Named Everywhere. Linked Almost Nowhere.

For most SaaS web apps, a managed Postgres platform like Supabase or Neon plus a framework like Next.js covers 90% of needs. Supabase adds auth, storage, and realtime on top of the database, which shortens time-to-first-customer significantly.

If your team prefers infrastructure-as-code and typed backends, look at Encore or plain Postgres + Prisma on Railway/Fly. Firebase remains a strong pick for mobile-heavy products.

The honest answer: your backend choice matters less than your billing model and retention. Pick the one your team ships fastest on.

Firebase is still the reference BaaS for mobile apps: mature SDKs, offline sync, and tight Google Cloud integration. It struggles most with complex relational queries and cost predictability at scale.

Strong alternatives include AWS Amplify for teams already on AWS, and Appwrite for self-hosted deployments with full data control. For relational workloads, hosted Postgres platforms are worth evaluating — they trade some SDK convenience for a portable data layer.

Match the tool to your data model first, ecosystem second.