Hasura vs Firebase

Firebase and Hasura come with programming interfaces that allow developers to build apps faster.

The key component of both services is immediate APIs over databases, which means you should immediately get your APIs after defining your database schema.

So, Firebase and Hasura both provide APIs over databases. However, Hasura offers data APIs over multiple databases, and Firebase offers data APIs over a proprietary database.

Given below are the key features and pricing offered by Hasura and Firebase to help you understand the two app development platforms more deeply. 

Hasura vs. Firebase – Overview

Keep reading to know more.

What is Hasura?

Hasura is an open-source platform that provides industry-grade application programming interfaces (APIs) to developers based on the data provided without requiring them to create, function or scale a GraphQL server.

The GraphQL engine of Hasura is astonishingly fast that gives you immediate, real-time GraphQL APIs over Postgres, remote schemas for business logic, and web trigger on database events.

With Hasura, developers can conveniently build GraphQL applications backed by Postgres or incrementally switch to GraphQL using Postgres for existing apps.

Developers love Hasura because they can start with their app building process in no time, operate this engine successfully without being a GraphQL expert upfront, and save their months of recurring effort and time in creating, shipping, and maintaining APIs.

All they need to do is run Hasura locally or in the cloud and connect to their existing or new databases to get a production-grade GraphQL application programming interface.

With Hasura, you do not have to worry about the app’s performance as it is much more efficient. It offers blazing-fast performance that is dramatically easy to scale.

Hasura Core Features

A lot of amazing features are available on Hasura that let you adopt GraphQl and a 3factor architecture quickly. These include:

• Realtime– Hasura lets you convert GraphQL query to live query by using subscriptions.

• Serverless functions or trigger webhooks– Event triggers on Postgres. You can trigger asynchronous cloud functions to simplify DevOps for programmers and minimize infrastructural costs. 

• Fine-grained access control– Powerful access control that collaborates with your auth system (for example, Firebase-auth, auth0)

• Admin user-interface and migrations– Rails-inspired and admin UI schema migrations

• Make dynamic queries– Bulk insert, built-in filtering, pattern search, update, pagination, delete mutations

• Merge remote schemas– Hasura can conveniently merge GraphQL schemas and provide a GraphQL API. You may think of it as an automated schema merging. Create your GraphQL service (you may write it in any language or use any framework) and then provide the HTTP endpoint to Hasura. Also, to render business logic, you will require building a GraphQL server and merge its schemas with the Engine of GraphQL.

• Works seamlessly with existing databases– To get a ready-to-use GraphQL API, you need to point it on a live, existing database

• Low footprint and high performance– Multi-core aware; approximately 15 MB docker image; approximately 50 MB RAM 

Hasura Pricing

Hasura’s pricing list scales with your usage.

• A free plan- $0 per month (personal use and basic sites)

• A standard plan- $99 per month per project. $2 per additional GB.

• A customized enterprise plan- For private cloud deployments

What is Firebase?

Firebase is a powerful and feature-rich mobile app development solution from Google with a host of features for building, managing, and enhancing applications.

Firebase is a collection of app development tools programmers can rely on for creating apps and expanding them (software developers can expand Firebase features and collaborate them with the developed applications through the addition of server-side codes seamlessly) based on demand. 

Firebase solves three major issues for developers:

• Create an application, fast

• Release and track the app performance with confidence

• Engage customers

Developers who rely on this robust platform gain access to resources and functions that they would have to create themselves otherwise, and therefore, have their focus laid on delivering robust and lucrative app experiences. 

Since Firebase offers cloud-hosted services, users can perform on-demand scaling without hassles. Firebase is among the top application development platforms trusted by developers worldwide.

Firebase Core Features

Firebase platform offers some striking features that include machine learning, real-time database, messaging, authentication, and more.

• Real-time Database– Firebase real-time database facilitates JSON-based information storage and performs data synchronization with connected clients. This cloud-hosted database lets apps receive the latest data and updates. Offline apps remain responsive because the database SDK carries out on-disk information persistence. It aids syncing of devices to present servers following the restoration of connectivity.

• Cloud Firestore– It is a component of the Firebase app development framework. It is a cloud-based NoSQL database that facilitates data synchronization and storage. Developers who use Firebase can access Firestore from the web or mobile applications via native SDKs. Cloud Firestore, also known as Google Firestore, supports a range of programming languages. This database is modified to offer optimal performance, benchmark usability, reliability, and automatic scaling. 

• Machine Learning– It is a mobile software development kit that equips Google’s machine learning power and applies the same to the iOS and Android applications through a convenient package. Firebase machine learning is suitable to use for developers regardless of their experience level. You may not possess knowledge of aspects like neural networks or model optimization and still create apps with Firebase.

• Authentication– This Firebase feature offers convenient SDKs, backend, and ready-to-use libraries, for user app authentication, which is supported through passwords, numbers, and providers such as Google, Facebook, etc.

• Messaging– It refers to cross-platform message services for cost-free messaging. Firebase cloud messaging feature allows application owners to send messages to clients when emails or data are to be synced.

Firebase Pricing

• A Spark plan that encompasses most of Firebase’s features and provides a free tier.

• A Blaze plan is a paid plan that works under a usage-based model and charges for the used workload. 

Conclusion

This context has laid out the core features and pricing structure of two of the most famous and universally-used app development platforms, Hasura and Firebase. 

FAQ