v1.0.9 LTS — 87 plugins (25 free + 62 paid), Go-native binary, CLI/Admin lockstep. What's new

nSelf vs Firebase

Firebase is the opposite of nSelf in almost every axis: managed NoSQL vs self-hosted Postgres, lock-in vs portability, per-event pricing vs flat bundles. If you are comparing them, you are probably at the moment where Firebase's bill hit three figures and you started googling alternatives.

The short version

Where Firebase wins

• Firebase is great for mobile. The offline-first SDK, real-time sync, and Crashlytics are genuinely best-in-class.
• Google scales for you. You will not outgrow Firestore in a reasonable timeframe. Reliability is extremely high.
• Auth social providers. The Firebase Auth social provider matrix is broader than nSelf's today.
• Fast to ship. Weekend hackathon projects reach production in hours on Firebase.

Where nSelf wins

• SQL. Postgres is a real database. Relations, joins, transactions, window functions, full-text search, pgvector. Firestore's query model is a lookup table.
• GraphQL out of the box. Hasura gives you typed GraphQL + subscriptions + remote schemas. Firebase has no equivalent; you hand-roll Cloud Functions.
• Cost stops going up. Firebase bills per document read, per function invocation, per stored byte, per egress byte. nSelf bills your hosting provider once a month.
• No lock-in. Firestore data and security rules are proprietary. Migrating off Firebase is a rewrite. Migrating off nSelf is a pg_dump away.
• Plugin ecosystem. 87 plugins — chat, livekit, commerce, CMS, AI, etc. Firebase extensions exist but the marketplace is smaller and inconsistent.
• The AI stack. ɳClaw, ɳMux, ɳVoice, ɳBrowser — a full AI assistant platform with persistent memory on your own server.
• Real open source. MIT core. You can read every line, fork every plugin.

Pricing comparison (10k DAU, one app)

• Firebase Blaze: tens of millions of reads/month + tens of thousands of function invocations + egress ≈ $100–$500/mo, depends heavily on read patterns. Frontend queries are almost free individually, brutal in aggregate.
• nSelf: Hetzner CX33 ($14.90/mo) + plugin bundle ($0.99/mo) = ~$16/mo.

At 100k DAU the gap widens by an order of magnitude.

Where migration hurts

• Firestore → Postgres is a data model rewrite. Denormalized documents must be split into tables.
• Firebase Auth → nHost Auth. JWT format differs. Existing user sessions invalidate unless you sign a one-time migration token.
• Cloud Functions → CS_N. If your functions are Node/Python and don't use Google-only APIs, this is straightforward. Otherwise rewrite.
• Security rules → Hasura permissions. Different mental model (per-table RBAC vs per-document rules).

Migration outline

1. Map Firestore collections to Postgres tables. Denormalize where needed.
2. Export Firestore via firebase firestore:export, transform, COPY into Postgres.
3. Reissue auth tokens for existing users (one-time token, ~2 week validity).
4. Port Cloud Functions to CS_N services (each a Go/Node/Python app behind Nginx).
5. Rewrite Firestore security rules as Hasura permissions.
6. Point DNS. Keep Firebase project read-only for 30 days as rollback.

When to pick Firebase

• Mobile-first app where offline sync is a product requirement.
• You will not care about the bill for 12–18 months.
• You have no server-side team and no plan to get one.

When to pick nSelf

• You want a real database.
• You want the bill to stop at your server's monthly cost.
• You want portable data you can move in an afternoon.
• You want Postgres + GraphQL + AI + 87 plugins on day one.

Links: install nSelf · pricing · full comparison matrix