Google Cloud Pub/Sub vs Supabase: What are the differences?

Introduction

In this document, we will compare and highlight the key differences between Google Cloud Pub/Sub and Supabase.

1. Scalability: Google Cloud Pub/Sub is designed to handle massive amounts of data and easily scales to accommodate high-volume messaging. It can handle millions of messages per second and offers global availability. On the other hand, Supabase is primarily a Realtime Database and does not provide the same level of scalability as Google Cloud Pub/Sub. While Supabase can handle smaller workloads efficiently, it might not be suitable for high-throughput messaging use cases.

2. Data Persistence: Google Cloud Pub/Sub is a messaging service and does not persist messages by default. It follows the publish-subscribe model where messages are delivered to subscribers at the time of publishing. In contrast, Supabase is a persistent database that allows you to store and retrieve data. It ensures that all data is persisted and can be accessed even after a restart or system failure.

3. Multi-tenancy: Google Cloud Pub/Sub is a multi-tenant service that allows multiple users or applications to share the same infrastructure. It provides isolation and security between different tenants to safeguard data integrity. On the other hand, Supabase is a single-tenant database, meaning each tenant gets a separate and dedicated instance of the database. This offers higher data isolation and control but requires more resources if multiple tenants are expected.

4. Integration Options: Google Cloud Pub/Sub integrates seamlessly with other Google Cloud services, making it easy to build scalable and modular applications. It can be connected to services like Cloud Functions, BigQuery, and Dataflow to process and analyze the incoming messages. Supabase, on the other hand, provides a comprehensive set of APIs and libraries to integrate with various frontend and backend frameworks. It offers client libraries for popular programming languages such as JavaScript, Python, and Ruby.

5. Pricing Model: Google Cloud Pub/Sub operates on a pay-as-you-go model, where you are charged based on the number of published and subscribed messages, as well as any storage and network usage. The pricing is based on the usage and volume of data being processed. In contrast, Supabase offers different pricing tiers based on the number of concurrent connections, storage, and data transfer. The pricing is more tailored towards the hosting and usage of the database instance.

6. Real-time capabilities: Google Cloud Pub/Sub enables real-time messaging and event-driven architectures. It allows real-time processing of streaming data and enables seamless communication between various components of a distributed system. While Supabase does support real-time updates through its real-time API, it is primarily focused on delivering persistent data storage and retrieval capabilities.

In summary, Google Cloud Pub/Sub is a highly scalable and globally available messaging service that can handle massive message volumes, integrates well with other Google Cloud services, and operates on a pay-as-you-go model. Supabase, on the other hand, is a persistent database offering real-time capabilities but is more focused on providing data storage and retrieval functionality with various pricing tiers based on concurrent connections and data transfer.