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Firebase vs Google Cloud Run

Discover how Firebase compares to Google Cloud Run, and understand which is right for your use case, based on dimensions such as core features, pricing, reliability, and scalability.

What is Firebase?

Firebase is a cloud-native backend by Google that allows developers to build mobile and web applications. Firebase services include Firebase Realtime data, Firestore database, authentication, and Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM), among others.

Suitable for:

  • Realtime chat applications
  • Online collaborative apps
  • Multiplayer gaming
  • Realtime analytics
  • Monitoring services

Not suitable for:

  • Complex queries
  • Large data sets

Pros:

  • Generous free tier
  • Multiple SDKs
  • Robust documentation

Cons:

  • Unexpected cost surge
  • Google product lifespan concerns
  • Geo-blocking
  • Data privacy concerns
Google Cloud Run

What is Google Cloud Run?

Google Cloud Run is a serverless platform that allows developers to deploy containerized applications with real-time communication capabilities using Websockets. It uses Google's highly scalable infrastructure, providing automatic scaling, high availability, and easy integration with other GCP services and products.

Suitable for:

  • Delivery tracking systems
  • Live auctions or bidding systems
  • Chat applications
  • Gaming apps
  • Collaborative tools

Not suitable for:

  • Heavy computational jobs
  • Legacy monoliths
  • Low-budget projects
  • Offline-first apps
  • Long-running processes

Pros:

  • Auto-scaling
  • Easy to deploy
  • High availability
  • Easy integration with Google products

Cons:

  • Limited customization
  • Cost with scale
  • Learning curve
  • Max of 250 concurrent requests

Compare Firebase and Google Cloud Run

Let’s compare Firebase and Google Cloud Run, looking at key dimensions such as their core features, pricing, integrations, QoS, performance, and security and compliance.

Disclaimer:This comparison was created based on documentation and resources freely available online about Firebase and Google Cloud Run. The content was last updated on 22 Jul 2024 for Firebase and on 29 Jul 2024 for Google Cloud Run. Be sure to double-check everything before you make any decisions. If you do find anything incorrect or out of date, then please contact us.

Core features
Pub/Sub messaging

Reduces communication code complexity, simplifying the process of building highly functional and architecturally complex realtime apps.

Firebase

Partial

Firebase does not natively support Pub/Sub messaging. However, this can be implemented with Google's Pub/Sub service.

Read more
Google Cloud Run

Yes

WebSockets services deployed on Cloud Run can integrate with Google Cloud Memorystore for Redis, which has Pub/Sub features.

Read more
Chat capabilities

Accelerates the time to implement rich chat experiences with features such as read receipts, typing indicators, and more.

Firebase

Yes

You can build chat capabilities on top of Firebase's Realtime Database.

Google Cloud Run
Collaboration capabilities

Enables you to quickly integrate realtime collaborative features like live cursors, member location, avatar stacks, and component locking.

Firebase

Yes

Google Cloud Run

Yes

Realtime collaboration features such as live cursor and profile stacks can be built using Cloud Run's Google Cloud Memorystore for Redis, and Google Firestore for storage.

State sync capabilities

Enables realtime data synchronization across devices and users, ensuring a cohesive and up-to-date user experience.

Firebase

Yes

The Firebase Realtime Database lets you store and sync data between your users in real time.

Read more
Google Cloud Run

Yes

Presence

Maintaining a view of which users are connected, and their associated metadata, enables their online status to be updated in realtime.

Firebase

Yes

Firebase Realtime Database natively supports presence.

Read more
Google Cloud Run

No

Occupancy

High-level metrics about the clients currently connected to a channel make it simple to show things such as connected user count, or display which channels are the most popular.

Firebase

Partial

Firebase does not have built-in support for occupancy tracking. However, occupancy tracking functionality can be built on top of the Firebase Realtime Database.

Google Cloud Run

No

Message interactions

Enables interaction with previously-sent messages, facilitating the implementation of features like message reactions and threads.

Firebase

Partial

Message interactions are not natively supported in Firebase. However, you can programmatically build interactions on top of Firebase's Realtime Database.

Google Cloud Run

No

Message history

Enables clients to catch up on missed messages when inactive, ensuring a user doesn’t miss any important messages.

Firebase

No

Google Cloud Run

Partial

To build a message history feature, you will have to integrate with a database like Cloud Firestore for the storage of messages.

Read more
Push notifications

Cross-platform push notifications make it possible to deliver important and timely messages to users even when they’re inactive.

Firebase

Yes

You can create, send, and monitor push notifications using Firebase Cloud Messaging.

Read more
Google Cloud Run

No

Cloud Run does not natively support push notifications.

