Backend & data

Search that feels instant and forgives typos, as a hosted API — the gold standard for site and app search. Brilliant DX; costs climb with scale, so watch the meter.

An open-source Firebase alternative with auth, databases, storage, functions and realtime. The pick when you want Firebase's breadth without the lock-in.

The enterprise identity standard — social, SSO, MFA, the lot. Rock-solid and feature-deep; pricing climbs steeply once you need enterprise connections.

Open-source, framework-agnostic auth that lives inside your own code — email, OAuth, 2FA, multi-tenancy via plugins. The self-hosted answer to Clerk, and the TypeScript crowd's new default.

Drop-in auth with beautiful prebuilt React components and B2B/org features. The fastest way to good-looking auth in a frontend-heavy app; pricing scales with active users.

Store, transform and deliver images and video with on-the-fly URL transforms over a CDN. The media layer that saves you building an image pipeline.

A reactive TypeScript backend — database, server functions, realtime and vector search in one. Loved by the AI-app crowd; queries update live with no plumbing.

A thin, SQL-close TypeScript ORM with great types and a tiny runtime. My pick when I want to stay near SQL and have agents generate correct queries.

Google's veteran BaaS — realtime database, auth, hosting and functions, all wired together. Fast to start and great for mobile; proprietary and Google-flavoured, so weigh lock-in.

A form backend so static and frontend-only sites can collect submissions with no server. The classic way to wire up a contact form on a JAMstack site.

Point it at a Postgres database and get a production GraphQL API in minutes, permissions included. A huge shortcut when GraphQL is your interface of choice.

Durable, event-driven functions with retries and steps baked in — great for AI pipelines and anything that must not silently fail. Reach for it when reliability beats a cron.

Drop multiplayer presence, cursors and collaborative editing into an app without building the realtime backend. The shortcut to a Figma-style 'live' feel.

The open-source answer to Algolia — fast, typo-tolerant, easy to self-host. The pick when you want great search without the Algolia bill.

Postgres that branches like Git, which is oddly perfect for preview deployments. Reach for it when you want just the database, not the whole Supabase bundle.

A code-first, Next.js-native headless CMS that installs into your app with data in your own database. Increasingly the Next/TypeScript crowd's favourite CMS.

A managed vector database for similarity search and RAG over embeddings. The default when you're building AI features that retrieve by meaning; managed-only.

Serverless MySQL (and now Postgres) with Git-like schema branches. Powerful at scale, but the free Hobby tier is gone — it's paid from the start now.

An entire backend in one Go file — SQLite, auth, realtime, admin UI, REST API. Absurdly convenient for small apps and prototypes; you self-host it.

Transactional email obsessed with deliverability and speed, with separated streams. The pick when an email absolutely has to land in the inbox.

The type-safe ORM that made database access pleasant in TypeScript, now with its own managed Postgres. Schema-first and ergonomic; some find the runtime heavier than Drizzle.

A developer-first email API from the React Email team, with a lovely DX. The default transactional email for indie and AI-built apps; React Email makes templates painless.

A headless CMS with a real-time content store and a fully customisable React Studio, queried with GROQ. Flexible enough for structured content that rigid CMSes choke on.

The popular open-source, self-hostable headless CMS — auto-generated REST/GraphQL and a customisable admin. No per-editor seat cost when you run it yourself.

The fastest way to get a real database, auth and APIs without running a backend — and it is just Postgres underneath, so you are not locked into something proprietary. My default backend for AI-built apps.

Background jobs and long-running tasks that don't time out, written as code in your own repo. The fix for 'this needs to run for five minutes' on serverless.

SQLite at the edge via libSQL, built for many small databases — per-tenant, per-agent. A fresh take on serverless data; great fit for multi-tenant and AI apps.

File uploads for TypeScript apps without wrestling S3 directly — typed, simple, Next-friendly. The 'just let me accept a file' button for indie builders.

Serverless Redis and a vector database over HTTP, billed per request — perfect for spiky edge workloads. Reach for it when you need a cache or queue without running one.