Alternatives to Firebase

Open source notification infrastructure

Novu is the notification infrastructure you'd build yourself if you had three months to spare. One API for email, SMS, push, in-app, and chat notifications — with a visual workflow editor, subscriber preferences, and digest/batching built in.

Complete cloud infrastructure for web, mobile, and AI apps

Appwrite is the open source Firebase that actually lets you self-host. Authentication, databases, storage, serverless functions, real-time subscriptions — the complete backend-as-a-service in Docker containers.

Open source realtime backend in 1 file

PocketBase is a complete backend in a 20MB binary. Run `./pocketbase serve` and you get auth, real-time subscriptions, file storage, REST API, and an admin dashboard — no Docker, no database server, no infrastructure.

Realtime database with push queries

The database that solved realtime push queries — then the company behind it died. RethinkDB lets you subscribe to query results and get live updates when data changes, no polling required.

The Postgres development platform with auth, storage, and realtime

Supabase is the open-source Firebase alternative that actually delivers. Built on Postgres — not a proprietary NoSQL store — it gives you auth, real-time subscriptions, storage, edge functions, and pgvector for AI embeddings.