The Night I Almost Quit My Own Startup
I remember sitting in my home office at 3:00 AM, staring at a wall of Docker logs. I was trying to get a self-hosted Supabase instance to play nice with my auth flow. I hadn't even written a single line of my app's actual business logic yet. I was just trying to get the database to start. I felt like a 'real' engineer because I was using Postgres and managing a dozen containers. But the truth? I was just procrastinating on the hard work of building a product. I was over-engineering for a scale I didn't have. I used to think that if I didn't have a distributed, horizontally-scalable cluster, I wasn't building a 'serious' app. I was wrong. And if you are doing the same thing, you are wasting the most valuable asset you have: time.
Stop Fearing SQLite
We have been brainwashed to think SQLite is a toy. We hear 'concurrency' and we panic, thinking we need a massive Postgres instance to handle five users. Look, it is 2025. SQLite in WAL mode is a beast. Pocketbase uses it to handle tens of thousands of real-time connections on a tiny $5 server. Unless you are building the next Uber or a global banking system on day one, SQLite is not your bottleneck. Your complexity is. Pocketbase leverages the sheer speed of embedded data. There is no network hop between your backend logic and your data. It is just raw, local speed. Stop building for millions of users you don't have and start building for the speed you actually need.
The Single Binary Advantage
Supabase is a feat of engineering, but it is a fleet. You need a database, an auth service, a real-time server, a storage API, and a gateway. Pocketbase? It is one file. You download it, you run it, and you are done. In 2025, we are seeing a massive shift back to this kind of 'de-clouding.' Why? Because managing a dozen services is a full-time job. As a solo dev or a small team, you don't have time for a 'DevOps tax.' With Pocketbase, your backup is a single file called data.db. You can move your entire backend to a different provider in thirty seconds. No vendor lock-in, no complex migrations, just a portable, self-contained unit that works everywhere.
JavaScript Hooks are the Game Changer
One of the old arguments against Pocketbase was that it was 'too simple.' People said you couldn't write complex backend logic. That's dead now. With the 2025 JSVM (JavaScript Virtual Machine) hooks, you can write custom backend logic directly in the binary. You don't need a separate Node.js server or Deno functions. You just write a little JavaScript to handle your custom business rules, and Pocketbase executes it natively. It is the leanest way to build a custom API without the overhead of a traditional microservice architecture.
When You Actually Need the Heavyweight
I am not saying Supabase is bad. It is incredible. But you need to be honest about your requirements. Do you need PostGIS for complex geographic queries? Do you need pgvector for a massive AI-driven search engine? Are you working in a team of twenty developers who all need granular database permissions? Then yes, use Supabase. It is built for that enterprise-grade, massive scale. But if you are building a SaaS, a mobile app, or a prototype, you are likely choosing Supabase out of habit rather than necessity.
Stop Planning and Start Shipping
You don't win by having the most complex infrastructure. You win by getting your idea in front of users before you lose interest or run out of money. Pocketbase is the shortcut to that goal. It gives you Auth, Database, Storage, and an Admin UI in one minute. Go grab a cheap VPS, download the binary, and see how it feels to actually focus on your features instead of your config files. Go build something today.