Message delta compression

Minimizes bandwidth and can reduce latency, particularly in scenarios where continuous updates are sent.

Firebase

No

Google Cloud Run

No

Programmatic management

Enables the automation of provisioning, management, and testing of service resources, simplifying integration with existing development workflows such as CI.

Firebase

Yes

Firebase projects can be managed programmatically using the Firebase Management API.

Google Cloud Run

Yes

Pricing
Free plan

With a free plan, you can test the service’s functionality and compatibility with your project before committing to a paid plan.

Firebase

Yes

The Spark plan (free plan) realtime database is limited to 100 simultaneous connections and 1 GB of storage.

Read more
Google Cloud Run

Yes

Pricing model

The pricing model should align with your project's expected load, usage patterns, and budget in order to be cost-effective and efficient.

Firebase

Firebase has a free plan and a pay-as-you-go plan:

  • Free (Spark) plan: Limited to 100 simultaneous connections and 1 GB of storage.
  • PAYG (Blaze) plan: 1 GB of storage is priced at $5. Supports multiple databases per project.
Google Cloud Run

Could Run has a free tier and two paid tiers of usage-based pricing, based the number of CPU, memory, and requests used.

Read more
Integrations & interoperability
SDKs

Supporting multiple languages and platforms offers greater flexibility when building cross-platform realtime apps.

Firebase
  • iOS
  • Android
  • Web
  • C++
  • Unity
Google Cloud Run
  • Python
  • Java
  • Node.js
  • Go
  • .NET
  • Ruby
  • PHP
Supported realtime protocols

Support for multiple protocols provides the flexibility to choose a protocol that best suits your project’s requirements.

Firebase
  • WebSockets
  • Server-sent events (SSEs)
Google Cloud Run
  • WebSockets
Serverless functions

Enables integration with third-party cloud providers by facilitating the execution of custom code against messages to perform business logic like on-the-fly translation.

Firebase
  • Cloud Functions for Firebase
Google Cloud Run
  • Google Cloud Functions
Streaming & queueing

Provides a dependable method to reroute messages from the service to third-party streams and queues for further processing.

Firebase

Yes

Google Cloud Run

Yes

Observability services

Enables realtime monitoring and troubleshooting by offering insights into service behavior directly in your observability platform of choice.

Firebase

Yes

Using Firebase Performance Monitoring you can monitor your application performance based on location, device, or version.

Google Cloud Run

Yes

Google Cloud Monitoring provides tools for observing services deployed on Cloud Run. You can use the service to build charts and dashboards.

Read more
CI/CD tools

Makes it possible to provision and configure service infrastructure as part of a CI or CD pipeline, enabling repeatable and reliable deployments.

Firebase

Yes

Supports:

  • Jenkins
  • Buddy CI/CD
  • Google Cloud Build
  • GitHub Workflow
Google Cloud Run

Yes

Supports:

  • Google Cloud Build
Quality of Service
Scalability

Scalability is vital as it ensures the service can handle increased data load or users without compromising performance.

Firebase

Firebase Realtime Database is limited to 200,000 simultaneous connections, 1000 Cloud Functions per write (500 for v2 per region), 1 MB event size, and 10 MB/sec data transfer to Cloud Functions.

Google Cloud Run

In Cloud Run, each revision automatically scales to the necessary number of instances to handle incoming requests, events, or CPU utilization, and scales down to zero instances when there is no traffic.

Guaranteed message delivery

Ensures messages are never lost during transmission, even in the presence of network disruptions.

Firebase

No

Google Cloud Run

No

Cloud Run doesn't guarantee message deliverability as it can scale to zero instances when traffic drops, interrupting WebSocket connections.

Guaranteed message ordering

Maintains the sequence of messages as they were sent. This is particularly important in apps where the chronological order of messages is essential for meaningful communication.

Firebase

No

Google Cloud Run

No

Cloud Run doesn't guarantee message ordering for WebSockets, as multiple instances may handle connections independently.

Exactly-once message delivery

Guarantees that each message is processed exactly once, preventing data inconsistencies that can arise from duplicate processing or missing messages.

Firebase

No

Google Cloud Run

No

Cloud Run doesn't provide exactly-once message delivery semantics for WebSockets, as it lacks built-in deduplication and can't guarantee single processing of messages across scaling events or instance changes.

Performance & availability
Uptime Guarantee

An uptime guarantee instills confidence in the reliability of the service and protects your business from the negative impacts of downtime.

Firebase

99.95%.

Read more
Google Cloud Run

99.95%

Read more
Global edge network

By bringing servers (Points of Presence, or PoP) geographically closer to the devices of end users, and routing requests to the nearest PoP, global latency is reduced to a minimum.

