Supabase pricing explained: what the Free plan really costs you in 2026

How Supabase pricing actually works

Supabase is a base plan plus metered usage. The plan fee buys you a set of allowances; going past any one of them bills at a published per-unit rate. Nothing about that is unusual — what's unusual is how many separate meters there are.

Six of them matter:

• Database size — how much your Postgres actually holds.

• Egress — data leaving Supabase. API responses, file downloads, images.

• Monthly active users (MAUs) — distinct people who authenticate.

• Storage — files in the storage buckets, separate from the database.

• Compute — the instance your database runs on, billed per project.

• Projects — each one past the first has its own line.

Most people blow a budget on the two they weren't watching: compute and egress. We'll come back to both.

Supabase plans in 2026 (official)

Verified August 2026, from the Supabase pricing page.

• Free — $0/month. 500 MB database · 5 GB egress · 5 GB cached egress · 50,000 MAUs · 1 GB storage · no compute credits · maximum 2 active projects · projects pause after 1 week of inactivity.

• Pro — $25/month (first project included; each additional project $10/month). 8 GB database, then $0.125/GB · 250 GB egress, then $0.09/GB · 250 GB cached egress, then $0.03/GB · 100,000 MAUs, then $0.00325/MAU · 100 GB storage, then $0.0213/GB · $10/month compute credits, covering one Micro instance.

• Team — $599/month (first project included; additional projects $10/month). The same technical allowances and overage rates as Pro — you're buying organisational controls, not capacity.

• Enterprise — custom. Everything negotiable.

The jump worth noticing is Pro to Team: $25 to $599 with identical included resources. If you're hitting a technical ceiling, Team doesn't solve it — overage on Pro does, and usually for far less.

The Free plan pause, and why it bites

On the Free plan, a project pauses after 1 week of inactivity. Your data isn't deleted and you can restore the project — but until you do, the database doesn't answer.

This is the single most common Supabase surprise, and it's specifically painful for the way AI-built apps get used. You build something in a weekend, connect a Supabase backend, share the link, and go quiet for ten days. Someone finally opens it and gets an error, because the database went to sleep before they arrived. The app is fine. The backend is paused.

Free also caps you at 2 active projects, which is less generous than it sounds if you build a lot — a third experiment means pausing one of the first two.

Neither of these is a reason to avoid the Free plan. They're reasons not to put anything with real users on it. The moment a project matters to somebody other than you, $25 buys away the pause.

The two meters that actually cause surprise bills

Compute is per project, not per account

Pro includes $10/month of compute credits, which covers one Micro instance. That's the phrase to reread: one. A second project needs its own compute, and the $10 credit doesn't stretch across both.

So the mental model "Pro is $25/month" holds for one app. Three small apps on Pro is $25 plus $10 and $10 for the extra projects, plus compute for each beyond the single credited instance. It grows linearly with the number of things you're running, not with how big any of them are.

Egress grows with content, not with users

250 GB of included egress sounds enormous, and for a JSON API it is — you'd need a lot of traffic to move a quarter of a terabyte of text.

Images are a different story. Serve user-uploaded photos straight out of Supabase Storage and a few thousand page views can move real gigabytes. Past the allowance it's $0.09/GB uncached, $0.03/GB cached — rates that are fine individually and add up quietly. The fix is boring and effective: put a CDN in front of anything visual, and don't serve full-size originals when a thumbnail will do.

Three scenarios with numbers

Scenario 1: a side project with a handful of users

A tool you built and share with a few people. Small database, occasional use.

Free ($0) covers the resources easily — 500 MB and 50,000 MAUs is far more than you need. The problem is the 1-week pause, which will hit precisely when someone tries it after a quiet fortnight.

Verdict: Free if it's genuinely just you. Pro at $25 the moment you've given the link to anyone whose opinion you care about.

Scenario 2: one real app, real users

A live product. Thousands of MAUs, a few gigabytes of database, images served to users.

