Self-Hosting Supabase on Bare-Metal: Zero-Lockin Auth, Realtime Postgres, and Storage Architecture

Firebase makes starting a project easy, but as your application scales, the vendor lock-in becomes debilitating: proprietary NoSQL query limits, soaring read/write bills, and zero control over your user data. Supabase offers an open-source, relational alternative built on top of the world's most powerful database: PostgreSQL.

In this guide, I break down how we architect and harden a self-hosted Supabase cluster on a private Linux server, providing instant REST APIs, WebSockets, JWT Authentication, and S3-compatible file storage with zero monthly SaaS subscriptions.

Production Supabase Docker Compose Stack

# docker-compose.yml (Core components)
services:
  db:
    image: supabase/postgres:15.1.1.78
    restart: unless-stopped
    environment:
      POSTGRES_PASSWORD: ${POSTGRES_PASSWORD}
    volumes:
      - ./volumes/db/data:/var/lib/postgresql/data
    healthcheck:
      test: ["CMD-SHELL", "pg_isready -U postgres"]
      interval: 10s

  kong:
    image: kong:2.8.1
    restart: unless-stopped
    environment:
      KONG_DATABASE: "off"
      KONG_DECLARATIVE_CONFIG: /var/lib/kong/kong.yml
    ports:
      - "8000:8000"
      - "8443:8443"

  auth:
    image: supabase/gotrue:v2.158.1
    restart: unless-stopped
    environment:
      GOTRUE_JWT_SECRET: ${JWT_SECRET}
      GOTRUE_DB_DATABASE_URL: postgres://postgres:${POSTGRES_PASSWORD}@db:5432/postgres