Migrating from Firebase to Supabase? Here Is What the Tutorials Skip

Moving from Firebase to Supabase involves far more than swapping SDKs, as the two platforms use fundamentally different database models — Firestore is a NoSQL document store while Supabase runs on PostgreSQL. This means developers must remodel denormalized document structures into relational tables rather than performing a straightforward data transfer. A practical approach involves staging raw Firestore exports as JSONB in PostgreSQL first, then incrementally normalizing high-priority entities using SQL queries. Beyond data modeling, migrations must also address moving authenticated users without forcing password resets and rebuilding real-time and security logic under entirely different paradigms. The author draws on personal experience migrating two projects and assisting on a third to highlight these as the issues that most commonly consume project timelines.