Appwrite Cloud’s free tier looks like a Supabase or Firebase rival on paper: it offers 75K monthly active users and a useful set of backend services at $0. But the headline MAU quota is not the verdict. Free projects pause after one week of inactivity, the plan allows just two projects, and Phone OTP, backups, and SSO are unavailable. Those limits matter more than the top-line auth number when choosing where to build. Appwrite’s pricing page
How This Guide Was Built
This guide’s limits come from current vendor pricing pages and primary documentation, not from a hands-on product review. The numbers describe published free-plan quotas and restrictions, so treat them as a snapshot rather than a promise that a vendor will never change its terms.
All limits in this guide were measured live from vendor pricing pages and primary docs on 2026-09-30 by StacksFree; no hands-on testing was performed.
Every limit here was measured live from Appwrite’s, Supabase’s, Firebase’s, Clerk’s, and Kinde’s official pricing pages and documentation on 2026-09-30. No Appwrite account was created, no project was deployed, and no request was measured—nothing was tested hands-on. Appwrite’s product documentation and the vendors’ pricing pages are the primary sources linked throughout. Appwrite pricing · Supabase pricing · Firebase pricing · Clerk pricing · Kinde pricing
The Honest TL;DR
Appwrite Free suits a small project that can tolerate inactivity pauses and work within its service quotas; self-hosting suits teams prepared to operate infrastructure. Supabase or Firebase may fit better when their database or hosting allowances match your design, while Pro is for teams that need higher quotas, backups, and operational controls. Appwrite pricing
- Use Free for a prototype or small app whose 5 GB monthly API bandwidth, 2 GB storage, and one database per project are adequate. Appwrite pricing
- Self-host if avoiding the Cloud free-project pause is important and you can manage updates, scaling, backups, and monitoring. Appwrite self-hosting guide
- Consider Supabase if its 500 MB database and 1 GB file storage fit your product, or Firebase if its daily Firestore quotas or hosting allowance fit better. Supabase pricing · Firebase pricing
- Pay for Pro when you need daily backups, budget caps and alerts, or higher quotas such as 200K MAU and 2 TB bandwidth. Appwrite pricing
- Look elsewhere for a specific auth need if Phone OTP or SSO is essential on the free plan; neither is included in Appwrite Free. Appwrite pricing
Appwrite Cloud Free: The Real Limits
Appwrite Free costs $0 and includes 5 GB of API bandwidth per month, 2 GB of storage, and 750K executions per month. It provides 75K MAU, one database and one storage bucket per project, and 500K database reads plus 250K writes monthly. The plan is useful for a modest workload, but its ceilings and missing capabilities need to be part of the design. Appwrite pricing
The platform limit is two projects with shared resources, one organization member, three connected websites or apps per project, and two webhooks per project. Build duration is 15 minutes, while execution logs are retained for one hour and limited to 100. Those figures affect both development workflow and how much history is available when diagnosing a problem. Appwrite pricing
Each project gets one database with unlimited documents, but the read and write quotas still apply. Nomic and MiniLM text embeddings each have a quota of 1M tokens per model per month, and bulk operations allow 100 rows per request. Free includes no backups and no data encryption, so do not treat it as a plan with built-in recovery or that protection. Appwrite pricing · Appwrite Databases
Auth includes 75K MAU and up to 100 teams per project. Appwrite documents email/password, Magic URL, Email OTP, OAuth2, anonymous auth, JWT, custom tokens, MFA, and other methods; however, Phone OTP is not available on Free, and SSO is not available. Appwrite pricing · Appwrite Auth
Compute provides two functions per project, unlimited sites, 750K monthly executions, and 100 GB-hour per month, with options from 0.5 CPUs to 512 MB RAM. Realtime allows 250 concurrent connections, 2M messages, and a maximum message size of 256 KB. Appwrite pricing · Appwrite Functions · Appwrite Realtime
Storage is limited to one bucket per project and 50 MB per file, with image transformations unavailable on Free. Messaging allows 1,000 messages a month and one topic; in-app, chat, push, email, SMS, and Discord channels are included, but WhatsApp and Slack are not. Free also includes 50 screenshots per month, but no custom SMTP or removal of Appwrite branding on emails. Appwrite pricing · Appwrite Storage · Appwrite Messaging
The Pause Rule: What 1 Week of Inactivity Actually Means
Appwrite’s free projects are paused after one week of inactivity; the stated rule is a pause, not a loss of project data. The free plan also has a two-project limit, so inactive projects still matter when planning how many environments or experiments to keep under the account. Appwrite pricing
For an indie product, inactivity is easy to overlook: a prototype may go quiet while its owner works on a launch, travels, or shifts attention to another project. The practical consequence is that a Cloud Free project is not a set-and-forget environment if it may sit unused. Plan to return to it regularly, and check Appwrite’s current project status and terms before depending on it for an unattended service. Appwrite’s published pricing page states the pause rule, but it does not provide a detailed guarantee here about how a paused project behaves or how quickly it can be made active again. Appwrite pricing
