Driver 01
Unpredictable read and write bills
Costs that spike when a client query reads far more documents than expected.
Migration playbook: Firebase Firestore → Supabase and PostgreSQL
Firebase Firestore to Supabase PostgreSQL migration
Move from Firestore documents to relational PostgreSQL on Supabase for SQL joins, transactions and pricing that doesn't depend on document reads.
Migration drivers
Why teams make this move
Driver 02
No joins
Duplicating data across collections because Firestore can't join.
Driver 03
Vendor lock-in
Proprietary SDKs and security rules that don't move to another platform.
Execution sequence
How the migration runs
Each phase ends with a check you can verify — data parity, error rates, latency — and the rollback path is agreed before any traffic moves.
- 01Phase
Documents to a relational schema
Normalizing nested Firestore collections into PostgreSQL tables with foreign keys.
- 02Phase
Export and load
Exporting Firestore data and loading it into PostgreSQL with transformation scripts.
- 03Phase
Auth and storage
Migrating Firebase Auth users, with password hashes where they can be verified, and files to S3-compatible storage.
- 04Phase
Row Level Security and SDK cutover
Replacing Firebase Security Rules with PostgreSQL Row Level Security policies.
Risk prevention
Pitfalls that derail this migration
Risk 01
Leftover denormalized fields
Carrying stale duplicate fields from NoSQL documents into normalized tables.
Risk 02
Password hash verification
Misconfiguring verification of Firebase's modified scrypt hashes, which locks users out.
Risk 03
Unindexed foreign keys
Forgetting to index foreign key columns, which makes joins fall back to sequential scans.
Before and after
What we measure
We take a baseline before any change and report the same numbers after cutover, from your own tools. They are the evidence of whether the migration worked — not figures promised in advance.
- Monthly cost
- Firebase bill vs Supabase plan for the same usage
- Row parity
- Documents exported vs rows loaded, per collection
- Login success
- Sign-in success rate after the auth cutover
Questions
Frequently asked migration questions
Usually. Firebase uses a modified scrypt algorithm, and the user export includes the hashes and the parameters needed to verify them. We test sign-in on a sample of migrated users first; anyone whose hash can't be verified gets a passwordless or reset flow.
Yes. Supabase Realtime broadcasts database changes over WebSockets, filtered by Row Level Security.
Rehearse the cutover before the real one
Tell us about your data volume, traffic and timeline. An engineer will reply within one business day to set up a call about the migration plan and its rollback path.