Motherbase is an open source self-hosted backend platform for running many isolated projects from one VPS and one domain.

Think of it as the backend you'd build yourself, with a Supabase-style Project Studio and a multi-project Platform Console.

Note

Platform Console = control plane for creating, starting, stopping, rebuilding, and inspecting projects. Project Studio = admin UI for one project: tables, SQL, auth, policies, logs, storage, realtime, edge functions, triggers, cron jobs, settings, and Connect.

What's included

• Auth — Better Auth: email/password, social login, magic links, email OTP, passkeys, two-factor, organizations, per-org SSO, API keys, JWT/JWKS, live-reloaded config, server-side roles, rate limiting
• Database — PostgreSQL, SQL editor first, Table editor, indexes, extensions, functions, and triggers
• RLS — Native PostgreSQL row-level security with Supabase-style auth.uid(), auth.jwt(), anon, and authenticated
• REST API — Automatic table API under /rest/v1/:model, enforced by PostgreSQL RLS
• Storage — Local or S3-compatible storage such as MinIO, AWS S3, Cloudflare R2
• Realtime — Socket.IO with JWT authentication, Project Studio monitoring, and RLS-aware table broadcasts
• Edge Functions — Server-side TypeScript/JS in a private Deno runtime, one process per function, with a hard memory cap, a timeout that kills the process, and an SSRF-guarded fetch; stored in the database, invoked over HTTP. A Supabase function runs verbatim
• Postgres Triggers — Real CREATE TRIGGER workflows for database-side automation
• Cron Jobs — pg_cron scheduling plus read-only status for code-defined app jobs
• Project Studio — Supabase-style admin UI for one project
• Client SDK — @motherbase/client for Next.js, Expo, React Native, browser/server TypeScript
• Platform Console — Provision and operate multiple project stacks with Docker Compose and Traefik
• Operator CLI - @motherbase/cli for Console login/link workflows, projects, database, RLS, users, storage, edge functions, cron, backups, Supabase imports, diagnostics, and local stack operations

When to use Motherbase

Supabase is great for the hosted experience. Motherbase is for the moment where your VPS has room for more than one project and you want one control plane for isolated backends.

Migration path

Motherbase can import the portable parts of a Supabase project: public schema, table data, RLS policies, and email/password users. See Migrate from Supabase.

Requirements

• Node.js >= 22.12.0 for backend development and build scripts
• Node.js >= 18 for @motherbase/cli
• Docker and Docker Compose. Postgres is not installed separately: every project runs the bundled postgres:16 image extended with pg_cron, pgvector and PostGIS.

Explore the docs