This is not unique among the listed backend free plans: Supabase also pauses free projects after one week of inactivity and limits accounts to two active projects. If you are comparing Appwrite and Supabase, inactivity policy alone does not distinguish them; compare their data, bandwidth, and feature quotas as well. Supabase pricing
Appwrite Free vs. Supabase, Firebase, Clerk, Kinde (2026)
Appwrite’s quotas combine auth, database, storage, functions, and messaging in one backend plan, while the alternatives distribute their limits differently. This table compares published free plans and Appwrite Pro using the vendor pricing information available on the verification date; “n/a” means the comparison set does not list an equivalent quota. Appwrite pricing · Supabase pricing · Firebase pricing · Clerk pricing · Kinde pricing
| Plan (price) | Auth / MAU | Database | File storage | Functions / compute | Bandwidth / egress | Inactivity pause | Free-tier gotcha |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Appwrite Free ($0) | 75K MAU | 1 database/project; 500K reads and 250K writes/month | 2 GB; 1 bucket/project | 2 functions/project; 750K executions/month; 100 GB-hour/month | 5 GB API bandwidth/month | Paused after 1 week | No Phone OTP, backups, data encryption, SSO, or image transformations |
| Appwrite Pro ($25/mo) | 200K MAU | Unlimited databases | 150 GB; unlimited buckets | Unlimited functions; 3.5M executions/month; 45-minute builds | 2 TB bandwidth | Not stated | Daily backups, 7-day retention; pay-as-you-go |
| Supabase Free ($0) | 50,000 MAU | 500 MB; shared CPU / 500 MB RAM | 1 GB | n/a | 5 GB egress; 5 GB cached egress | Paused after 1 week; 2 active projects | Community support |
| Firebase Spark ($0) | 50K MAU | Firestore: 1 GiB; 20K writes/day; 50K reads/day | Cloud Storage: 5 GB | Cloud Functions and App Hosting not applicable | Firestore: 10 GiB/month; Realtime Database: 10 GB/month; Hosting: 360 MB/day | n/a | Cloud Functions and App Hosting require Blaze |
| Clerk Hobby ($0) | 50,000 MRU/app | n/a | n/a | n/a | n/a | n/a | Fixed 7-day session lifetime; 1-day application log retention |
| Kinde Free ($0) | 10,500 MAU | n/a | n/a | n/a | n/a | n/a | 0.7% transaction fee if billing customers through Kinde |
For a bootstrapper, the useful comparison is not simply which row has the biggest auth allowance. First identify the service that will constrain your product: database size, daily reads, egress, file storage, or whether you need functions at all. Supabase and Appwrite both publish a one-week pause for their free projects, while Firebase’s free plan makes some compute products unavailable rather than assigning them an included quota. Auth specialists such as Clerk and Kinde list user limits and identity features, not a full database-and-storage stack. Supabase pricing · Firebase pricing · Clerk pricing · Kinde pricing
The Free-Tier Ceiling: What Breaks First
The first constraint depends on your architecture, but Appwrite Free has several concrete friction points: one database per project, two functions per project, 50 MB per file, no backups, no image transformations, and execution logs retained for just one hour. A plan that works for a small prototype may need changes before the product’s requirements grow. Appwrite pricing
Database structure is an early decision. Unlimited documents may sound spacious, but they do not remove the limit of one database per project or the monthly caps of 500K reads and 250K writes. If you need separate databases for environments or parts of a service, the project limit and database limit should be considered together rather than as isolated numbers. Appwrite pricing · Appwrite Databases
Functions are another likely ceiling for a product that splits work into multiple independent handlers: Free allows two functions per project. Storage becomes a constraint if users need to upload files larger than 50 MB, or if the product depends on image transformations, which Free does not include. There is one bucket per project, so a design that expects several buckets also exceeds the published free allocation. Appwrite pricing · Appwrite Storage
Operational safeguards may be the more serious limitation. Appwrite Free has no backups, and its execution-log retention is one hour, with 100 logs listed. That combination gives a small team less room to recover from mistakes or inspect older execution history. Free also does not include data encryption, so evaluate that limitation against your own requirements before placing sensitive data on the plan. Appwrite pricing
When Self-Hosting Wins
Self-hosting is worth considering when you need more control over the environment or do not want your project lifecycle tied to Appwrite Cloud’s free-tier pause, and you have the skills or time to run the service. Appwrite is open source and supports installation on systems that can run a Docker CLI, but operating it means owning updates, scaling, backups, and monitoring. Appwrite self-hosting guide · Self-hosting installation
