TL;DR — Quick Summary

Deploy PocketBase — a single-binary backend with embedded database, REST API, auth, file storage, and real-time subscriptions for side projects and apps.

PocketBase — Backend in One Binary

# Download, extract, run. That's it.
wget https://github.com/pocketbase/pocketbase/releases/download/v0.22.0/pocketbase_0.22.0_linux_amd64.zip
unzip pocketbase_*.zip
./pocketbase serve
# Admin UI: http://127.0.0.1:8090/_/
# API:      http://127.0.0.1:8090/api/

Features

Feature Description
Database Embedded SQLite with collections
REST API Auto-generated CRUD for all collections
Real-time SSE subscriptions for live updates
Auth Email/password, OAuth2 (Google, GitHub, etc.)
File storage Local or S3-compatible
Admin UI Built-in dashboard
Hooks JavaScript hooks for custom logic
Size ~15 MB single binary

PocketBase vs Supabase vs Firebase

Feature PocketBase Supabase Firebase
Self-hosted ✅ ✅ ❌
Database SQLite PostgreSQL NoSQL
Size 15 MB Multi-container Cloud
Real-time ✅ ✅ ✅
Auth ✅ ✅ ✅
Ideal for Side projects Production Scale