PocketBase
Hacker ApprovedThe most recommended of 6 backend services
One-binary backend on SQLite with admin UI, auth and easy extensibility, suited to small to medium apps. Caveat: it struggles once requirements fall outside its features.
One-binary backend on SQLite with admin UI, auth and easy extensibility, suited to small to medium apps. Caveat: it struggles once requirements fall outside its features.
79 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 67
- criticize it
- 12
- approval share
- 85%
Recommended in 9 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 67 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 5.6 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 9 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Small to medium apps and prototypes
“Pocketbase seems like a perfect fit for those small to medium sized projects”
Comment from 28 Nov 2025 in “Pocketbase – open-source realtime back end in 1 file” “It's exactly the right level of medium complexity where Pocketbase shines.”
Comment from 28 Nov 2025 in “Pocketbase – open-source realtime back end in 1 file” “It's great for quick prototypes, MVPs, and simple apps.”
Comment from 28 Nov 2025 in “Pocketbase – open-source realtime back end in 1 file” - Comment from 29 Nov 2025 in “Pocketbase – open-source realtime back end in 1 file”
Easy extensibility through code and hooks
“Pocketbase does an awesome job of providing extensibility, likely most of the stuff you want that's not fully out of the box can be added in 20 lines of code or so.”
Comment from 28 Nov 2025 in “Pocketbase – open-source realtime back end in 1 file” “The hooks are great, even relatively complex things like spinning up infrastructure is easy”
Comment from 28 Nov 2025 in “Pocketbase – open-source realtime back end in 1 file” “No you can setup everything (models and db migrations) with code, no need to use the gui”
Comment from 28 Nov 2025 in “Pocketbase – open-source realtime back end in 1 file” - Comment from 10 Apr 2026 in “Instant 1.0, a backend for AI-coded apps”
Built-in admin UI and auth
“it is by far the easiest way IMO to create a maintainable, robust backend with direct auth integrations and a pleasant interface”
Comment from 28 Nov 2025 in “Pocketbase – open-source realtime back end in 1 file” “It's a nice base (and nice project) when you need users management and a quick admin tool.”
Comment from 26 Aug 2026 in “One Go binary, one YAML file, one SQLite database: I wrote my monitoring tool” “it's designed as a friendly but powerful GUI to quickly get a backend up and running.”
Comment from 28 Nov 2025 in “Pocketbase – open-source realtime back end in 1 file” One binary, one SQLite file
“It's a lot lighter than Postgres/supabase. I run it on a pi-5 and it works perfectly well.”
Comment from 28 Nov 2025 in “Pocketbase – open-source realtime back end in 1 file” “One binary to manage one sqlite file is indeed quite a selling point”
Comment from 28 Nov 2025 in “Pocketbase – open-source realtime back end in 1 file”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Breaks when requirements fall outside features
“The catch is that the moment your requirements fall outside what the system supports, you are more or less f*cked.”
Comment from 28 Nov 2025 in “Pocketbase – open-source realtime back end in 1 file” “That factor alone would make me weary of overly relying on Pocketbase.”
Comment from 28 Nov 2025 in “Pocketbase – open-source realtime back end in 1 file” Not ready for production; pre-1.0 changes
“PocketBase is still under active development and therefore full backward compatibility is not guaranteed before reaching v1.0.0”
Comment from 28 Nov 2025 in “Pocketbase – open-source realtime back end in 1 file” “It's a niche little product that's alpha-level quality and changes frequently”
Comment from 28 Nov 2025 in “Pocketbase – open-source realtime back end in 1 file” “PocketBase is NOT recommended for production critical applications yet”
Comment from 28 Nov 2025 in “Pocketbase – open-source realtime back end in 1 file” Admin UI not optimised for phones
“My biggest gripe with it by far is that the web interface is not phone-optimised at all”
Comment from 28 Nov 2025 in “Pocketbase – open-source realtime back end in 1 file” “Pocketbase's admin UI is not optimised for phones at all”
Comment from 28 Nov 2025 in “Pocketbase – open-source realtime back end in 1 file”
Other backend services people recommend
The four most recommended other backend services, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PocketBaseThis page | 67 | 12 | 85% | 9 | — | Approved |
| InstantDB | 23 | 10 | 70% | 6 | — | Approved |
| PostgREST | 12 | 3 | 80% | 8 | — | Approved |
| Sheet Ninja | 11 | 12 | 48% | 3 | — | — |
| Hasura | 7 | 1 | 88% | 4 | — | — |
What people said
40 of the 95 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“I use it as a backend for my vibecoded "auto-SaaS" Tools.”
“It's a nice base (and nice project) when you need users management and a quick admin tool.”
“basically the same pattern with some nice dashboard magics”
“All agents seem to know how to talk to the Pocketbase API without telling them much about it”
“one very valuable feature it has is server extensibility”
“I so love Pocketbase, used it when I was trying out HTMX for a side project.”
“Pocketbase is such a smooth and easy-to-use database - great for people starting with web dev.”
“I set up a Pocketbase instance with a Lovable-like app on top”
“as a counterexample you have Pocketbase where you don't have to”
“The backend leverages PocketBase which has really been great.”
“Works surprisingly well even for mid to large web-apps.”
“I've definitely done bulk deletes and things have been fine.”
“a git repo which currently has 53k stars which I've known of for many years”
“It's a lot lighter than Postgres/supabase. I run it on a pi-5 and it works perfectly well.”
“Rather than fill the screen the edit shows up in a modal which doesn't really make sense, since you have so little horizontal space to work with.”
“I'm not a fan of alphanumeric strings used as raw key bytes for AES”
“PocketBase is still under active development and therefore full backward compatibility is not guaranteed before reaching v1.0.0”
“Pocketbase proves that for 99% of CRUD apps, the bottleneck isn't the database”
“it's designed as a friendly but powerful GUI to quickly get a backend up and running.”
“It's exactly the right level of medium complexity where Pocketbase shines.”
“That factor alone would make me weary of overly relying on Pocketbase.”
“No you can setup everything (models and db migrations) with code, no need to use the gui”
“One binary to manage one sqlite file is indeed quite a selling point”
“it is by far the easiest way IMO to create a maintainable, robust backend with direct auth integrations and a pleasant interface”
“This is a very, very good piece of work when you need to decorrelate the back from the front”
“It's a niche little product that's alpha-level quality and changes frequently”
“I love it and use it for personal projects and internal tools.”
“PocketBase is NOT recommended for production critical applications yet”
“it's been bulletproof. Saved us a lot of time and money.”
“Pocketbase does an awesome job of providing extensibility, likely most of the stuff you want that's not fully out of the box can be added in 20 lines of code or so.”
“The catch is that the moment your requirements fall outside what the system supports, you are more or less f*cked.”
“The hooks are great, even relatively complex things like spinning up infrastructure is easy”
“This project is so well thought out, you couldn't vibe code it in a week or a month.”
“Im not really compelled by the “it doesn't scale at all” aspects of it.”
“Pocketbase's admin UI is not optimised for phones at all”
“right now its only via UI making it hard to setup large complex tables”
“My biggest gripe with it by far is that the web interface is not phone-optimised at all”
“It's great for quick prototypes, MVPs, and simple apps.”
“Pocketbase seems like a perfect fit for those small to medium sized projects”
“Pocketbase has a sense of quality/care around it that seems missing.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.