and resources. Platforms like Parse and Supabase have strong community support.
Source: signoz.io
5 Best Vercel Alternatives for Next.js & App Router
Supabase distinguishes itself through its focus on data and community-driven development. Self-hosting capabilities allow you to deploy Supabase's suite of products within your own infrastructure. This maintains data ownership while still leveraging Supabase's tools.
Source: il.ly
Best Serverless Backend Tools of 2023: Pros & Cons, Features & Code Examples
Create an account, a project, and a database. Unlike a NoSQL database like Firebase’s, you need to have a structure ready to be able to manipulate data. But once this step is done―and you’ll have ready-to-use templates to help speed up this part―you can call Supabase like so:
Source: www.rowy.io
2023 Firebase Alternatives: Top 10 Open-Source & Free
Supabase is another trusted platform in our list that calls itself an open-source alternative to Firebase. You can also name it one of the newest cloud service providers similar to Firebase because it launched in 2020. Indeed, with great scalability and documentation support, Supabase could be an ideal option.

Ruby on Rails Reviews

  1. Stan
    · Founder at SaaSHub ·
    The most productive web framework

    Yes, there are other more trending frameworks; however, nothing reaches the productivity of Rails. It's simply unbeatable if you have a small team.

    For example both SaaSHub and LibHunt were built on Rails.

    🏁 Competitors: Django, Laravel

Top 9 best Frameworks for web development
The best frameworks for web development include React, Angular, Vue.js, Django, Spring, Laravel, Ruby on Rails, Flask and Express.js. Each of these frameworks has its own advantages and distinctive features, so it is important to choose the framework that best suits the needs of your project.
Source: www.kiwop.com
Top 5 Laravel Alternatives
In terms of documentation, guidelines, and libraries, Ruby on Rails is the superior framework for smaller applications. Since it entered the online scene before Laravel, its community is larger and more well-liked among programmers. When compared to other Laravel alternatives, Ruby’s code is much simpler to understand and write.
Top 10 Phoenix Framework Alternatives
While modern frameworks try to minimize the tradeoffs to a limited extent, none of them has come closer to the implementation of the Phoenix Framework, which offers Ruby on Rails levels of productivity while being one of the fastest frameworks available in the market.
10 Ruby on Rails Alternatives For Web Development in 2022
Once a prolific web development technology, in 2021, both Ruby and Ruby on Rails are considered dying technologies. The data speaks for itself. In October 2021, Ruby lost 3 ranks in the Tiobe Index compared to October 2020 and became the 16th most searched programming language. The same decline in Ruby on Rails popularity is demonstrated by Google Trends. The language...
Get Over Ruby on Rails — 3 Alternative Web Frameworks Worth Checking Out
Disclaimer: I started working on this article before the big controversy about Basecamp happened. I don’t want to make any point about this in the article. Regardless of what DHH and others are saying on different topics, Ruby on Rails is still a great piece of software and will continue to be. But there are some great alternatives as well that I would like to highlight.

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Supabase should be more popular than Ruby on Rails. It has been mentiond 501 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.

Supabase mentions (501)

  • Why devs are quitting aws and what they’re choosing instead
    Platforms like Railway, Render, Fly.io, Vercel, Supabase, and Cloudflare are leading the charge with a shared philosophy:. - Source: dev.to / 1 day ago
  • I analyzed how Supabase and Laravel launched. Here's what I learned.
    Supabase is an open-source alternative to Firebase. They turned fast shipping into a format: launch weeks — announcing something new every day. They were first and initiated a movement. Picture this: according to launchweek.dev, there were 126 launch weeks run by 94 different companies in 2024. - Source: dev.to / about 2 months ago
  • Why You Shouldn’t Invest In Vector Databases?
    In fact, even in the absence of these commercial databases, users can effortlessly install PostgreSQL and leverage its built-in pgvector functionality for vector search. PostgreSQL stands as the benchmark in the realm of open-source databases, offering comprehensive support across various domains of database management. It excels in transaction processing (e.g., CockroachDB), online analytics (e.g., DuckDB),... - Source: dev.to / 16 days ago
  • How to Host a Scalable Full-Stack App for Free Using Cloudflare Pages, Workers, and Supabase
    Create an account at Supabase and create a new project. You’ll get:. - Source: dev.to / 18 days ago
  • Supabase WordPress Integration - SupaWP Plugin
    Supabase provides a robust authentication system supporting email/password, OAuth providers, and magic links. Integrating this with WordPress allows you to leverage Supabase’s secure and scalable auth backend to manage user registration and login seamlessly. - Source: dev.to / 21 days ago
View more

Ruby on Rails mentions (142)

  • Unlocking Opportunities: How to Thrive as a Ruby Engineer in Today's Tech Landscape
    Ruby on Rails open source projects. Contribute and learn at the same time. - Source: dev.to / 3 days ago
  • Open Source: A Goldmine for Indie Hackers
    Speed of Development: Frameworks such as Django or Rails accelerate the development process. - Source: dev.to / 3 days ago
  • Indie Hacking with Open Source Tools: Innovating on a Budget
    This ecosystem is fueled by repositories hosting powerful languages, functions, and versatile tools—from backend frameworks like Django and Ruby on Rails to containerization with Docker and distributed version control via Git. Moreover, indie hackers can also utilize open source design tools (e.g. GIMP, Inkscape) and analytics platforms such as Matomo. - Source: dev.to / 5 days ago
  • Charybdis ORM: Building High-Performance Distributed Rust Backends with ScyllaDB
    Ruby on Rails (RoR) is one of the most renowned web frameworks. When combined with SQL databases, RoR transforms into a powerhouse for developing back-end (or even full-stack) applications. It resolves numerous issues out of the box, sometimes without developers even realizing it. For example, with the right callbacks, complex business logic for a single API action is automatically wrapped within a transaction,... - Source: dev.to / 15 days ago
  • Ask HN: What's the ideal stack for a solo dev in 2025
    As it's just you I'd stick with Ruby on Rails 8[1] as you already know it and I think it could realistically easily achieve what you're proposing. There's lots of libraries to for calling out external AI services. e.g. Something like FastMCP[2] From the sound of it that's all you need. I'd use Hotwire[3] for the frontend and Hotwire Native if you want to rollout an app version quickly. I'd back it with... - Source: Hacker News / about 1 month ago
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What are some alternatives?

When comparing Supabase and Ruby on Rails, you can also consider the following products

Firebase - Firebase is a cloud service designed to power real-time, collaborative applications for mobile and web.

Laravel - A PHP Framework For Web Artisans

Next.js - A small framework for server-rendered universal JavaScript apps

Django - The Web framework for perfectionists with deadlines

AppWrite - Appwrite provides web and mobile developers with a set of easy-to-use and integrate REST APIs to manage their core backend needs.

ASP.NET - ASP.NET is a free web framework for building great Web sites and Web applications using HTML, CSS and JavaScript.