# Firebase 26 Hacker News commenters recommended Firebase and 63 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 12 of 13 months. **Verdict:** Recommended for its free tier, easy auth and quick setup for small projects, though critics warn bills can climb steeply at scale and misconfigured keys have caused costly incidents. ## Why people recommend it - Built-in auth and user management (4 comments): "They have a generous free tier that includes hosting and you can add real user auth, again all for free." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49144085)) "They provide basic auth and stuff like this. So you can actually focus on writing your code." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46272085)) "I would definitely go with something like firebase or auth0 vs rolling your own auth" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47164520)) - Easy to set up and use (4 comments): "Firebase is genuinely nicer to work with than its alternatives" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48340061)) "Both make it pretty dead simple to deploy." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46555986)) "Firebase integration is absurdly easy" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49281305)) - Good for personal and simple projects (4 comments): "I think they are good options for personal projects until it reaches a scale where costs really start to matter." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46601955)) "I still reach for Firebase for my personal projects" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49771904)) "for this kind of project it works really well" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47013486)) ## What people warn about - Surprise bills and costs at scale (7 comments): "I think they are good options for personal projects until it reaches a scale where costs really start to matter." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46601955)) "I had a Firebase charge of $1k from someone who set up an automated script" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47792485)) "A lot of cloud providers have very generous free tiers to hook you and then the moment things take off , it's a small fortune to keep the servers on." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47875224)) - Security exposure and past incidents (5 comments): "Firebase was such a gold-mine for security researchers: everyone just forgot about security when they forgot about their backend." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46358525)) "This is by far the worst security incident Google has ever had, and that's why they aren't publicly or loudly responding to it." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47792099)) "Google should know better to not have such an incident like this as the Firebase SDK runs on millions of apps." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49891537)) - Lock-in and no data export (2 comments): "Firebase will give you the instant database and UI, but then you're forever tied to paying them rent." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46748503)) "using firebase without export and user access to their data was ok as long as it was an experiment" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47545120)) - Hard to set up permissions (2 comments): "I gave up on fire base for one project because I could not figure out how to get the right permissions set up" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46040482)) "Having client-accessible databases with optional rule-base security has always seemed a bit dumb." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49249674)) ## Alternatives hackers recommend - [Supabase](https://hackerapproved.com/p/supabase.md): 109 recommend - [Convex](https://hackerapproved.com/p/convex.md): 10 recommend ## Where to get it - [Visit the official site](https://firebase.google.com/) ## Cite as Hacker Approved, "Firebase", https://hackerapproved.com/p/firebase/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).