Aiven vs Supabase
SEPT 2026 auditA comparison of Aiven and Supabase built from values read directly from each provider's own documentation, with the source recorded against every figure.
The short answer
Choose Aiven if…
Teams who want more than one open-source data service from one vendor and one bill — Postgres beside Kafka, ClickHouse or OpenSearch — with the availability tier chosen per service rather than fixed.
Editorial · Palash Bagchi · approved
Choose Supabase if…
Teams who want Postgres plus auth, storage and generated APIs from one vendor on a fixed monthly bill, and who would otherwise assemble those pieces themselves.
Editorial · Palash Bagchi · approved
Consider something else if…
- Aiven: You want long recovery history on a cheap plan. Backup history is what the plan tiers buy here: two days on the entry paid plan against thirty at the top.
- Supabase: You want only a database. Much of the $25 covers a platform you may not use, and free projects are paused after a week of inactivity, which is not the same as scaling to zero.
8 sourced criteria separate them — see where, with sources, below.
Pick the criteria you care about. The chart counts how many of them lean toward each provider — the same read as scanning the bars below, just totalled for the ones you chose.
Aiven 0
Supabase 0
At a glance.
| Criterion | Aiven | Supabase |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | ||
| Free tier | Yes — indefinite, but idle services are powered off | Yes |
| Entry paid plan | $5 a month for Developer — one VM, 1 CPU, 1 GB RAM, 8 GB storage, with no choice of cloud or region and no connection pooling. The first plan that behaves like a production service is Startup at $75 a month or $0.10 an hour, which is where the uptime SLA and multi-CPU sizing begin; Hobbyist sits between them at $12. | $25/month for the Pro plan, including the first project and $10/mo of compute credits; additional projects from $10/mo |
| Pricing model | Fixed plans quoted both monthly and hourly, with the plan setting CPU, RAM and storage together rather than metering them separately. Aiven describes the pricing as all-inclusive: backups, monitoring and support come with the plan instead of appearing as line items. Higher tiers buy node count and backup history — Business adds a standby node, Premium a second. | Fixed monthly plan per organisation plus per-project compute, billed hourly by instance size |
| Execution | ||
| Managed connection pooling | Supported — not on the Free or Developer tiers | Supported |
| Infrastructure | ||
| Regions | 153 regions across six clouds — AWS 25, Google 42, Azure 39, OVH 22, UpCloud 16, DigitalOcean 9 — counted from Aiven's own reference list, which publishes the regions and no total. No magnitude is recorded, because Aiven states on that same page that the list differs per project and that not all service types are available in every cloud and region: the number is the platform's reach, not PostgreSQL's, and a bar drawn from it would be compared against providers whose counts are engine-specific. | 17 specific AWS regions across the Americas, Europe, Asia-Pacific and South America, plus broader 'general region' groupings that place the project on an available AWS region within an area. General regions do not support read replicas or API management. |
| Data | ||
| Engine | PostgreSQL, alongside MySQL, ClickHouse, OpenSearch, Valkey, Kafka, Flink and Grafana. Aiven runs the upstream projects rather than a compatible reimplementation, which is why its own docs point at postgresql.org for per-release detail. | PostgreSQL |
| Connection limit | Set per plan, not by a formula: 100 on the entry paid plan (Startup-4), rising to 200, 400, 800 and 1000 as the plan grows, with 25 on Hobbyist, 20 on Free and 15 on Developer. Aiven states plainly that it does not apply a per-GiB formula, and that some of the allowance is used by Aiven itself to manage the service. | 60 direct and 200 pooled connections on the Micro instance included with Pro; both scale with instance size |
| Database branching | Limited — a full copy from the latest backup, not copy-on-write | Supported |
| Point-in-time recovery | Bounded by the plan's backup history, so 2 days on the entry paid plan and 30 at the top. Granularity is fine within that: full backups daily with write-ahead logs copied every 5 minutes or per new file, whichever comes first. | Point-in-time recovery is a paid add-on on Pro, Team and Enterprise, and needs at least a Small compute add-on alongside it. Worst-case recovery point is 2 minutes. Without it, restores go back only to a daily backup. |
| Read replicas | Supported | Supported |
| Backup retention | By plan: none on Hobbyist, 2 days on Startup, 14 on Business, 30 on Premium. The magnitude is Startup's 2 days, the entry paid plan. Aiven's high-availability page states 2 days for Hobbyist where the backups page states none — the backups page is the more specific of the two and is what is recorded here. | Daily backups: 7 days on Pro, 14 days on Team, up to 30 days on Enterprise. Free projects get no automatic backups at all — Supabase tells free users to export their own data with the CLI. |
Where they differ.
