nowfound

Dev tools · June 9, 2025

SelfDB – Ditch Supabase and Firebase Lock-In, Self-Host Simply

Hey HN! We're a small team of developers who, like many of you, love the power and convenience of Backend-as-a-Service (BaaS) platforms. However, we've also felt the sting of vendor lock-in, wrestled with the complexities of self-hosting feature-rich open-source alternatives, and worried about unpredictable costs or the sudden disappearance of free tiers that many indie devs and small projects rely on. We believe developers deserve more control and simplicity without sacrificing functionality. After countless hours spent navigating these challenges, we decided to build the solution we wished…

SelfDB – Ditch Supabase and Firebase Lock-In, Self-Host Simply launched on June 9, 2025 with 6 votes and more than 75% of that year's launches. The site was still online in September 2026, 1 year on.

What it does

Hey Devs!Tired of mounting Firebase or Supabase bills? Meet SelfDB, your self-hosted alternative that puts you in control. Self-hosted: Deploy anywhere—your server, cloud, or local machine. Cost-effective: Eliminate recurring fees. And ship more 🚀

In the maker’s words, at launch

Hey HN! We're a small team of developers who, like many of you, love the power and convenience of Backend-as-a-Service (BaaS) platforms. However, we've also felt the sting of vendor lock-in, wrestled with the complexities of self-hosting feature-rich open-source alternatives, and worried about unpredictable costs or…

Does a similar job

all alternatives →
  • Supabase (Alpha)2020 · supabase.com · ▲463

    An open source Firebase alternative

  • InstantDB – A Modern Firebase2024 · github.com · ▲1,145

    Hey there HN! We’re Joe and Stopa, and today we’re open sourcing InstantDB, a client-side database that makes it easy to build real-time and collaborative apps like Notion and Figma. Building modern apps these days involves a lot of schleps. For a basic CRUD app you need to spin up servers, wire up endpoints, integrate auth, add permissions, and then marshal data from the backend to the frontend and back again. If you want to deliver a buttery smooth user experience, you’ll need to add optimistic updates and rollbacks. We do these steps over and over for every feature we build, which can…

  • Open-source Firebase Alternative? It's here2022 · github.com · ▲153

    Announcing Appwrite 0.14 with 11 Cloud Function Runtimes! 🥳

  • Supabase (Beta)2020 · supabase.com · ▲314

    The open source Firebase alternative.

  • Firebase, a scalable real-time backend2012 · firebase.com · ▲526

    Discover Firebase, Google’s mobile and web app development platform that helps developers build apps and games that users will love.

  • InstantDBApr 2026 · instantdb.com · ▲320

    Complete backend with auth and storage in one prompt

More dev tools this month

the category →
  • /dev/null▲490

    a social network for devs

    Dev tools · 4d ago · dev-null.sh

  • open-source IDE for thoughtful software design. Contribute to devdotfast/whiteboard development by creating an account on GitHub.

    Dev tools · 28d ago · github.com

  • Contribute to reladraw/reladraw development by creating an account on GitHub.

    Dev tools · 26d ago · github.com

  • OpenBot▲362

    Grok Bot alternative: free, local, open-source, multiplayer

    Dev tools · 24d ago · openbot.run

  • Contribute to oosexgang/hackios-xnu-kernel development by creating an account on GitHub.

    Dev tools · 13h ago · github.com

  • Talanoa▲346

    Hi HN, I’m a fullstack developer, and honestly, I’ve lost count of how many side projects I’ve worked on over the years. But one idea kept coming back to me: a different kind of email client. It first came to me in 2014: “What if we could handle emails more like conversations?” Every year, I’d revisit this concept in my “Build Notes.” Ten years later, no one had built exactly what I had in mind — so I finally decided to do it myself. That’s how Talanoa was born. I wanted something focused on people, not timelines. I was tired of marking messages as unread just to remember to reply later, or…

    Dev tools · 21d ago · talanoa.email

Source: Show HN post ↗ · launch text quoted in part

Launched alongside, June 2025

the whole month →
  • IM

    Hey HN! Pilots everywhere are required to keep a logbook of all their flying hours, aircraft, airports, and so on. Since I track everything digitally (some people still just use paper logbooks!), I put together some data visualizations and a few 3D globes to show my flying history. This globe is probably my favourite so far: https://jameshard.ing/pilot/globes/all If you’ve got ideas for other graphs or ways to show this kind of data, I’d love to hear them!

    Life & fun · 2025 · jameshard.ing

  • Stunning presentations with AI. No design skills required.

    AI · 2025 · chroniclehq.com

  • Build native mobile apps for iOS and Android without code.

    Dev tools · 2025 · bble.io

  • Twenty▲989

    Build your Enterprise CRM with an AI-friendly SDK

    Dev tools · 2025 · twenty.com

  • All your connections, across all your socials.

    AI · 2025 · pally.com

  • I was the main contributor to workout.lol, an open-source fitness app to easily build a workout routine. The project had traction (1.4k GitHub stars, 95 forks, ~20K visits/month), but was eventually sold due to video licensing hurdles. The new owner stopped maintaining it, and the repo went abandoned. Over the next 9 months, I sent 15 emails to try to save it : no replies. Feature requests & issues were ignored. The community was left with a "broken" tool let's say. I couldn't just let it die So I built the new version from scratch with the same open-source spirit, but a better…

    Dev tools · 2025 · github.com