Supabase for Platforms

Supabase is a Platform as a Service (PaaS) that can be managed programmatically. You can use it to offer the key primitives to your own users, such as Database, Auth, Edge Functions, Storage, and Realtime. Supabase is commonly used as a platform by AI Builders and frameworks needing a backend.

This document will guide you on best practices when using Supabase for your own platform and assumes that Supabase projects are in a Supabase organization that you own. If you want to instead interact with projects that your users own, navigate to OAuth integration for more details.

Overview

All features of Supabase can be managed through the Management API or the remote MCP Server.

Launching projects

Management API endpoints:

Create project: POST /v1/projects
Get smart region selection codes: GET /v1/projects/available-regions
Check service health: GET /v1/projects/{ref}/health

We recommend:

a very secure password for each database. Do not reuse the same password across databases.
storing the encrypted version of the password. Once you set the password during project creation, there is no way to programmatically change the password but you can do so manually in the Supabase Dashboard.
using smart region selection to ensure there's enough capacity. The available smart region codes are americas, emea, and apac and you can make a request to GET /v1/projects/available-regions for region details.
using an appropriate instance size. Scale to zero pricing only applies to pico instances, make sure to not pass in a desired_instance_size when creating a project. >= Micro instances are not able to scale to zero.
make sure that the services are ACTIVE_HEALTHY after project creation. After creating project, confirm the service that you want to make a request to has a status of ACTIVE_HEALTHY by polling GET /v1/projects/{ref}/health. For example, before making a request to set an Auth configuration confirm that the Auth service has a status of ACTIVE_HEALTHY.

curl https://api.supabase.com/v1/projects \
  --request POST \
  --header "Content-Type: application/json" \
  --header "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_SECRET_TOKEN" \
  --data '{
    "name": "Todo App",
    "organization_slug": "aaaabbbbccccddddeeee",
    "db_pass": "SUPER_SECURE_PASSWORD",
    "region_selection": {
      "type": "smartGroup",
      "code": "americas"
    },
    "desired_instance_size": "micro"
  }'

Pico compute instance

Only select customers have access to Pico instances. Submit this form to get access.

</Admonition>

Pico instance is our newest compute instance and the only one that scales to zero when not used.

Recommended API keys

Management API endpoints:

Get the API keys: GET /v1/projects/{ref}/api-keys
Enable the API keys: POST /v1/projects/{ref}/api-keys

We are in the process of migrating away from our legacy API keys anon and service_role and towards API keys publishable and secret.

You can learn more by navigating to Upcoming changes to Supabase API Keys #29260.

</Admonition>

Get the API keys by making a GET /v1/projects/{ref}/api-keys request.

curl 'https://api.supabase.com/v1/projects/{ref}/api-keys?reveal=true' \
  --header 'Authorization: Bearer YOUR_SECRET_TOKEN'

If the response includes "publishable" and "secret" keys then you're all set and you should only use those from now on.

Otherwise, enable the API keys by making two POST /v1/projects/{ref}/api-keys requests, one for publishable and another for secret.

curl 'https://api.supabase.com/v1/projects/{ref}/api-keys' \
  --request POST \
  --header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  --header 'Authorization: Bearer YOUR_SECRET_TOKEN' \
  --data '{
  "type": "publishable",
  "name": "default"
}'

curl 'https://api.supabase.com/v1/projects/{ref}/api-keys?reveal=true' \
  --request POST \
  --header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  --header 'Authorization: Bearer YOUR_SECRET_TOKEN' \
  --data '{
  "type": "secret",
  "name": "default",
  "secret_jwt_template": {
    "role": "service_role"
  }
}'

Changing compute sizes

Management API endpoint: PATCH /v1/projects/{ref}/billing/addons

Once you have access to Pico instances, you will no longer be able to upgrade or downgrade to Nano instances.

</Admonition>

You can upgrade and downgrade compute sizes by making requests to PATCH /v1/projects/{ref}/billing/addons.

curl 'https://api.supabase.com/v1/projects/{ref}/billing/addons' \
  --request PATCH \
  --header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  --header 'Authorization: Bearer YOUR_SECRET_TOKEN' \
  --data '{
    "addon_type": "compute_instance",
    "addon_variant": "ci_small"
  }'

Configuration changes

Management API endpoints:

Auth: PATCH /v1/projects/{ref}/config/auth
Data API (PostgREST): PATCH /v1/projects/{ref}/postgrest
Edge Functions:
- PATCH /v1/projects/{ref}/functions/{function_slug}
- PUT /v1/projects/{ref}/functions
Storage: PATCH /v1/projects/{ref}/config/storage
Realtime: PATCH /v1/projects/{ref}/config/realtime

You can manage the configuration of all services using the Management API.

