# Supabase vs Nile

Canonical: https://inetgeek.com/compare/supabase-vs-nile/

Every value below is read from Supabase's and Nile's own documentation. See https://inetgeek.com/methodology/ for how.

## At a glance

| Criterion | Supabase | Nile |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Entry paid plan | $25/month for the Pro plan, including the first project and $10/mo of compute credits; additional projects from $10/mo | $15/month for Pro, which carries a production SLA. Scale is $350/month. |
| Pricing model | Fixed monthly plan per organisation plus per-project compute, billed hourly by instance size | Priced on queries rather than instances, with a $15 base for Pro. Nile's own framing is "Pay for queries, not for instances", and additional tokens are $0.05 per million. |
| Storage (entry plan) | 8 GB disk per project on the Pro plan; 500 MB on Free | 5 GB on Pro, then $1.00 per additional GB. |
| Managed connection pooling | Supported | Supported |
| Engine | PostgreSQL | PostgreSQL, with tenant isolation as a first-class concept — databases, tenant databases and vector embeddings are all described as unlimited. |
| Connection limit | 60 direct and 200 pooled connections on the Micro instance included with Pro; both scale with instance size | 10,000 connections on Pro, with connection pooling included. |
| When idle | Free projects are paused after one week of inactivity and must be restored manually; paid projects are not paused | No cold start on Pro — Nile lists it as a plan feature rather than a behaviour to configure. |

## Where they differ

### Entry paid plan

- Supabase: $25/month for the Pro plan, including the first project and $10/mo of compute credits; additional projects from $10/mo ([source](https://supabase.com/pricing))
- Nile: $15/month for Pro, which carries a production SLA. Scale is $350/month. ([source](https://www.thenile.dev/pricing))

### Pricing model

- Supabase: Fixed monthly plan per organisation plus per-project compute, billed hourly by instance size ([source](https://supabase.com/pricing))
- Nile: Priced on queries rather than instances, with a $15 base for Pro. Nile's own framing is "Pay for queries, not for instances", and additional tokens are $0.05 per million. ([source](https://www.thenile.dev/pricing))

### Storage (entry plan)

- Supabase: 8 GB disk per project on the Pro plan; 500 MB on Free ([source](https://supabase.com/pricing))
- Nile: 5 GB on Pro, then $1.00 per additional GB. ([source](https://www.thenile.dev/pricing))

### Engine

- Supabase: PostgreSQL ([source](https://supabase.com/docs/guides/database/connecting-to-postgres))
- Nile: PostgreSQL, with tenant isolation as a first-class concept — databases, tenant databases and vector embeddings are all described as unlimited. ([source](https://www.thenile.dev/pricing))

### Connection limit

- Supabase: 60 direct and 200 pooled connections on the Micro instance included with Pro; both scale with instance size ([source](https://supabase.com/pricing))
- Nile: 10,000 connections on Pro, with connection pooling included. ([source](https://www.thenile.dev/pricing))

### When idle

- Supabase: Free projects are paused after one week of inactivity and must be restored manually; paid projects are not paused ([source](https://supabase.com/pricing))
- Nile: No cold start on Pro — Nile lists it as a plan feature rather than a behaviour to configure. ([source](https://www.thenile.dev/pricing))

## Which should you choose?

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.

Pick Nile if Multi-tenant SaaS where every customer wants isolation — Nile makes a database per tenant the default shape rather than something you build on top of Postgres.

Consider something else: 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.

Consider something else: Nile — Several of the features on its own pricing table are marked Coming soon, including branching, backups and provisioned compute, so what is bought today is narrower than the table suggests.

## Documented by only one

- Free tier: Supabase: Yes
- Egress over allowance: Supabase: $0.09 per GB for uncached egress and $0.03 per GB for cached, charged only above the plan's quota. Egress restrictions clear at the next billing cycle, or immediately on upgrading or disabling the spend cap.
- Included bandwidth: Supabase: 250 GB uncached and 250 GB cached egress a month on Pro and Team, pooled across Database, Auth, Storage and every other service as one Unified Egress Quota
- Regions: 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.
- Database branching: Supabase: Supported
- Point-in-time recovery: 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.
- Read replicas: Supabase: Supported
- Backup retention: Supabase: 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.

## Questions this comparison answers

**Entry paid plan: Supabase or Nile?**

Supabase: $25/month for the Pro plan, including the first project and $10/mo of compute credits; additional projects from $10/mo
Nile: $15/month for Pro, which carries a production SLA. Scale is $350/month.

**Storage (entry plan): Supabase or Nile?**

Supabase: 8 GB disk per project on the Pro plan; 500 MB on Free
Nile: 5 GB on Pro, then $1.00 per additional GB.

**Should I choose Supabase or Nile?**

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.
Pick Nile if Multi-tenant SaaS where every customer wants isolation — Nile makes a database per tenant the default shape rather than something you build on top of Postgres.