Strapi vs Firebase

This article will explore the similarities and differences between Strapi vs Firebase. It will provide an overview of each platform, core features, and pricing structure.

These days, APIs bring many benefits to the web development and app development industry. APIs allow developers to connect the back end of their application to the front end for a better user experience and better backend functionality. Doing so increases productivity and performance while having significant cost-saving benefits.

Due to these reasons, many platforms today provide API development and usage services. Strapi and Firebase are among the best ones, and here we will be having a comparison review of both of them.

What is Strapi?

Strapi is the platform that allows JavaScript developers to easily develop flexible APIs. The platform is an open-source CMS that makes the management, building, and designing of APIs simple, easy, and quick.

Due to being a 100% customizable platform, it allows easy connections with most of the databases. So, it brings freedom for the developers to use their favorite tools and saves development time.

Strapi Features

Using Strapi brings a very simplified experience with its features that make the development process easy for every developer across the globe. Here are some of the features that you get from Strapi.

1.     Open-source

The entire codebase of Strapi is available open-source forever on GitHub, where anyone can access it. Additionally, there are a lot of contributors who not only use the codebase but also maintain it.

2.     Customizability

Whether we talk about the APIs or the Admin panel, everything here comes with a possibility of customization.

You can get custom plugins to bring better functionality and performance. So, it helps in extending your content management within seconds.

3.     APIs versatility

Strapi supports RESTful and GraphQL APIs. You can customize these APIs from any client, including Angular, React, and Vue. So, Strapi supports API versatility.

Additionally, you can enhance the functionality of mobile applications and IoT devices using RESTful and GraphQL APIs.

Along with all of these things, an amazing benefit of Strapi is its global community of developers. So, if you ever get stuck in any problem, the community across different platforms can help you out.

Strapi Pricing

Keep in mind that when you use Strapi, you have to manage your hosting yourself. With you managing your hosting, here are some of the pricing plans that you will get

Community plan

The community plan is the free plan here that you can use for free forever without worrying about anything. It even comes with unlimited usage for different features. So, this might be the perfect choice for you on normal usage.

Bronze plan

The Bronze plan starts at $9 monthly per admin user, and it only brings billing and licenses support and granular access controls.

Silver plan

The Silver plan starts at $29 monthly per admin user and comes with Guidance and Assistance along with the Customer Success Manager and the services of the Bronze plan.

Gold plan

The most premium plan is the Gold plan. You can get a custom quote upon contacting Strapi. It brings most features, including technical support, single sign-on, and much more.

What is Firebase?

Firebase is one of the best platforms globally that you can use to develop top-notch web and mobile applications. It’s a comprehensive development environment that runs on Google Cloud.

Google provides Firebase, and it supports cross-platform development that significantly reduces the development time.

Firebase Features

Strapi brings a more simplistic experience, while Firebase brings a more detailed experience. The features you get at Firebase may not be as easy to integrate as Firebase’s, but you can enjoy many functionalities and better performance. Some of the Firebase’s features include:

Hosting

Firebase provides secure and fast web hosting whether you need a single-page website or a mobile application.

With management services from Firebase, you do not need to worry about managing anything at the backend. It even makes the perfect choice for progressive websites.

Firebase has its hardware spread across the globe so that you get the best speed, and SSD-backed hardware enhances this speed and performance even more.

Analytics

Analytics is very important if you want to ensure that your application is moving towards betterment and growth from the first day of its deployment. Firebase provides amazing analytics services that include:

1. Google analytics
2. Crashlytics
3. Performance monitoring

The reporting you get is done according to 500 different events so that there is nothing that you miss about your app’s performance. 

Machine Learning

It is the era of machine learning and artificial intelligence, and Firebase enables you to add machine learning capabilities to your application.

You can choose to use the cloud vision APIs here, and you can also choose to go for custom models. It depends on your requirements and the feature experience you want from your application.

Other features include push notifications, cloud functions, A/B testing, etc.

Firebase Pricing

The pricing plans at Firebase me be simple to some and a bit complex to some. There is a free Spark plan, and then there is a Blaze plan that costs according to the pay-as-you-go methodology. Below are the details about each one of them.

Spark

In the spark plan, a lot of things come for free. These free things include analytics and many other features. However, it misses some important features like Cloud Vision APIs and more.

Blaze

When we talk about the Blaze plan, the free things come for free but not all of them. There are different prices for most things, and you have to pay for everything you use according to the pay-as-you-go plan.

Firebase vs Strapi Comparison Table

Conclusion

Developing everything from scratch is not the best practice today. It wastes a lot of time and resources and hosts too much.

That is why we have APIs to help speed up the development process with better performance and efficient resource utilization. Firebase and Strapi are the platforms that allow designing and managing custom APIs.

So, if you were looking for the right platform to design your API, we hope you know which one brings the better value. You can select any platform after observing your requirements.

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