PocketBase Cloud vs Appwrite
Appwrite is an open-source backend-as-a-service — database, auth, functions, storage, realtime, and messaging — offered as Appwrite Cloud or self-hosted. PocketBase Cloud is a managed app platform built on the open-source PocketBase: the same feature set in one process, for a flat monthly price. This page compares Appwrite Cloud’s per-project, partly metered model against one predictable bill.
Prices below are as of September 2026 — check the Appwrite pricing page and the PocketBase Cloud pricing page for current numbers.
Summary
| PocketBase Cloud | Appwrite Cloud | |
|---|---|---|
| Model | Managed app platform, flat rate | BaaS, per-project plan + metered overages |
| Free tier | $0 — 1 instance + frontend hosting, always-on | Free — 2 projects, 75K MAU, 5 GB bandwidth, 750K function executions |
| Paid entry | $5 Starter / $20 Pro flat | $25/mo per project |
| Beyond allowance | Nothing metered on paid plans | MAU $3/1K, bandwidth $15/100 GB, executions $2/1M, storage $2.80/100 GB |
| Auth | Email/OAuth/OTP, no MAU billing | Metered MAU past the allowance |
| Realtime | SSE subscriptions, API-rule aware; 1,000+ concurrent on a 2 vCPU / 4 GB box | WebSocket channels |
| Functions | JavaScript hooks in-process, no invocation fee | Functions metered per execution |
| Storage | Local disk or any S3-compatible bucket | Included, metered past the allowance |
| Frontend hosting | Included | Sites product, metered bandwidth |
| Self-host | Run stock PocketBase anywhere, pbc works against it |
Fully open-source, Docker Compose |
Pricing: per-project + meters vs flat
Appwrite Cloud charges $25/mo per project, and resources (MAUs, bandwidth, function executions, storage) are allocated and billed per project. Past the included amounts you pay per unit. Two client apps are two projects — $50/mo before any overage.
PocketBase Cloud charges per plan, not per project. Pro is a flat $20/mo for a dedicated 2 vCPU compute hosting effectively unlimited PocketBase instances, frontends, and backends, with nothing metered — no MAU counter, no execution counter, bandwidth included with the compute. Ten apps still cost $20.
Architecture and the real trade-off
Appwrite runs a set of services (an API layer, a MariaDB database, a queue, functions runtimes) you can scale independently — better suited to genuinely write-heavy, high-concurrency workloads.
PocketBase is one process. Reads are fast with no network hop; writes are serialized through a single lock, which read-heavy CRUD apps never notice but write-heavy ones eventually do. In exchange you get one thing to deploy, one folder to back up, API rules as one-line filters, and local development against the exact same binary.
When to choose which
Choose Appwrite when:
- You want independently scalable services and a client-server database under heavy write concurrency
- You use its messaging product (push, email, SMS) or need its team/enterprise RBAC depth
- You are standardising on its multi-language SDKs and self-hosted control plane
Choose PocketBase Cloud when:
- Your app is read-heavy CRUD with auth, files, and realtime
- You want one flat bill with no MAU or execution meters, across several apps
- You want the database, frontend, and backend on one platform and one CLI
The honest bottom line
- Metered scale, independent services, messaging — Appwrite’s model fits.
- Several standard apps on a fixed budget — PocketBase Cloud’s $20 flat wins, and the gap widens with each project once per-project fees stack up.