Choose Supabase when
- You need SQL, joins, row-level security, or your app's user auth.
- The project is the business, not an experiment.
- You want open source and the option to self-host.
TmpState vs Supabase
Supabase is an open-source Firebase alternative built on real Postgres: SQL, row-level security, auth, storage, edge functions, realtime, and vectors. It is one of the best ways to run a serious application database today.
The honest verdict
Supabase gives you a real Postgres with auth and APIs; TmpState gives you a JSON database with literally zero ceremony. A serial builder running many small experiments hits Supabase's shape problem: projects are heavyweight (per-project pricing, paused free projects, dashboards, keys) while experiments are lightweight. TmpState inverts that: databases are as disposable as branches. When one app becomes the business, Supabase (or any real Postgres) is the correct graduation target, and our export exists precisely so that move is easy.
Side by side
| Dimension | TmpState | Supabase |
|---|---|---|
| Time to first write | Seconds, no account. | Minutes: account, org, project provisioning, then keys and a client. |
| Database engine | Document store over HTTP (JSON collections). | Full Postgres: SQL, joins, indexes, extensions, vectors. |
| Auth for your app's users | Not provided (on the Phase 4 research list, honestly). | Built-in auth with row-level security; a core strength. |
| Free-tier behavior for many small projects | Every database free for 24h, unlimited experiments, nothing to pause. | Two free projects; free projects pause after a week of inactivity. |
| Cost of several always-on side projects | $8/mo covers 3 databases, $1.50 per extra: ~$11/mo for five. | $25/mo per Pro project; five always-on projects is $125/mo (or shared-project workarounds). |
| Credentials an agent must handle | None; the URL is the credential and the agent persists it. | Project URL + anon/service keys, managed by a human dashboard. |
| Off-ramp | GET $DB/__export (full JSON); REST shape ports anywhere. | It IS the destination; pg_dump and standard Postgres tooling. |
Choose TmpState when
- You ship an app a day and most of them deserve to die quietly and free.
- Your AI agent does the wiring and should never see a service key.
- You want per-experiment isolation without per-project cost.
- Provisioning ceremony kills your prototyping momentum.
When NOT to use TmpState here
An honest comparison argues against us too. Skip TmpState if any of these apply:
- Do not pick TmpState because it is cheaper if what you actually need is Postgres; you will rebuild Supabase badly on top of a document store.
- No relational integrity, no SQL, no RLS, no app-user auth.
- Quotas are hard caps by design; heavy write workloads do not fit.
Common questions
Is TmpState a Supabase replacement?
No. It replaces the empty ceremony before Supabase: the experiments phase. When an experiment becomes a product, export and graduate; that off-ramp is a design commitment, not a concession.
Why is TmpState cheaper for serial builders?
Because databases share infrastructure and have hard quotas, a small always-on database costs us almost nothing to run, so Pro prices per-database instead of per-project.
Try the ten-second version
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