Development workflow

Supabase is a stateful service: we store data. If anything breaks in production, you can't "roll back" to a point in time because doing so might cause your users to lose any data that their production environment received since the last checkpoint.

Because of this, it's important that you adopt a development workflow on behalf of your users:

Creating a `DEV` branch

Management API endpoint: POST /v1/projects/{ref}/branches

After launching a project, it's important that all changes happen on a development branch. Branches can be treated like ephemeral servers: if anything goes wrong you can either revert the changes or destroy the branch and create a new one based off of production.

curl 'https://api.supabase.com/v1/projects/{ref}/branches' \
  --request POST \
  --header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  --header 'Authorization: Bearer YOUR_SECRET_TOKEN' \
  --data '{
    "branch_name": "DEV",
    "secrets": {
      "STRIPE_SECRET_KEY":"sk_test_123..."
      "STRIPE_PUBLISHABLE_KEY":"pk_test_123..."
    }
  }'

Make database changes

Management API endpoint: POST /v1/projects/{ref}/database/migrations

Only select customers have access to database migrations endpoint. Submit this form to get access.

</Admonition>

For this example we will create a todos table using the POST /v1/projects/{ref}/database/migrations endpoint.

sql

create table public.todos (
  id serial primary key,
  task text not null
);

alter table public.todos
enable row level security;

This endpoint will automatically create a migration inside the supabase_migrations schema and run the migration. If the schema migration fails, the changes will be rolled back.

curl https://api.supabase.com/v1/projects/{ref}/database/migrations \
  --request POST \
  --header 'Authorization: Bearer YOUR_SECRET_TOKEN' \
  --header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  --data '{
    "query": "create table public.todos (id serial primary key, task text not null); alter table public.todos enable row level security;",
    "name": "Create a todos table"
  }'

Create a restore point

Only select customers have access to restore points. Submit this form to get access.

</Admonition>

After every change you make to the database, it's a good idea to create a restore point. This will allow you to roll back the database if you decide to go in a different direction.

Beware that only database changes are captured when creating a restore point.

curl https://api.supabase.com/v1/projects/{ref}/database/backups/restore-point \
  --request POST \
  --header 'Authorization: Bearer YOUR_SECRET_TOKEN' \
  --header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  --data '{
    "name": "abcdefg"
  }'

Reverting changes

Only select customers have access to restore points. Submit this form to get access.

</Admonition>

After creating restore points, you are able to revert back to any restore point that you want.

curl https://api.supabase.com/v1/projects/{ref}/database/backups/undo \
  --request POST \
  --header 'Authorization: Bearer YOUR_SECRET_TOKEN' \
  --header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  --data '{
  "name": "abcdefg"
}'

When you revert changes, you are undo-ing all database changes since the specified restore point, including:

Schema changes
Any seed data that you inserted
Any test users who have signed up (and auth tokens for sign ins)
Pointers to files in Supabase Storage.

It will not affect:

Configuration changes
Any secrets that have been added
Storage objects themselves
Any deployed Edge Functions

Add seed data

It's important that the data in development branches is NOT production data, especially for non-developers who don't understand the implications of working with data. Security and side-effects (e.g. emailing all production users) are two reasons why this is important.

</Admonition>

It's common in DEV branches to "seed" data. This is basically test data for users. Let's insert the following seed to our new todos table:

sql

insert into todos (task)
values
  ('Task 1'),
  ('Task 2'),
  ('Task 3');

You can use the POST /database/query endpoint to add data:

curl https://api.supabase.com/v1/projects/{branch_ref}/database/query \
  --request POST \
  --header 'Authorization: Bearer YOUR_SECRET_TOKEN' \
  --header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  --data-binary @- <<EOF
{
  "query": "insert into todos (task) values ('Task 1'), ('Task 2'), ('Task 3');"
}
EOF

Deploying Edge Functions

You can create and deploy Edge Functions on a branch and then merge them into Production.