There are several documented ways to get started. Appwrite offers one-click deployments on DigitalOcean, Akamai Compute, and AWS Marketplace, plus one-click templates for Coolify and Dokploy. Those routes can reduce setup work, but they do not transfer responsibility for maintaining the resulting instance. Choose an option based on the hosting environment you already understand rather than assuming a template removes ongoing operations. Appwrite self-hosting guide · DigitalOcean, Akamai, and AWS deployment information · Coolify template · Dokploy template
Appwrite says self-hosted instances get the same features as Appwrite Cloud. Its repository uses the BSD-3-Clause license and, as rendered on 2026-09-30, showed 57.5k stars and 5.8k forks. Those facts make self-hosting a viable technical route, but they do not answer the cost question by themselves: you still need to account for hosting resources and the labor required to operate them. Appwrite self-hosting guide · Appwrite repository
The decision comes down to whether control is worth operational ownership. A founder comfortable with Docker, monitoring, and routine maintenance may prefer managing an instance to working around Cloud Free’s quotas and pause rule. A small team without DevOps experience may find that trade-off unattractive; Appwrite recommends Cloud in that situation and notes self-hosting often costs more when time and expertise are included. Appwrite self-hosting guide
When to Stay on Cloud (and When Pro Is Worth $25)
Stay on Cloud Free if its quotas fit and the pause rule is acceptable; move to Pro when you need the paid plan’s higher capacity or included operational features. Appwrite Pro starts at $25 per month and lists 2 TB bandwidth, 150 GB storage, 200K MAU, unlimited databases, buckets, and functions, plus daily backups with seven-day retention. Appwrite pricing
Backups can be a clear upgrade trigger if your service depends on recovering data and you want a published backup schedule instead of managing recovery yourself. Pro also lists budget caps and alerts, organization roles, email support, and pay-as-you-go. These are practical reasons to pay even before a free quota becomes a bottleneck, particularly when a team needs clearer controls around spending or access. Appwrite pricing
Capacity is another trigger: compare your actual usage and planned growth with Pro’s 2 TB bandwidth, 150 GB storage, 3.5M monthly executions, and 200K MAU. Pro also provides 45-minute builds, compared with the Free plan’s 15-minute build duration. Its unlimited database, bucket, and function allocations remove those specific per-project caps, though they do not mean every resource or workload is unlimited. Appwrite pricing
Pro does not automatically make Appwrite the right choice for every project. If Free already meets your requirements, paying for unused headroom is not necessary; if a missing feature or a specific workflow determines your architecture, check that the plan provides it before upgrading. Compare the complete needs of your application with the published plan rather than treating the price as a shortcut to a fit decision. Appwrite pricing
The Bottom Line
Appwrite Cloud Free is a capable starting point for a small application that can live within 5 GB of monthly API bandwidth, 2 GB of storage, 750K executions, and one database per project. Its 75K MAU figure is attractive, but the missing backups, Phone OTP, SSO, and image transformations—and the one-week inactivity pause—make the full set of constraints more important than the auth headline. Appwrite pricing
Choose Cloud Free when its limits match your plan and you can manage the pause risk. Choose Pro when backups, higher quotas, or budget controls justify the monthly cost. Self-host when you value operating control enough to take on maintenance, scaling, and recovery responsibilities. For teams without that operational capacity, Appwrite itself recommends Cloud; either way, make the decision against your real workload, not a single comparison number. Appwrite pricing · Appwrite self-hosting guide
FAQ
Appwrite Cloud Free is best understood through its published boundaries: projects pause after inactivity, and some authentication methods are not part of the plan. The answers below distinguish the stated pause rule from data loss and clarify which auth features are available without upgrading. Appwrite pricing
Does Appwrite Cloud delete my free project after 7 days of inactivity?
No. Appwrite says free projects are paused after one week of inactivity; the published rule is a pause, not deletion. The free plan also limits an account to two projects. Check the current pricing page before relying on a project that may remain inactive, since this guide does not describe project reactivation behavior. Appwrite pricing
Can I use Phone OTP or SSO on the Appwrite free tier?
No. Phone OTP is not available on Appwrite Free, and SSO is not available on the plan. Free does include 75K MAU and other authentication methods, including email/password, Magic URL, Email OTP, OAuth2, anonymous auth, JWT, and custom tokens. Appwrite pricing · Appwrite Auth documentation
Is Appwrite Cloud free tier enough for a production SaaS?
It can be enough if your requirements fit the published quotas and you accept the pause rule, but Free includes no backups or data encryption and limits databases, functions, storage, and bandwidth. Assess your recovery, security, and capacity requirements before using it for a production service; this guide cannot determine whether those limits fit your specific application. Appwrite pricing