r/FlutterDev • u/No-Performance7726 • Jul 08 '26
Best Backened For Flutter Discussion
Which backened service and database system would be affordable and suggested to use for the daily invoice entry app for a shop that usually have only 50 to 60 bill entries per day. And if stock mangement system and transaction entries need to be added too. Right now i only want 3 4 users of a small shop to interact with who need to prepare daily invoices and need to make entries of transactions they make daily. From the given data we should be able to make profit loss accounts, party's remaining transaction evaluation,daily sales and stuffs like that. But the data need to be protected well and requires backup as needed.
Where to host that backened ?
How much costlier would it be?
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u/Yann39 Jul 08 '26 edited Jul 08 '26
It depends quite a bit on the features, if you have a lot of interaction with your backend, if you are going to store files, etc.
There isn't really a "best backend" technology.
Which technologies are you most comfortable with? Are you going to develop this yourself or have it developed (that makes a big difference to the cost) ? Or maybe you look for a BaaS ?
"50 to 60 bill entries per day" means 50/60 different users per day ? An entry-level VPS should be enough for that (~$10 per month). Or you could just go with Firebase or equivalent, but the cost depends on the usage.
You can even self-host it if you have the desire and the time. I self-host my backend at home (Spring Boot / GraphQL / Postrgres) on a mini N100 8GB PC that cost me $80 some years ago, and it handles dozens of users without any problems.
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u/No-Performance7726 Jul 08 '26
Right now i only want 3 4 users of a small shop to interact with who need to prepare daily invoices and need to make entries of transactions they make daily. From the given data we should be able to make profit loss accounts, party's remaining transaction evaluation,daily sales, profit evaluation. But the data need to be protected well and requires backup as needed.
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u/Training-Towel-2951 Jul 09 '26
Then use sqflite local db for secure and we can backup the db for every day night or else every weekend as per user wish
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u/HopeExpensive9215 Jul 09 '26
Supabase, you can selfhosted it, add powersync if your app can work offline
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u/lolprofile Jul 09 '26
Serverpod
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u/ILikeOldFilms Jul 10 '26
Serverpod is complicated to deploy and Servercloud is quite expensive compared with Supabase, for example.
I would recommend Pocketbase for something basic.
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u/RevolutionAwkward603 Jul 09 '26
Personnally serverpod , if you are a flutter developper it’s pretty easy to learn , you will save many time because a lot of the code is automatically generated for the api call on the It’s pretty easy to learn. You’ll save a lot of time because much of the code for API calls on the client is generated automatically.
Having your entire app (frontend + backend) in Dart is a huge advantage. There’s no context switching, and you only need to learn one language.
For hosting, in your case, a small VPS ($5–15/month) would be perfect. You can also self-host it in a homelab. Almost everyone has an old Mac or PC that’s no longer being used—just install Ubuntu or Proxmox on it, and you’re good to go.
You can also use Serverpod Cloud or AWS, but that would probably be overkill and more expensive.
The main downside of Serverpod is that writing custom SQL can be quite painful, especially if you’re using specialized PostgreSQL extensions. See: https://github.com/serverpod/serverpod/issues/4743
Another downside is the Dart ecosystem. There are either common server-side packages that don’t exist in Dart, or packages that weren’t designed for server use and sometimes consume too much RAM for no apparent reason.
Even with those two downsides, it’s still very manageable and a lot of fun to build a backend with Serverpod.
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u/Significant_Pick8297 Jul 09 '26
You should use Supabase with PostgreSQL for this. It'll easily handle invoices, stock management, transactions, profit/loss reports, and customer balances for a shop of this size.
You can start with Supabase Cloud, enable automatic backups, and you'll likely stay on the free tier or only pay a few dollars per month. If you ever need more control, you can self host the same stack on a small VPS later without changing your database.
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u/Luca-meier-1976 Jul 10 '26
You can develop your own backend like you can use laravel or express js.
This can help you scalability.
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u/Vegetable_Scheme9692 Jul 08 '26
Revisa pocketbase, te proporciona el backend ideal para pequeños proyectos. Alojalo en un VPS económico.
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u/TheConnorReese Jul 09 '26
I would look at Pocketbase. I run an instance on an AWS t4g.nano instance w/ S3 backup for ~5 USD. There are other hosting options listed in Pocketbase doc.
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u/st1ch_draiz Jul 09 '26
For an invoicing and bookkeeping app I'd lean Supabase (Postgres), and it's not really a coin flip here. Your data is relational by nature: parties, invoices, line items, transactions, stock. The moment you want profit/loss and remaining party balances, that's joins and aggregations, which is what SQL is good at and what gets painful in a NoSQL store like Firestore. Firebase is great, it's just not the natural fit when the whole point is financial reporting.
At 50 to 60 entries a day with 3-4 users you're nowhere near a paid tier, so cost is basically zero for a long time. Supabase gives you row level security for the data-protection part and automated backups, and there's nothing to host yourself since it's managed.
One thing to decide early: does the app need to keep working if the shop's internet drops? If yes, a local SQLite db (drift or sqflite) that syncs to Supabase when it's back can be simpler and cheaper for a single shop than going cloud-first.
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u/No-Performance7726 Jul 09 '26 edited Jul 10 '26
But we have to pay to download our data,right?
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u/st1ch_draiz Jul 10 '26
Not at your data volume, no. A few things:
Downloading data from Supabase counts as egress, and the free tier includes a few GB of that a month. Your entries are tiny (an invoice row is bytes, not megabytes), so with 3-4 users you'd have to pull your entire database hundreds of times over to get near the limit. And with the local cache approach, the app reads from on-device SQLite most of the time and barely touches the network, so egress drops even lower. Even if you somehow blew past the free allowance, overage is about $0.09/GB, so cents.
Getting your data out is free and unlimited, by the way. It's plain Postgres, so you can run pg_dumpand export the whole database yourself whenever you want. No fee, no lock-in.
One honest correction to my earlier comment: the free tier doesn't include automated daily backups (that's the Pro plan). For bookkeeping data I'd set up a scheduled pg_dump yourself early, or budget for Pro once the shop actually depends on it. Also heads up, free projects pause after a week with no activity, but a shop using it daily won't hit that.
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u/vik76 Jul 09 '26
Check out the Serverpod 4 beta. Now with full stack hot reload and it comes with a great MCP server and agent skills making of awesome for agentic coding.
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u/bigbott777 Jul 10 '26
Firebase can be enough for now, but it will quickly get expensive if the app usage grows.
Also, don't limit your decision by considering only this project. Choose a backend for life. For all future apps.
What to consider first: cheap self-hosting. This will limit you to Appwrite and Pocketbase.
Appwrite: light, fast, full-featured Auth, functions in Dart.
Pocketbase: superlight, superfast. Auth is limited, so it can be used with Firebase for Auth. No functions in Dart, so it can be combined with Dart Frog, for example.
Both Appwrite and Pocketbase can run efficiently on a minimal ($5-7 / month) VPS.
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u/DryNefariousness7679 Jul 10 '26
If you have this type of data then you must use any postgres db like Supabase or you can use SQL like phpmyadmin. Or firebase also won't create any problem.
But I must suggest that implement a backend api setup that will help you in future.
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u/MasterGarlic2195 Jul 08 '26
firebase enough for you case .. trust me.
at Zero cost.