Entry paid plan
- Aiven
- $5 a month for Developer — one VM, 1 CPU, 1 GB RAM, 8 GB storage, with no choice of cloud or region and no connection pooling. The first plan that behaves like a production service is Startup at $75 a month or $0.10 an hour, which is where the uptime SLA and multi-CPU sizing begin; Hobbyist sits between them at $12.
- Supabase
- $25/month for the Pro plan, including the first project and $10/mo of compute credits; additional projects from $10/mo
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Plans & Pricing — Aiven ↗
“Free $0 / month [...] 1 GB total storage Cannot select a specific cloud or region No integrations or connection pooling Developer $5 / month [...] 8 GB total storage Cannot select a specific cloud or region No integrations or connection pooling Hobbyist starting from $12 / month $0.02 / hour [...] Startup starting from $75 / month $0.10 / hour [...] 99.99% uptime SLA Business starting from $180 / month $0.25 / hour”
Read 2026-09-09 · official pricing
- Pricing & Fees — Supabase ↗
“$25/month [...] First project included. Additional projects from $10/mo. [...] Paid plans include $10/mo in compute credits, enough to cover one Micro instance.”
Read 2026-09-05 · official pricing
Pricing model
- Aiven
- Fixed plans quoted both monthly and hourly, with the plan setting CPU, RAM and storage together rather than metering them separately. Aiven describes the pricing as all-inclusive: backups, monitoring and support come with the plan instead of appearing as line items. Higher tiers buy node count and backup history — Business adds a standby node, Premium a second.
- Supabase
- Fixed monthly plan per organisation plus per-project compute, billed hourly by instance size
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Plans & Pricing — Aiven ↗
“Aiven's pricing is all-inclusive and transparent, providing you with the confidence [...] Startup starting from $75 / month $0.10 / hour [...] Business starting from $180 / month $0.25 / hour [...] Everything in Startup, plus high availability Premium starting from $270 / month $0.37 / hour”
Read 2026-09-09 · official pricing
- Pricing & Fees — Supabase ↗
“First project included. Additional projects from $10/mo. [...] Paid plans include $10/mo in compute credits, enough to cover one Micro instance.”
Read 2026-09-05 · official pricing
Regions
- Aiven
- 153 regions across six clouds — AWS 25, Google 42, Azure 39, OVH 22, UpCloud 16, DigitalOcean 9 — counted from Aiven's own reference list, which publishes the regions and no total. No magnitude is recorded, because Aiven states on that same page that the list differs per project and that not all service types are available in every cloud and region: the number is the platform's reach, not PostgreSQL's, and a bar drawn from it would be compared against providers whose counts are engine-specific.
- Supabase
- 17 specific AWS regions across the Americas, Europe, Asia-Pacific and South America, plus broader 'general region' groupings that place the project on an available AWS region within an area. General regions do not support read replicas or API management.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Available cloud regions — Aiven docs ↗
“This is a reference list of the default cloud regions available per provider on the Aiven Platform. note The list of available clouds can differ per project. Not all Aiven service types are available for all cloud providers and regions.”
Read 2026-09-09 · official docs
- Available regions — Supabase Docs ↗
“Each Supabase project is deployed to one primary region. [...] General regions deploy to an available AWS region within that broader area, which may not match a specific jurisdiction. For example, the "Europe" general region includes London and Zurich, which are not EU member states. Region selection is a data-location control, not proof of regulatory compliance. [...] General regions aren't yet supported for read replicas or management via the API.”
Read 2026-09-05 · official docs
Engine
- Aiven
- PostgreSQL, alongside MySQL, ClickHouse, OpenSearch, Valkey, Kafka, Flink and Grafana. Aiven runs the upstream projects rather than a compatible reimplementation, which is why its own docs point at postgresql.org for per-release detail.
- Supabase
- PostgreSQL
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Aiven for PostgreSQL® — Aiven docs ↗
“Aiven for PostgreSQL is the perfect fit for your relational data. A scalable SQL database solution that can be up and running within a few minutes. [...] Find a comprehensive per-release documentation on the PostgreSQL project website.”
Read 2026-09-09 · official docs
- Connect to your database — Supabase Docs ↗
“The session mode connection string connects to your Postgres instance via the Shared Pooler (Supavisor).”
Read 2026-09-05 · official docs
Connection limit
Set per plan, not by a formula: 100 on the entry paid plan (Startup-4), rising to 200, 400, 800 and 1000 as the plan grows, with 25 on Hobbyist, 20 on Free and 15 on Developer. Aiven states plainly that it does not apply a per-GiB formula, and that some of the allowance is used by Aiven itself to manage the service.
