Is Supabase cheaper than Amazon RDS?
When you are choosing where to host Postgres, price is rarely the only thing that matters, but it is often what decides it. And "cheaper" is slippery, so to be precise: here it means the real monthly bill to run the same workload on each service, worked out from published rates, not a sticker price or an intro discount.
For Supabase versus Amazon RDS, there is no single answer, because they bill on different models. Supabase is $25/mo Pro floor, then compute add-ons and usage. Amazon RDS is per instance-hour, 24/7, no scale-to-zero. Which one wins comes down to how big an instance you need.
So this page settles it with real numbers: we compute the monthly bill for Supabase and Amazon RDS across a range of usage, find the exact point where the cheaper option flips, then look past price at the tradeoffs that decide a real migration. Prices were last verified 2026-08-01.
Short answer: Amazon RDS is cheaper at smaller sizes, up to about 2.96 CU. Above that, Supabase is cheaper.
- The break-even point, charted
- What tips the balance between them
- Each provider's real gotchas and tradeoffs
- Which one to choose
- A calculator for your exact numbers
Where the answer flips
This matchup turns on how big an instance you need. The chart plots each provider’s monthly bill as that changes, holding always-on, at 25 GB storage. They cross at about 2.96 CU.
What tips the balance
They price out differently because of how each one bills. Supabase: Platform pricing: a free tier, then a $25/mo Pro floor plus a per-project compute add-on (Micro $10 up to 2XL $410) billed hourly, with storage and egress over generous allowances.
Amazon RDS: Per instance-hour, billed around the clock with no scale-to-zero. On-demand is the expensive default; Reserved Instances or Database Savings Plans cut roughly 30% to 70% for steady workloads.
So the honest answer is not a single number, it is a curve. Amazon RDS is cheaper at smaller sizes, up to about 2.96 CU. Above that, Supabase is cheaper. The one gotcha that catches people on Supabase: Compute never scales to zero on paid plans, and the included $10 credit covers only one Micro instance, so every extra project (staging, preview, production) stacks its own around-the-clock charge. It is structurally never the cheapest option for a tiny or idle database. On Amazon RDS: Multi-AZ high availability is a single checkbox that runs a full standby you also pay for, doubling the compute bill for a node that serves no read traffic. Stopping an instance still bills storage and backups, and RDS auto-restarts anything left stopped for 7 days.
Beyond price: the two, side by side
Price is only half the decision. Here is what each one is actually like to run.
Supabase
Platform pricing: a free tier, then a $25/mo Pro floor plus a per-project compute add-on (Micro $10 up to 2XL $410) billed hourly, with storage and egress over generous allowances.
Compute never scales to zero on paid plans, and the included $10 credit covers only one Micro instance, so every extra project (staging, preview, production) stacks its own around-the-clock charge. It is structurally never the cheapest option for a tiny or idle database.
- Bundles Postgres with Auth, Storage, Realtime, and Edge Functions under one bill.
- Free projects pause after 7 days of inactivity and keep no backups.
- Automatic failover is Enterprise-only, and a read replica bills as a full extra instance.
- Built-in Supavisor pooler: session mode on 5432, transaction mode on 6543.
- The direct connection is IPv6 by default; IPv4 needs a $4/mo add-on or the session pooler.
From a Mac client: Use the direct connection (port 5432) from a desktop GUI; its limit scales with compute, from 60 on Micro to about 500 at the top tiers. On an IPv4-only network, use Supavisor session mode.
Amazon RDS
Per instance-hour, billed around the clock with no scale-to-zero. On-demand is the expensive default; Reserved Instances or Database Savings Plans cut roughly 30% to 70% for steady workloads.
Multi-AZ high availability is a single checkbox that runs a full standby you also pay for, doubling the compute bill for a node that serves no read traffic. Stopping an instance still bills storage and backups, and RDS auto-restarts anything left stopped for 7 days.
- Native AWS integration: IAM auth, Secrets Manager, VPC isolation, Performance Insights.
- Multi-AZ adds a synchronous standby with automatic failover, at roughly 2x compute.
- Up to 15 read replicas, each a full paid instance.
- Provisioned storage bills whether used or not, and can only grow, never shrink.
- You own the patching cadence through weekly maintenance windows.
From a Mac client: Default max_connections scales with instance memory, roughly 80 to 100 on a db.t4g.micro, so a small instance is easy to exhaust. RDS Proxy adds managed pooling for about $22/mo per 2 vCPU.
Which should you choose
Run your exact numbers
Move the sliders for your compute, active hours, and storage, and see Supabase, Amazon RDS, and the others side by side.
Open the comparatorHow we worked this out
Every figure is computed from each provider’s published on-demand rates, single region, last verified 2026-08-01. We count compute and storage. We do not count backups, support, data transfer beyond the noted allowances, high availability or Multi-AZ, or committed-use and reserved discounts, any of which can move a real bill.
The chart holds always-on, at 25 GB storage and varies only the compute size, so the curve isolates the one variable that decides this matchup. Your own mix will differ, which is what the comparator is for.
Is Supabase cheaper than Amazon RDS?
Amazon RDS is cheaper at smaller sizes, up to about 2.96 CU. Above that, Supabase is cheaper. At 0.25 CU the two cost $37.13 and $14.56 in our reference case; at 8 CU they cost $437 and $495. Run your own numbers in the comparator.
What decides whether Supabase or Amazon RDS is cheaper?
Mostly how big an instance you need. Supabase bills its instance around the clock, while Amazon RDS bills its instance around the clock. Compute size and storage move the number too.
When should I pick Supabase over Amazon RDS?
Pick Supabase for Full-stack app backends that actually use the bundled auth, storage, realtime, and edge functions, with steady enough traffic to justify an always-on instance. Pick Amazon RDS for Steady, always-on production databases with predictable capacity, especially inside an existing AWS estate where you can lock in Reserved Instances and get free same-AZ data transfer.
Whichever you pick, FluentDB is the Mac client for it.
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