Firebase vs CockroachDB for Solo Developers

Quick Comparison

Firebase Overview

Firebase is Google's app development platform. It bundles Firestore (NoSQL database), authentication, cloud storage, hosting, cloud functions, push notifications, and analytics into a single SDK. The mobile integration is excellent. iOS, Android, and web clients all get first-class support.

For solo developers, Firebase's value is speed of development. You can go from zero to a working app with auth, database, and file storage in a single afternoon. The free tier covers prototyping and early users. Real-time sync means changes to your database propagate instantly to every connected client without any additional infrastructure.

The trade-off is Firestore's NoSQL data model. Documents in collections. No SQL, no joins, no complex aggregations. Your data modeling adapts to Firestore's constraints, not the other way around. For simple data structures, this is fine. For anything with complex relationships, it gets awkward fast.

CockroachDB Overview

CockroachDB is a distributed SQL database designed to survive failures. It speaks PostgreSQL's wire protocol, automatically shards data across nodes, provides strong consistency across regions, and handles node failures without downtime. It's built for applications where data consistency and availability are non-negotiable.

The Serverless free tier gives you 10 GiB of storage and 50 million request units monthly. That's usable for experimentation. But CockroachDB's real capabilities, multi-region distribution, automatic failover, and horizontal scaling, only manifest on the Dedicated tier at $295/month.

CockroachDB requires understanding distributed systems concepts. Consistency models, partition strategies, replication topologies, and how queries perform across distributed nodes. The learning curve is steep, especially for developers who haven't worked with distributed databases before.

Key Differences

Complexity spectrum. Firebase is one of the easiest backend platforms to learn. CockroachDB is one of the most complex database systems to master. For a solo developer, this gap in complexity translates directly into development speed. Firebase lets you ship this week. CockroachDB requires weeks of learning before you're productive.

Platform vs database. Firebase gives you everything: database, auth, storage, hosting, functions. CockroachDB gives you a database. Everything else, you build or buy separately. A solo developer choosing CockroachDB still needs to add auth (Clerk, Auth0), storage (S3, R2), and hosting (Vercel, Railway). Firebase includes all of that.

Data model. Firebase uses NoSQL documents. CockroachDB uses relational SQL with PostgreSQL compatibility. For complex data with many relationships, CockroachDB's SQL is far more capable. For simple, document-oriented data, Firebase is more straightforward. Neither is universally better; it depends on your data.

Real-time capabilities. Firebase has built-in real-time sync. CockroachDB has changefeeds (similar to change data capture) but no client-side real-time subscription system. If real-time updates are core to your app, Firebase handles it natively. CockroachDB requires building a real-time layer on top.

Global distribution. CockroachDB's strength is multi-region, globally distributed, strongly consistent data. Firebase can run Firestore in multi-region mode, but it's a simpler form of distribution. If you genuinely need data to be consistent across continents with automatic failover, CockroachDB is purpose-built for that. Firebase is not.

Cost. Firebase's free tier is generous and the pay-as-you-go model works for small applications. CockroachDB's meaningful tier (Dedicated) costs $295/month. For a solo developer, that's a steep entry point. The Serverless free tier exists but doesn't showcase CockroachDB's differentiating features.

Scaling trajectory. Firebase scales well but costs become unpredictable at high usage. CockroachDB scales horizontally by adding nodes. Both handle growth, but CockroachDB is built for the kind of scale that most solo developers will never reach. Firebase's scaling is more than sufficient for projects that haven't raised a Series B.

When to Choose Firebase

• You want the fastest path from idea to working product
• You're building a mobile app or real-time web application
• You need a complete platform (auth, storage, hosting, database)
• Your data model is simple and document-oriented
• You want to start free and only pay as usage grows

When to Choose CockroachDB

• Your application genuinely needs multi-region strong consistency
• Data availability across regions is a hard business requirement
• You need PostgreSQL compatibility with horizontal scaling
• You have compliance requirements for data locality
• You have the budget for the Dedicated tier

The Verdict

Firebase wins this comparison for solo developers. The 8/10 vs 4/10 gap reflects the practical reality of building solo.

Firebase gives you everything you need to build and launch an application: database, auth, storage, hosting, and real-time sync. The free tier covers prototyping and early traction. The learning curve is minimal. You ship fast.

CockroachDB gives you a distributed database that solves problems solo developers don't have. Multi-region consistency, automatic sharding, node failure recovery. These are impressive engineering capabilities, but they serve applications with millions of users and strict uptime requirements. A solo developer building a side project or early-stage SaaS doesn't need this.

The 4/10 solo developer rating for CockroachDB isn't a reflection of its quality. It's an incredible database. The rating reflects how poorly it fits the solo developer use case. The complexity, the cost, and the operational knowledge required are all calibrated for teams with dedicated database engineers.

My recommendation: if you need NoSQL with a complete platform, use Firebase. If you need SQL, use Supabase or Neon instead of CockroachDB. Save CockroachDB for the day your application genuinely needs distributed consistency at global scale. By then, you'll have the team and budget to justify it.