Supabase Backups and Point-in-Time Recovery: What Each Plan Includes, What It Costs, and a Restore Drill You Can Run on the Free Plan

Here is a summary of the key points from the source, rewritten in my own words:

Supabase offers three types of backups:

1. Daily backups are automatically taken for Pro, Team and Enterprise projects, with retention periods of 7, 14 and 30 days respectively. Free projects do not have automatic backups and it's recommended to regularly export backups using the CLI or other methods.

2. Point-in-time recovery (PITR) is a paid feature that combines daily snapshots with a continuous record of changes. It can recover data up to 2 minutes ago. Pricing starts at about $100 per month for 7 days of retention, increasing to $200 for 14 days and $400 for 28 days. PITR requires at least the Small compute add-on, with Micro being insufficient.

3. Users can also create their own backup copies. On the Free plan, this is the main method. The restore drill in the article used this method, backing up a test database, accidentally deleting data, and then restoring it.

PITR costs more than the original $100 estimate I previously mentioned. The full pricing is provided by Supabase in the docs.

The drill involved backing up a database, accidentally deleting data and then restoring it. Comparing the restored data to the original shows how much is lost depending on the frequency of backups.

Note that for the Free plan:

- Daily backups are not available

- Passwords for custom database roles are not stored, so would need to be reconfigured after a restore

- While a restore is running, the project is unavailable

- Larger databases take longer to restore

In summary, Supabase provides multiple backup options with varying levels of automation and retention. PITR offers faster recovery but at a higher cost, and requires a specific compute add-on. The Free plan relies on manual backup exports to maintain copies.