60 direct and 200 pooled connections on the Micro instance included with Pro; both scale with instance size
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Connection limits per plan for Aiven for PostgreSQL® — Aiven docs ↗
“Default values of the max_connections setting vary according to the service plan: Plan Max connections Developer 15 Free 20 Hobbyist 25 Startup/Business/Premium-4 100 Startup/Business/Premium-8 200 Startup/Business/Premium-16 400 Startup/Business/Premium-32 800 Startup/Business/Premium-64 and above 1000 note Aiven can utilize any number of the connections for managing the service. Aiven for PostgreSQL doesn't apply a fixed per-GiB connection formula”
Read 2026-09-09 · official docs
- Pricing & Fees — Supabase ↗
“1 GB RAM / 2-core ARM CPU / Connections: Direct 60, Pooler 200”
Read 2026-09-05 · official pricing
Database branching
- Aiven
- Limited — a full copy from the latest backup, not copy-on-write
- Supabase
- Supported
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Fork a service — Aiven for PostgreSQL® — Aiven docs ↗
“Fork your Aiven for PostgreSQL® service to create an independent copy for testing, debugging, or development without affecting the original service. Fork an Aiven service to create a complete copy of it from its latest backup. Forked services are independent and don't share resources with or increase the load on the original service. Common use cases for forking include: Creating a snapshot to analyze an issue. Creating a development copy of your production environment.”
Read 2026-09-09 · official docs
- Pricing & Fees — Supabase ↗
“Branching [...] $0.01344 per branch, per hour”
Read 2026-09-05 · official pricing
Point-in-time recovery
- Aiven
- Bounded by the plan's backup history, so 2 days on the entry paid plan and 30 at the top. Granularity is fine within that: full backups daily with write-ahead logs copied every 5 minutes or per new file, whichever comes first.
- Supabase
- Point-in-time recovery is a paid add-on on Pro, Team and Enterprise, and needs at least a Small compute add-on alongside it. Worst-case recovery point is 2 minutes. Without it, restores go back only to a daily backup.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Aiven for PostgreSQL® backups — Aiven docs ↗
“Aiven for PostgreSQL® databases are automatically backed up, with full backups made daily, and write-ahead logs (WAL) copied at 5 minute intervals, or for every new file generated. All backups are encrypted using pghoard, an open source tool developed and maintained by Aiven.”
Read 2026-09-09 · official docs
- Database Backups — Supabase Docs ↗
“Point-in-Time Recovery (PITR) allows you to back up a project at shorter intervals, giving you the option to restore to any chosen point with up to seconds of granularity. [...] Pro, Team and Enterprise Plan projects can enable PITR as an add-on. Projects that want to use PITR must also use at least a Small compute add-on to ensure smooth functioning. [...] in the worst case scenario, PITR achieves a Recovery Point Objective (RPO) of two minutes.”
Read 2026-09-05 · official docs
Backup retention
By plan: none on Hobbyist, 2 days on Startup, 14 on Business, 30 on Premium. The magnitude is Startup's 2 days, the entry paid plan. Aiven's high-availability page states 2 days for Hobbyist where the backups page states none — the backups page is the more specific of the two and is what is recorded here.
Daily backups: 7 days on Pro, 14 days on Team, up to 30 days on Enterprise. Free projects get no automatic backups at all — Supabase tells free users to export their own data with the CLI.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Aiven for PostgreSQL® backups — Aiven docs ↗
“Backup retention time by plan The number of stored backups and the backup retention time depends on the service plan that you have selected. Plan Type Backup Retention Time Hobbyist None Startup 2 days Business 14 days Premium 30 days”
Read 2026-09-09 · official docs
- Database Backups — Supabase Docs ↗
“We automatically back up all Pro, Team, and Enterprise Plan projects on a daily basis. [...] Pro Plan projects can access the last 7 days of daily backups. Team Plan projects can access the last 14 days of daily backups, while Enterprise Plan projects can access up to 30 days of daily backups. [...] We recommend that free tier plan projects regularly export their data using the Supabase CLI db dump command and maintain off-site backups.”
Read 2026-09-05 · official docs
When these numbers change, hear about it. Sources are re-checked monthly; a repricing goes out as a short note.
Documented by only one.
These criteria are published by one provider and not the other. An absence here means we have not found a source, not that the feature is missing.
Questions this comparison answers.
Entry paid plan: Aiven or Supabase?
Aiven: $5 a month for Developer — one VM, 1 CPU, 1 GB RAM, 8 GB storage, with no choice of cloud or region and no connection pooling. The first plan that behaves like a production service is Startup at $75 a month or $0.10 an hour, which is where the uptime SLA and multi-CPU sizing begin; Hobbyist sits between them at $12.
Supabase: $25/month for the Pro plan, including the first project and $10/mo of compute credits; additional projects from $10/mo
Should I choose Aiven or Supabase?
Pick Aiven if Teams who want more than one open-source data service from one vendor and one bill — Postgres beside Kafka, ClickHouse or OpenSearch — with the availability tier chosen per service rather than fixed.
Pick Supabase if Teams who want Postgres plus auth, storage and generated APIs from one vendor on a fixed monthly bill, and who would otherwise assemble those pieces themselves.