Supabase

Supabase is an open-source Backend-as-a-Service (BaaS) platform based on PostgreSQL. It combines database, authentication, storage, real-time features, auto-generated APIs and serverless functions for modern web or mobile apps.

Supabase provides a full-featured PostgreSQL database, user management (Auth), file/media storage, auto-generated REST and GraphQL APIs, real-time subscriptions, serverless edge functions and support for vector/embedding data for AI/ML use cases.

Supabase is suitable for web and mobile apps, SaaS, applications with relational data structure, real-time functionality or AI/ML applications that require data storage, auth and API access.

Since Supabase is based on PostgreSQL and is open source, you get real SQL performance, full control over your data and no dependency on proprietary services. In addition, there are ready-to-use backend blocks and great flexibility.

Yes — Supabase supports real-time subscriptions and realtime features, so apps with live data, chats, notifications or synchronized data can be easily implemented.

Yes — Supabase can be fully operated on your own infrastructure (e.g. with Docker, Kubernetes, VM or bare-metal). This gives you full control over data, security and hosting environment.

Basically, the self-hosted version offers the same core features as the cloud version. However, new features may come with a delay; regular maintenance and updates are important.

Self-hosting requires your own infrastructure, administration, updates and maintenance. Depending on the project scope, it takes time and know-how for scaling, backup & security.

For smaller to medium workloads, a single DB may be sufficient. For larger data/vector volumes, an architecture with multiple databases/pods is recommended.

You export the database (e.g. via pg_dump), import it into your own Postgres instance and also transfer storage or system data.

Yes — Supabase supports environments such as development, staging or production. With migration tools and versioning of the database schema, deployments can be implemented in a structured manner.

SSL/HTTPS, secure auth tokens or passwords, role-based access and possibly Row Level Security (RLS) are recommended. For AI/vector workloads, it's worth keeping embeddings and operational data in separate databases.

Yes — the self-hosted version offers the same core features as hosted: database, auth, storage, realtime, API, functions. There may be temporary delays with new features.

Yes — Supabase supports vector/embedding data via the pgvector extension. This allows embeddings to be stored and queried with vector similarity searches — the basis for semantic search or AI-powered research.

You create embeddings (e.g. via LLM or embedding model), store them in a vector(...) column (via pgvector), and use vector similarity queries or edge functions for semantic search or RAG workflows.

Semantic document search, knowledge bases with AI-powered search, chatbots with access to documents, RAG systems, recommendation systems, full-text or semantic search across large text or document collections.

Activate the pgvector extension, correctly define the embeddings column, implement embeddings generation and synchronization, plan backup & scaling for large embedding volumes and monitor performance.

Yes — with built-in vector and embedding support, a complete RAG or AI-powered search/retrieval stack can be built — without requiring an external vector DB or additional services.

Yes — by combining relational structures (for metadata, access rights) and embeddings/vector search, Supabase is excellently suited as a backend for knowledge management or document retrieval systems.

If you have large amounts of data or AI workloads, need to guarantee high availability, have compliance requirements, or don't have your own ops resources — then a managed hosting partner like WZ-IT can be more economical and reliable.

When data protection, compliance, operational security, scaling, monitoring or complex data/embedding workloads are required — then managed hosting offers significantly lower risk and more stability.