Firebase

Firebase lets developers build apps without running their own servers. Its core services are Cloud Firestore and Realtime Database for storing and syncing data, Authentication for sign-in with email, phone, or social accounts, Cloud Storage for files, Hosting for websites, and Cloud Functions for server-side code. Analytics, Crashlytics, and Cloud Messaging for push notifications round out the app lifecycle tools, and SDKs support iOS, Android, web, Flutter, and Unity.

AI has become part of the platform. Gemini in Firebase helps developers write code, debug, and understand their projects, and Firebase AI Logic gives apps a secure way to call Gemini and other models directly from the client. Genkit is an open-source framework for building AI features and agents, and Firebase Studio provides a browser-based environment for prototyping apps with AI assistance.

Firebase has a free plan with generous quotas for small projects and a pay-as-you-go plan for production. Costs can be surprising when usage grows, especially with database reads, so it is important to set budgets and structure queries carefully. The platform ties you into Google’s services, and moving data off it takes work. Supabase is an open-source alternative built on Postgres, AWS Amplify and Appwrite compete, and Convex offers a different real-time backend. Firebase is a common choice for mobile apps and prototypes.