The math. Well inside the 100,000 MAU and 8 GB allowances. Compute is covered by the $10 credit at Micro — until traffic makes Micro too small, at which point you're paying for a larger instance. Egress depends entirely on whether images go through a CDN.

What you pay: $25/month, comfortably — or $35–60 with a bigger instance and uncached media. Supabase is genuinely good value in this band.

Scenario 3: five projects on the go

You build a lot. Five small apps, each with its own backend, none of them heavy.

The math. $25 for the first, $10 each for four more, plus compute for the four instances the single credit doesn't cover. Resource usage is trivial; the count is what costs money.

What you pay: $65+/month for five nearly-idle databases. This is where self-hosting Supabase stops being an ideological choice and becomes arithmetic — one server runs all five, and the per-project meter disappears.

When self-hosting actually wins

Self-hosted Supabase is the same open-source stack: Postgres, auth, storage, realtime, the API layer. What you don't get is the managed part — automatic backups, one-click upgrades, security patching, and someone else being awake when it breaks.

Cash cost is the server: roughly $10–30/month for something that comfortably runs Supabase, or a flat $10/month on a managed host that handles the server for you. No per-project fee, no per-MAU rate, no egress meter beyond your provider's own.

The honest decision rule:

• One serious app — stay on Pro. $25/month for managed Postgres with backups is a good price and self-hosting saves you almost nothing.

• Many small projects — self-host. The per-project fee is what's costing you, and one server absorbs all of them.

• Data residency or compliance requirements — self-host, and the cost question doesn't really come into it.

• You don't want to think about backups — stay on Pro. This is the thing you're actually buying, and it's worth $25.

FAQ

Is Supabase free?

Yes, permanently — $0/month with 500 MB database, 5 GB egress, 50,000 MAUs, 1 GB storage and up to 2 active projects. The catch is that projects pause after 1 week of inactivity, so it isn't suitable for anything other people rely on.

How much does Supabase cost per month?

Free is $0. Pro is $25/month for the first project, $10/month for each additional project. Team is $599/month. Enterprise is custom. Overages on Pro: $0.125/GB database, $0.09/GB egress, $0.03/GB cached egress, $0.00325/MAU, $0.0213/GB storage. Verified August 2026.

Why did my Supabase project pause?

Free-plan projects pause after 1 week of inactivity. The data is retained and the project can be restored, but the database stops responding until you do. Upgrading to Pro removes the pause.

Does Supabase Pro include everything for $25?

For one project, effectively yes — the $10 compute credit covers a Micro instance, and the included allowances are generous. Additional projects are $10/month each and need their own compute, so the number of projects moves your bill more than the size of any one of them.

What makes a Supabase bill go up unexpectedly?

Two things, almost always. Compute, because it's billed per project and only one Micro instance is credited. And egress, because serving images and files directly from storage moves far more data than API responses do — $0.09/GB uncached adds up faster than people expect.

Is self-hosting Supabase cheaper?

For several small projects, clearly — one server replaces several per-project fees at roughly $10–30/month. For a single serious app it's close to a wash, and you'd be trading managed backups and upgrades for a saving of a few dollars. Our guide to self-hosting Supabase covers the setup.

Is Team worth $599?

Only for the organisational features — the included resources and overage rates are identical to Pro. If you're hitting technical limits, paying overage on Pro is almost always cheaper than moving to Team.

Count your projects before you count your users

Supabase's allowances are large enough that most apps never approach them, which makes the pricing page misleading in an unusual direction: the thing that will move your bill isn't scale, it's count. One app on Pro is excellent value. Five nearly-idle apps on Pro is a bill you didn't intend to sign up for. Work out which shape you are before you pick a plan — and if the answer is "many small things", one server you control costs less than the sum of the meters.

→ Self-host Supabase on livemy.app · Flat $10/month · No per-project or per-MAU meter · Custom domain and SSL included.