An honest comparison. Cloud backends have managed ops — we acknowledge that. nself wins on ownership, cost at scale, and extensibility.
| Feature | nself | Supabase | Nhost | Railway |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Self-hosted Runs on hardware you own or control | ||||
Pricing (production) | $0 CLI + server cost | $25/mo+ | $25/mo+ | $5/mo+ |
Data ownership You own the database and all data | ||||
Vendor lock-in Can you migrate away without data loss? | None — standard PostgreSQL | High — proprietary extensions | Medium | Low — standard containers |
Offline / air-gapped Works without internet access | ||||
Custom hardware Run on any server, including on-prem | ||||
Plugin extensibility 55+ plugins: AI, cron, email, search, CMS | 55+ plugins | Edge Functions only | Limited | Manual only |
AI agent (built-in) ReAct agent with tool auto-discovery | ||||
GraphQL API Hasura-powered GraphQL with real-time subscriptions | ||||
Open source core MIT licensed, audit the code yourself |
Comparison based on publicly available information as of early 2026. Managed cloud providers offer convenience that self-hosting does not — this table shows ownership and cost tradeoffs, not overall quality.
The core CLI is MIT-licensed and free forever. No hidden costs.
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