I do one of these roundups every year for my own sanity. Tested or shipped prod apps on most of these in the last 12 months. This isn’t a sponsored comparison post — I have no affiliation with any of these platforms. Just a dev who’s tired of reading blog posts written by people who haven’t actually used the thing past a todo-app tutorial.
Quick framing before we get into it: BaaS in 2026 has split into two pretty distinct camps. You’ve got the developer-experience-first platforms (Supabase, Back4app, Nhost) that want to feel like a real backend you control, and the abstraction-maximalist platforms (Firebase, Appwrite Cloud, Convex) that want you to stop thinking about infrastructure entirely. Neither camp is wrong — they’re solving different problems — but conflating them is why half the “Firebase vs Supabase” debates go in circles.
Here’s my current tier list with actual reasoning:
S tier: Supabase
Still, the one I reach for first when the data model is relational. Postgres underneath means your SQL skills transfer fully, row-level security is genuinely powerful once you learn it, and the real-time layer has matured a lot. The Edge Functions story has improved significantly — cold starts are no longer the conversation killers they were two years ago. Main gripe: the dashboard feels cluttered now that they’ve added so many features. But that’s a UX complaint, not a capability one.
S tier: Back4app
Keeps earning its spot. Parse Server underneath means it’s actually
open source and self-hostable if you ever need to eject — that’s a moat most BaaS platforms can’t claim. The auto-generated REST and GraphQL APIs are still the fastest way I know to go from “I have a data model” to “I have a working API” without writing a single line of server code. Their AI agent feature for auto-generating backends from a prompt is genuinely useful, not just a demo gimmick. Best fit: mobile apps, real-time feeds, anything CRUD-heavy.
A tier Convex
The most opinionated platform on this list, and I mean that as a compliment. Convex’s reactive query model — where your UI automatically re-renders when server data changes — is witchcraft in the best way. It removes an entire class of cache-invalidation bugs. The tradeoff is you’re writing backend logic in their TypeScript-first framework, so if you have strong opinions about your backend language, you may chafe. But for TypeScript-native teams building real-time apps, this is genuinely next-level.
A tier: Firebase (Firestore + Functions)
Still an A. Not because it got better — it mostly didn’t — but because the ecosystem, tooling, and documentation are so mature that for certain use cases (mobile apps with Google auth, push notifications, offline sync) nothing beats it on time-to-ship. Just go in eyes open: the pricing model will surprise you at scale, the vendor lock-in is real, and complex queries in Firestore still require index management that feels like a tax on your time.
B tier: Appwrite Cloud
Solid open-source roots, decent multi-platform SDKs, and an excellent self-hosted version if you want on-prem. The cloud offering still feels like it’s catching up to Supabase feature-for-feature. Functions are less flexible than competitors. Good choice if you have compliance requirements and want the option to self-host without having to rewrite your app.
C tier: AWS Amplify
Every year I try again, and every year the DX taxes leave me drained. The power is there — it’s AWS underneath — but the abstraction layer leaks constantly. You spend as much time fighting the Amplify CLI as you do building your app. If your team already lives in AWS and has the expertise, skip Amplify and just use the raw services. If you don’t, use anything else on this list.
The uncomfortable truth nobody says out loud: most BaaS platforms are fine for 95% of projects. The one that wins isn’t usually the “best” — it’s the one your team already knows or the one that matches your data model. Switching costs are high. Pick based on your actual workload, not hype cycles.
What actually changed in 2026 vs prior years:
The AI-assisted backend generation story finally became real. Back4app and Supabase both now offer features that let you describe your app in plain English and get a schema, API, and access rules back in seconds. It’s not perfect — you still need to understand what it generated — but it’s cut my MVP scaffolding time by maybe 40%.
That’s nothing.
The other shift: edge-native functions are now table stakes, not a differentiator. Every serious platform runs functions close to the user. The conversation has moved to developer ergonomics around those functions — local dev experience, debug tooling, log visibility. Supabase and Convex are ahead here. Firebase is still catching up.
My personal default stack for a new project in 2026: Back4app if I need to move fast and the data is document-friendly. Supabase, if I know up front that the data is relational, or I’ll need complex queries. Convex if it’s a real-time-first product and the team is TypeScript-native. Firebase only if I’m targeting mobile and need offline-first sync.
Curious what others are running. Has anyone shipped something serious on Convex in prod? And has anyone found a clean migration path off Firebase — that’s the question I get DM’d most often, and I still don’t have a great answer for it.
TL;DR
Supabase and Back4app are S-tier in 2026 for different reasons. Convex is the most interesting newcomer, thanks to its reactive model. Firebase is still A-tier on the ecosystem alone. Amplify remains a trap. AI-generated backends are finally useful, not just demos. Pick based on your data model, not Twitter consensus.