Encore compared to Supabase / Firebase

Supabase and Firebase are two popular Backend as a Service providers, that give web and app developers an easy way to get a database up and running for their applications. They also bundle built-in services for certain common use cases like authentication. This can be a great way of getting off the ground quickly. But as many developers have come to learn, you risk finding yourself boxed into a corner if you're not in control of your own backend when new use cases arise.

Encore is not a Backend as a Service, it's a platform for backend development. It gives you many of the same benefits that Supabase and Firebase offer, like not needing to manually provision your databases (or any other infrastructure for that matter). But since Encore gives you the tools to build and control your own backend application and infrastructure, you don't risk running out of road and having to start over from scratch.

With Encore you build your application using the appropriate infrastructure for your use case. You use Encore's Infrastructure SDK to declare your infrastructure needs as part of your application code, and Encore automatically provisions the necessary infrastructure. This works the same way in all types of environments (local, preview, cloud) and across all major cloud providers (GCP or AWS), which means your application is cloud-agnostic by default.

You can also use any type of cloud infrastructure, as you normally would, even if it's not a built-in building block. The only drawback is that your developer experience will be more conventional, and you will need to manually provision the "unsupported" infrastructure.