#1212th of 12 in Backends and databases
butterbase
Backend-as-a-service with per-app Postgres, functions, RAG and an MCP server
- Stars
- 3.7k
- License
- Apache-2.0
- Last commit
- Oct 2026
- Language
- TypeScript
Missed the latest GitHub check; these facts may be older.
Overview
Butterbase is a backend-as-a-service that gives each app its own Postgres database with row-level security and auto-generated REST. It adds auth, S3/R2 file storage, Deno serverless functions, realtime, a KV store, an AI gateway, RAG and graph-spec agents, all exposed as MCP tools at /mcp. The runtime data plane is self-hostable through Docker Compose; the managed cloud adds billing, multi-region orchestration and upstream AI router adapters.
Who it is for: Developers and agent builders wanting a self-hosted Postgres backend
Strengths
- Real Postgres per app with RLS, migrations and auto-generated REST, no proprietary datastore
- Every capability is exposed as MCP tools over HTTP at /mcp or stdio via npx @butterbase/mcp
- Apache-2.0 data plane with no feature-gated community edition, per the README
- Includes functions, realtime, KV, RAG, Durable Objects and agents in one stack
Weaknesses
- Self-host AI gateway has no upstream router adapters; you must implement RouterAdapter yourself
- Multi-region orchestration, billing and dashboards are private to the managed offering
- `butterbase clone` for templates requires an account at butterbase.ai
- Setup needs submodules, manual migrations and a dev-user seed; README calls the OSS distribution young
What it needs
- no GPU
- Compose
- Needs Docker, Node 22+, PostgreSQL, Redis, S3/R2 (LocalStack locally), Deno, Cloudflare Workers (build-runner, dispatch-worker)
- port 4000
Also in Backends and databases
See all 12| Rank | Project | Score |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | appwriteSelf-hostable backend with auth, databases, storage, functions, messaging and hosting | 94 out of 100 |
| 2 | supabasePostgres backend with auth, storage, realtime and edge functions | 73 out of 100 |
| 3 | spacetimedbRelational database that runs your app logic as modules and syncs clients live | 73 out of 100 |
| #4 | prestREST and read-only MCP API generated from a PostgreSQL or MySQL database | 72 out of 100 |
| #5 | parse-serverNode.js backend with REST and GraphQL APIs on MongoDB or PostgreSQL | 70 out of 100 |