Firebase

No

Google Cloud Run

No

Cloud Run is typically deployed in specific regions, and WebSocket connections are established directly to those regional endpoints.

Multi-region data replication (message durability)

By replicating data across multiple regions, the risk of data loss or downtime is greatly mitigated since if data is lost or a server fails in one region, the information can be retrieved from another.

Firebase

No

Multi-region data replication is currently not supported in Firebase Realtime Database, but it is supported in Firestore databases.

Google Cloud Run

Yes

Cloud Run services are automatically distributed across multiple zones within their deployed region, enhancing availability and fault tolerance without requiring manual configuration.

No single point of failure or congestion

Having no single point of failure means a system is resilient and can continue to operate even if one part fails. Avoiding a single point of congestion ensures messages flow efficiently across the system and avoids bottlenecks that could lead to performance issues under load.

Firebase

No

Each Realtime Database instance is tied to a single region chosen at the time of creation.

Google Cloud Run

Yes

Cloud Run eliminates single points of failure through multi-zone deployment, automatic load balancing, and auto-scaling.

Latency

Low latency is crucial for realtime apps as it ensures swift and efficient data transmissions, providing a smoother and more responsive user experience.

Firebase

Unknown.

Google Cloud Run

Unknown.

Security & compliance
API key authentication

Simplifies the authentication code on trusted servers compared to requesting, managing, and refreshing tokens.

Firebase

No

Google Cloud Run
Token-based authentication

Provides a means to securely authenticate user devices against your user management system.

Firebase

Yes

Supported with JSON Web Tokens (JWTs).

Read more
Google Cloud Run

No

Single Sign-On (SSO) authentication

SSO streamlines login processes, boosts security by minimizing password use, and meets compliance needs for secure data access management.

Firebase

Yes

SSO in a Firebase application can be implemented using SAML (Security Assertion Markup Language).

Read more
Google Cloud Run

Yes

SSO authentication is supported through Google Cloud Identity Platform.

Read more
Rules for permissions and operations

Provides control over which users can subscribe and publish to certain channels.

Firebase

Yes

Using Firebase Realtime Database Security Rules you can set who has access to your database.

Read more
Google Cloud Run

Yes

End-to-end encryption

Ensures that the data transmitted between the client and the API server remains confidential and secure while in transit.

Firebase

Yes

Data in transit is encrypted using HTTPS in all Firebase services.

Read more
Google Cloud Run

Yes

Encryption at rest

Ensures data stored by the service is secure and compliant, while also mitigating the risks of a data breach.

Firebase

Partial

Some Firebase services are encrypted at rest while others are not. Firebase Realtime Database and Firebase Cloud Messaging are encrypted at rest.

Read more
Google Cloud Run

Yes

Compliance

Compliance with regulations can impact your ability to meet legal obligations in your industry.

Firebase
  • SOC1
  • SOC2
  • SOC3
  • ISO 27001
Google Cloud Run
  • ISO/IEC 27001
  • ISO/IEC 27017
  • ISO/IEC 27018
  • SOC 1
  • SOC 2
  • SOC 3
  • PCI DSS
  • HIPAA
  • FedRAMP

Alternatives to Firebase and Google Cloud Run

Whilst both Firebase and Google Cloud Run are worth considering as options for realtime experiences, they aren’t without their limitations. We suggest evaluating them against the following alternatives to make sure you find the right solution for your needs.

Alternatives to Firebase

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Supabase Realtime is a globally distributed real-time server network built on PostgreSQL, enabling developers to build applications with real-time data sync.

Amazon SNS is an AWS service for designed to distribute notifications from applications to subscribers via SMS, email, etc.

Google Cloud Pub/Sub is a scalable messaging service that can be used to send and receive messages from applications or services.

Alternatives to Google Cloud Run

AWS AppSync enables developers to seamlessly handle and synchronize mobile app data in real-time across multiple devices and users.

Socket.IO is a library that provides realtime, bi-directional communication between clients and servers. It allows the management of connections, sending and receiving messages, and more.

tech provider image

SignalR is an open-source library that simplifies adding real-time web functionality to ASP.NET Core web apps.

Discover how Firebase and Google Cloud Run stack up against Ably

Ably is the definitive realtime experience platform of the internet. See how we compare to Firebase and Google Cloud Run on key dimensions such as core features, pricing, integrations, QoS, performance, and security and compliance.

Try Ably for free to discover the benefits for yourself

Ably has built reliable realtime infrastructure so you don’t have to. On our free plan you benefit from:

  • 6M monthly messages
  • 200 concurrent channels
  • 200 concurrent connections