Pricing
Supabase Free Tier Limits in 2026: Database, Storage, Projects, Auth Emails and Pausing
Supabase's free plan in 2026: database size, storage, egress, project limits, auth email caps, pausing and backups, and the point where Pro starts to pay.
5 min read
Supabase limits and prices checked Oct 23, 2026 on Supabase’s pricing page and its docs on billing, cost control, auth rate limits and SMTP. All are linked under Sources. This page has no affiliate links (how we work).
Is Supabase free?
Yes. The Free plan is $0, and Supabase says “you will not be charged while using the Free Plan.” You get a 500 MB database, 1 GB of file storage, 5 GB of egress and 50,000 monthly active users.
The limits that actually bite aren’t the sizes, though. They’re these four: free projects are “paused after 1 week of inactivity”, you get 2 active projects, the built-in email sender manages “2 emails per hour”, and there are no automatic backups. Hit any of those unprepared and your weekend changes shape.
We haven’t tested Supabase. Everything below comes from Supabase’s own pricing page and docs.
Supabase free tier limits
All Pro figures are included amounts per Supabase’s pricing page, with the overage rate after them. Pro is “from $25/month”.
| Limit | Free | Pro |
|---|---|---|
| Database | 500 MB | 8 GB/project, then $0.125/GB |
| File storage | 1 GB | 100 GB, then $0.0213/GB |
| Egress | 5 GB | 250 GB, then $0.09/GB |
| Cached egress | 5 GB | $0.03/GB |
| Monthly users | 50,000 MAU | 100,000, then $0.00325 each |
| Backups | None | Daily, kept 7 days |
| Pausing | After 1 week idle | Never paused |
Free-plan extras from the same page:
- Shared CPU with 500 MB RAM
- 50 MB max file upload
- 500,000 Edge Function invocations
- Realtime: 200 concurrent connections and 2 million messages
- Logs kept 1 day; auth audit logs kept 1 hour
- Community support only
The gotchas
Free projects pause after a week
Supabase’s wording: free projects are “paused after 1 week of inactivity.” So your Free project is basically a Tamagotchi: ignore it for seven days and it stops responding. That’s fine for a side project you poke daily. It’s a problem for the demo you built in June and sent to an investor in July.
Only 2 active projects
“Limit of 2 active projects,” with the useful detail from the billing FAQ that “Paused projects do not count”. Two by two, Noah’s Ark rules. If you want a third, pause one of the first two.
Auth emails: 2 per hour
This is the one that catches people on launch day. The built-in email provider sends “2 emails per hour”. The SMTP docs go further: the default sender is “not meant for production use”, has no SLA, and only delivers to your team’s addresses. Anyone else gets “Email address not authorized.”
So a real signup flow on the built-in sender won’t work for real users. Set up custom SMTP, where the limit starts at 30 messages per hour. Honestly, I wish Supabase put this on the pricing page in bold instead of making you find it in two separate docs pages after your first user can’t log in.
No backups on Free
The pricing page lists no automatic backups on Free. Pro gets daily backups kept for 7 days. If your Free database matters, export it yourself on a schedule.
What happens when you go over
You don’t get a surprise bill on Free. Instead, per the billing FAQ: “You will be notified… If you continue to exceed the limits, service restrictions will apply.” After a grace period, Supabase lists these possible restrictions:
- “Pausing projects”
- “Switching databases to read-only mode”
- “Disabling new project launches/transfers”
- “Responding with a 402 status code”
The restrictions lift when your quota refills at the next billing cycle. A 402 on your API is a strange thing to explain to users, so watch the usage page before you get there.
When Pro starts to pay
Pro is “from $25/month” and includes “$10/month in compute credits, which covers one Micro instance”. Supabase’s own worked example puts 2 projects at $35/month. A spend cap is on by default, and Pro projects are never paused.
Two triggers where the $25 makes sense:
- You have real users. Pausing after a week idle and 2 auth emails an hour are both fine for building and both wrong for production. Pro fixes the pausing; custom SMTP fixes the email (you can do that on either plan).
- You need your data to survive a mistake. Daily backups kept 7 days are a Pro feature. If losing the database would be a bad day, that alone is the reason.
If you’re still inside 500 MB and nobody but you uses the app, stay on Free. Just accept that an idle Free project does a Rip Van Winkle after a week, and nobody is served while it sleeps. The Supabase price tracker has the full plan list, including Team “from $599/month”.
Free alternatives if you outgrow it
- Neon: check current price and free-plan limits on our Neon pricing tracker.
- Firebase: check current price on Firebase’s own pricing page before you move.
Hosting the front end too? See Vercel vs Netlify, our Vercel price tracker and Cloudflare Workers vs Vercel. Building with an AI app builder instead? Start with Lovable alternatives.
Also considering Firebase? Supabase vs Firebase free tier puts both no-cost plans side by side.
FAQ
Is Supabase free forever? The Free plan is $0 with no charges, but inactive projects pause after 1 week and usage limits apply.
How many projects on the free tier? Two active projects; paused projects don’t count toward the limit.
Does Supabase pause free projects? Yes, Free projects are paused after 1 week of inactivity, while Pro projects are never paused.
What’s the Supabase free storage limit? 1 GB of file storage with a 50 MB max upload, plus a 500 MB database.
Sources
- Supabase pricing (Free and Pro limits, overage rates, pausing, 2 active projects, backups, compute credits, $35 example, spend cap, Team price): https://supabase.com/pricing (verified 2026-10-23)
- Supabase billing FAQ (paused projects don’t count, over-quota restrictions, grace period, reset at billing cycle): https://supabase.com/docs/guides/platform/billing-faq (verified 2026-10-23)
- Supabase cost control (no charges on Free): https://supabase.com/docs/guides/platform/cost-control (verified 2026-10-23)
- Supabase auth rate limits (2 emails per hour): https://supabase.com/docs/guides/auth/rate-limits (verified 2026-10-23)
- Supabase custom SMTP (default sender not for production, team-only, no SLA, custom SMTP from 30/hour): https://supabase.com/docs/guides/auth/auth-smtp (verified 2026-10-23)