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What Supabase Is

An open-source backend platform on Postgres.

Postgres plus batteries

Supabase is a backend platform whose centre is a real Postgres database. Around it sit services for auth (users, sessions, OAuth), storage (files in buckets), realtime (listening to changes and sending messages), edge functions (server-side TypeScript) and an auto-generated REST API. Because the data lives in ordinary Postgres, you keep SQL, constraints, views, functions and extensions. Supabase is open source and can be self-hosted, or used as a managed cloud service with a dashboard.

A backend built around Postgres

Supabase wraps a full Postgres database with auth, storage, realtime and functions behind one API gateway.

Three ideas: what Supabase is, how its services fit together and how a client connects. — Figure 1.1 — Client, API gateway, Supabase services and Postgres.

The building blocks at a glance

Which product answers which need.

# need                                 -> Supabase product
# store relational data, query with SQL -> Database (Postgres)
# sign users in, issue JWTs             -> Auth
# upload images, PDFs, videos           -> Storage
# live updates, chat, who is online     -> Realtime
# server-side logic, webhooks, secrets  -> Edge Functions
# embeddings and similarity search      -> pgvector extension

A furnished flat around a solid foundation

Postgres is the concrete foundation; auth, storage and realtime are furniture already moved in. You can rearrange or replace pieces, but the foundation stays standard.

त्वरित जाँच: What sits at the centre of every Supabase project?

A key-value cache only
A proprietary document store
A full Postgres database
A GraphQL-only data layer

Answer

A full Postgres database — Everything else is built around Postgres.