Checked September 26, 2026. USD, excluding tax. Based on published pricing pages, not a hands-on build. Jet Admin publishes this comparison and, unlike the other two, does operate in the no-code space — read the "Where Jet Admin fits" section with that in mind.
This isn't a like-for-like comparison, and pretending otherwise produces bad advice. Xano is a visual backend builder aimed at people who'd rather not write server code. Supabase is a developer platform built around Postgres. The price difference — $85 a month against $25 — reflects that difference in audience, not a difference in capacity.
The real question is who's building your backend and what they're comfortable with.
At a glance
| Xano | Supabase | |
|---|---|---|
| Free plan | $0 — 100,000 records, 1 workspace, 1 seat | $0 — 500 MB database, 50,000 MAU |
| Free tier rate limit | "10 req/20s" | No published per-request rate cap |
| Paid entry | Essential — $85/month billed annually | Pro — $25/month |
| Next tier | Pro — $224/month billed annually | Team — $599/month |
| Records on paid plans | Unlimited | 8 GB disk on Pro, then $0.125/GB |
| Storage | 100 GB (Essential), 250 GB (Pro) | 100 GB files on Pro |
| Team seats | 5 (Essential), 10 (Pro) | Not seat-limited |
| How you build | Visual no-code function stack | SQL, client libraries, edge functions |
Sources: Xano pricing and Supabase pricing, checked September 26, 2026.
Important caveat on Xano's figures. The $85 and $224 prices are billed annually. Xano's page states monthly rates differ but does not publish them where we could read them, so budget for a higher number if you want month-to-month. Check the monthly price in Xano's own billing flow before committing — don't assume the annual figure applies.
Read Xano's free tier carefully
The free plan lists 100,000 records, which sounds generous. Two limits underneath it matter more:
The rate limit is 10 requests per 20 seconds. That's one request every two seconds. It's enough to click through an app you're building and demonstrate it to someone. It is not enough for a handful of concurrent users, let alone a launch. Treat Xano's free tier as an evaluation environment, not a starting tier you can grow out of gradually.
Image storage is watermarked. The 1 GB of free storage is images only, with watermarks applied — again fine for evaluation, unusable for anything real.
Supabase's free tier has no equivalent per-request throttle published and allows 50,000 monthly active users. Plenty of small production apps run on it indefinitely. These two free tiers are doing different jobs: one is a trial, the other is a plan.
Where the money actually differs
Xano Essential at $85 a month (annual) gives unlimited records, no rate limit, 100 GB of storage, 3 workspaces and 5 team seats. Supabase Pro at $25 gives 8 GB of database disk, 100 GB of file storage, 250 GB egress and 100,000 MAU, with spend caps on by default and metered overage beyond.
"Unlimited records" against "8 GB then $0.125 per GB" is the interesting contrast. Xano's model is a flat fee with no metering anxiety. Supabase's is a lower base plus usage. At what point does Supabase's metered bill reach $85? You'd need roughly 480 GB of database overage — far beyond where most teams sit. For the overwhelming majority of applications, Supabase is substantially cheaper on pure cost.
That is not the argument for Xano, and any comparison claiming otherwise is misreading it. Xano's argument is that a person who can't write a Postgres query or deploy an edge function can build and ship a working backend on it. If that's true for your team, $60 a month is not the relevant number — the cost of a developer is.
The seat limits cut the other way. Xano caps team seats at 5 on Essential and 10 on Pro. Supabase doesn't charge per seat at all. For a larger team, that constraint arrives before any capacity limit does.
Which should you choose?
Choose Xano if the people building your backend don't write code and you want them shipping without a developer in the loop. The visual function stack is the product, and if it removes a hiring dependency the price premium is easy to justify.
Choose Supabase if you have developers. It's cheaper, it's Postgres so your data and skills are portable, there are no seat caps, and it doesn't ask anyone to learn a proprietary visual environment. For a technical team this is not a close call on either cost or flexibility.
Be honest about the "no-code will save us money" assumption. It sometimes does, decisively. But a visual backend still requires someone to model data, design endpoints and reason about auth — the work doesn't vanish, it changes shape. If nobody on the team wants to do that work in either tool, neither platform solves your problem.
Where Jet Admin fits
Unlike the other comparisons in this series, Jet Admin does overlap with Xano — both are no-code platforms, so treat what follows as an interested party's account.
The distinction is layer. Xano builds the backend: your database, your API endpoints, your business logic. Jet Admin builds the interface on top of a backend you already have, whether that's Postgres, an API, Supabase or indeed Xano. They're more often complementary than competing.
Where they genuinely compete is the case where someone wants an internal tool and is considering building the whole thing — backend and UI — in Xano. If the data already lives somewhere, connecting Jet Admin to it directly skips a layer. If you need new data structures and business logic from scratch, Xano is doing something Jet Admin doesn't.
Frequently asked questions
Why is Xano so much more expensive?
Different audience. Xano sells a visual environment that lets non-developers build a backend; Supabase sells infrastructure to people who write code. You're paying for the abstraction, not for capacity.
Can I actually use Xano's free tier?
For evaluation, yes. For anything live, no — the 10 requests per 20 seconds rate limit and watermarked images make it a demo environment rather than a starting plan.
Is "unlimited records" really unlimited?
That's how Xano's pricing page describes paid plans. Storage is still capped — 100 GB on Essential, 250 GB on Pro — so confirm how your record volume translates into storage for your data shape.
What does Xano cost monthly rather than annually?
Higher than the $85 and $224 annual-billing figures, but Xano doesn't publish the monthly rates where we could read them. Check in Xano's billing flow before budgeting.
Can I move off either one?
Supabase is Postgres, so your data and queries are portable. Xano's visual logic is proprietary — the data can be exported, but the backend you built has to be rebuilt elsewhere.
Do I need to know SQL for Supabase?
You'll be much more effective with it. Supabase's client libraries cover a lot of common cases, but the platform assumes a developer. If nobody on the team writes code, that assumption is the whole comparison.
Answer the team question first
This one is decided by who's building, not by a feature table. If your team writes code, Supabase is cheaper, more portable and has no seat caps. If it doesn't, Xano exists precisely for that situation and the premium is what it costs.
Whichever way you lean, evaluate Xano on a paid plan rather than the free one — the free tier's rate limit means a trial there tells you nothing about how the real thing behaves.
And if the data already exists and what you need is an interface over it, connect Jet Admin to it directly rather than rebuilding the backend to get a UI.