curl https://api.supabase.com/v1/projects/functions/deploy \
  --request POST \
  --header 'Authorization: Bearer YOUR_SECRET_TOKEN' \
  --header 'Content-Type: multipart/form-data' \
  --form 'file=@path/to/function.zip' \
  --form 'metadata={
    "name": "my-function",
    "entrypoint_path": "index.ts",
    "import_map_path": "import_map.json",
    "static_patterns": ["assets/*", "public/*"],
    "verify_jwt": true
  }'

Merge all changes

Management API endpoint: POST /v1/branches/{branch_id_or_ref}/merge

Once the changes have been made, you can merge the changes into the production project:

curl https://api.supabase.com/v1/branches/{ref}/merge \
  --request POST \
  --header 'Authorization: Bearer YOUR_SECRET_TOKEN' \
  --header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  --data '{}'

Merging changes will automatically merge only the following:

Database changes
Deployed Edge Functions

Security checks for production

Management API endpoint: GET /v1/projects/{ref}/advisors/security

Prior to deploying to production we strongly recommend running the security advisor on the project to make sure the latest changes are secure.

curl https://api.supabase.com/v1/projects/{ref}/advisors/security \
  --request GET \
  --header  'Authorization: Bearer {PAT_OR_USER_TOKEN}' \
  --header 'Content-Type: application/json'

Disaster recovery for production

Management API endpoint: POST /v1/projects/{ref}/database/backups/restore-pitr

Rollbacks can cause data loss. Only use it in PROD when absolutely necessary.
Only available in prod when a project has already explicitly enabled PITR prior to rolling back.

curl https://api.supabase.com/v1/projects/database/backups/restore-pitr \
  --request POST \
  --header 'Authorization: Bearer {PAT_OR_USER_TOKEN}' \
  --header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  --data '{
  "recovery_time_target_unix": 1
}'

Claim flow

Management API endpoint: GET /v1/oauth/authorize/project-claim

Only select customers have access to claim flow. Submit this form to get access.

</Admonition>

Your users may want to claim the project that currently lives in your org so that they can have more control over it.

We've enabled transferring the project from your org to your user's org while you continue to retain access to interact with the project through an OAuth integration.

curl -L "https://api.supabase.com/v1/oauth/authorize/project-claim?project_ref={ref}&client_id={oauth_client_id}&response_type=code&redirect_uri={redirect_uri}" \
  --request GET \
  --header 'Authorization: Bearer {PERSONAL_ACCESS_TOKEN}'

The user is redirected to a Supabase UI:

Create a new Supabase account or sign in to an existing one
Create a new Supabase Organization or select an existing one
Review your OAuth integration's permission scopes
Review the Project transfer details
Confirm the OAuth integration and the Project transfer for the selected Organization

Before transferring the project to your user's org, make sure to remove any custom configuration that you do not want your user's project to retain.

</Admonition>

Platform kit

Docs: https://supabase.com/ui/docs/platform/platform-kit

We've created Platform Kit, a collection of UI components that interact with Management API, as a lightweight version of Supabase Dashboard that you can embed directly in your app so your users never have to leave in order to interact with the project.

Debugging projects

Management API endpoint: GET /v1/projects/{ref}/analytics/endpoints/logs.all

When you need to debug a project, you can query the project's logs to see if there are any errors and address them accordingly.

curl 'https://api.supabase.com/v1/projects/{ref}/analytics/endpoints/logs.all' \
  --get \
  --header 'Authorization: Bearer YOUR_SECRET_TOKEN' \
  --data-urlencode 'sql=SELECT datetime(timestamp), status_code, path, event_message
    FROM edge_logs
    CROSS JOIN UNNEST(metadata) AS metadata
    CROSS JOIN UNNEST(response) AS response
    WHERE status_code >= 400
    ORDER BY timestamp DESC
    LIMIT 100' \
  --data-urlencode 'iso_timestamp_start=2025-03-23T00:00:00Z' \
  --data-urlencode 'iso_timestamp_end=2025-03-23T01:00:00Z'

Overview

Launching projects

Pico compute instance

Recommended API keys

Changing compute sizes

Configuration changes

Development workflow

Creating a DEV branch

Make database changes

Create a restore point

Reverting changes

Add seed data

Deploying Edge Functions

Merge all changes

Security checks for production

Disaster recovery for production

Claim flow

Platform kit

Debugging projects

Creating a `DEV` branch