Supabase vs. Firebase vs. EdgeBase: Real Production Latency Benchmarks

To eliminate bias, our benchmark suite ran automated test harnesses over 7 consecutive days from 10 distinct geographical client nodes (San Francisco, New York, London, Frankfurt, Tokyo, Singapore, Sydney, São Paulo, Mumbai, Johannesburg).

Each client executed a standard e-commerce read/write profile: 1. 80% Read operations: Complex JOIN with nested user profiles and active subscriptions. 2. 20% Atomic write operations: Order placement and inventory decrement within an ACID transaction. 3. Burst tests: Simulating 5,000 concurrent serverless workers spinning up simultaneously.

The results highlighted stark architectural differences. While Supabase excels at complex SQL relations in close geographic proximity to the primary database region (US-East: 12ms), latencies climbed significantly for European and Asian clients (London: 98ms, Singapore: 184ms) without manual connection replicas.

Firebase exhibited consistent worldwide performance via Google's internal backbone, but query flexibility remained constrained by its NoSQL document tree model.

EdgeBase Cloud outperformed both on read operations by caching read replicas dynamically across 300+ PoPs, averaging a global median read latency of just 16.4ms.

When 5,000 serverless functions spiked simultaneously, Supabase reached its default pool limits until PgBouncer stepped in, causing a 4.2% timeout rate on unpooled connections.

EdgeBase Cloud handled the entire 5,000 connection spike with 0 dropped queries, as SQLite handles requests through lightweight memory-mapped I/O without connection handshake penalties.

Database egress fees are often the #1 surprise on cloud bills. While Firebase charges for read and write document units—which can escalate exponentially during viral traffic bursts—EdgeBase offers flat predictable tiering with zero per-read surcharges.

- Choose **Supabase** if you need complex geospatial PostGIS queries, deep PostgreSQL extensions, and self-hosting flexibility. - Choose **Firebase** if you have an existing mobile app deeply intertwined with the Google Cloud ecosystem. - Choose **EdgeBase Cloud** if you are building an edge-first, latency-sensitive SaaS application where fast global reads and low predictable costs are paramount.