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Backend (BaaS)

Firebase

Google's realtime BaaS — best for mobile, weakest for SQL

8.4 / 10 55 Verified Reviewers Verified 2026-04-30 JavaScriptSwiftKotlinDart
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Firebase remains the default for mobile-first apps: realtime sync, offline, push, auth, hosting all in one SDK. Firestore is excellent at what it does (denormalized, document-shaped, realtime). The trade-off: your data model is Firestore-shaped forever. Migration off is painful. Pricing on egress and reads can spike. Best for mobile apps where realtime + offline is core.

Pricing
Free Spark · Blaze pay-as-you-go

Developer Consensus: Pros

  • Realtime + offline sync mature and reliable 46× mentioned
  • Mobile SDKs (iOS/Android/Flutter) are the platform standard 42× mentioned
  • Auth integrates with every social provider out of the box 35× mentioned
  • Crashlytics + Analytics + Performance for mobile observability 29× mentioned
  • Hosting + CDN + functions in one bill 21× mentioned

Common Friction Points

  • Firestore data model can't be normalized — you live with denormalization 24× mentioned
  • Migration off Firebase is genuinely painful 19× mentioned
  • Pricing on reads and bandwidth has surprised many teams 16× mentioned
  • No SQL means complex queries are application-layer joins 13× mentioned
  • Connection limits hit hard at scale 9× mentioned

Verified Peer Reviews

@mobile_dev
iOS Engineer · Swift · Mid
Verified
Mobile-first BaaS still the default for a reason.

Realtime sync, offline-first, auth, push in one SDK. Tried Supabase for mobile — the Swift SDK still trails Firebase. For mobile-primary apps Firebase is the pragmatic choice.

Blaze, April 2026 4.6/5 · 38 helpful
@web_to_mobile
Founder · TypeScript · Startup
Verified
Started here, will eventually migrate.

Firebase got us to MVP fast. The Firestore data model is now constraining product features that need joins. Migration to Postgres is on the 2027 roadmap.

Blaze, March 2026 3.9/5 · 22 helpful
@unity_dev
Game Developer · C# · Solo
Verified
Unity SDK is why I stay.

For Unity games, Firebase's SDK is years ahead of competitors. Auth + Realtime DB + Storage + Analytics with one import. Worth the data-model trade-offs.

Blaze + Unity SDK 11.x, April 2026 4.4/5 · 14 helpful

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Methodology

Every review on this page is verified through GitHub OAuth and weighted by reviewer credibility, use-case match, and conflict-of-interest disclosure. Aggregate scores combine with recency decay so rankings reflect current reality. Read full methodology →