PocketBase vs Cloudflare Developer Platform
Open-source backend in a single Go binary
vs. Workers, Pages, D1, R2, KV — edge-native serverless
Pricing tiers
PocketBase
Self-Hosted
MIT-licensed single binary. Run on any VPS / Docker / bare metal. No usage caps — only limited by your server.
$0 base (usage-based)
Cloudflare Developer Platform
Free
Workers: 100k req/day, 10ms CPU/req. D1: 5M reads/day. KV: 100k reads/day. R2: 10 GB/mo. Durable Objects: 100k req/day.
Free
Workers Paid
$5/month minimum. 10M Workers req/mo + overages. Generous D1, KV, R2 allowances. All services unlocked.
$5/mo
Enterprise
Custom. Higher SLAs, dedicated support, account managers.
Custom
Free-tier quotas head-to-head
Comparing self-hosted on PocketBase vs free on Cloudflare Developer Platform.
| Metric | PocketBase | Cloudflare Developer Platform |
|---|---|---|
| d1 reads day | — | 5000000 rows/day |
| d1 storage gb | — | 5 GB |
| d1 writes day | — | 100000 rows/day |
| durable objects gb sec | — | 13000 GB-sec/day |
| durable objects requests | — | 100000 req/day |
| kv reads day | — | 100000 reads/day |
| kv storage gb | — | 1 GB |
| kv writes day | — | 1000 writes/day |
| r2 class a ops | — | 1000000 ops/month |
| r2 class b ops | — | 10000000 ops/month |
| r2 egress | — | free (unlimited) egress |
| r2 storage gb | — | 10 GB/month |
| workers cpu ms | — | 10 ms/invocation |
| workers logs events | — | 200000 events/day |
| workers requests day | — | 100000 req/day |
Features
PocketBase · 12 features
- Access Rules — Record-level access rules (filter expressions) referencing @request and @collect…
- Admin Dashboard — Built-in web UI for schema + data management.
- Auth — Email+password, OAuth2 (Google, GitHub, Facebook, Apple, Discord, Microsoft, etc…
- Backups — Built-in backup/restore with S3 upload option.
- Built-in Mailer — SMTP integration for verification, password reset, magic link emails.
- Collections — Schema-defined record types with fields, validations, and record/admin/auth acce…
- Embedded JS Engine — JavaScript VM (goja) lets you write hooks in JS without recompiling.
- Extend as Go Library — Embed PocketBase in a larger Go app, add custom routes and events.
- File Storage — Local filesystem or S3-compatible storage with access rules.
- Hooks — Server-side Go or JavaScript hooks that run on CRUD events (OnRecordBeforeCreate…
- Migrations — JS/Go migration scripts applied on startup.
- Realtime Subscriptions — SSE-based subscriptions to collection changes.
Cloudflare Developer Platform · 18 features
- AI Gateway — Proxy for OpenAI/Anthropic/Gemini with caching, analytics, retries, rate limitin…
- D1 — Managed serverless SQLite via sqlite-wasm. Read replicas via replicas keyword.
- Durable Objects — Strongly-consistent objects with storage, pinned to a region. Good for sync/stat…
- Email Routing — Catchall email routing + Email Workers for programmatic handling.
- Hyperdrive — Connection pooler + cache for Postgres. Makes your DB edge-fast.
- Images — Store, resize, transform images. Polish on-the-fly.
- KV — Eventually-consistent key-value at every POP. Good for config, caching.
- Pages — Static + SSR framework hosting (Next.js via OpenNext, Remix, Nuxt, SvelteKit).
- Pages Functions — Workers integrated into Pages for backend logic.
- Queues — Persistent message queues with batched consumers. Exactly-once per consumer grou…
- R2 — S3-compatible object storage with **zero egress fees**.
- Stream — Video upload, encoding, adaptive streaming.
- Vectorize — Vector DB at the edge. For RAG + semantic search.
- Workers — V8-isolate serverless at 300+ POPs. Sub-ms cold starts. JS/TS/Rust/Python (beta)…
- Workers AI — Run LLMs (Llama, Mistral) + image, speech, embedding models at edge via @cf/... …
- Workers Logs — Structured logs with 3-day retention on paid.
- Workflows — Durable step-functions for long-running tasks.
- Zaraz — Third-party script management at edge (analytics, marketing tags).
Developer interfaces
| Kind | PocketBase | Cloudflare Developer Platform |
|---|---|---|
| CLI | — | Wrangler CLI |
| SDK | Go API (extend as library), pocketbase (Dart), pocketbase (JS SDK) | — |
| REST | REST API | Cloudflare REST API, D1 HTTP (via Worker), R2 S3-compatible API |
| MCP | — | Cloudflare MCP |
| OTHER | Admin Dashboard, Realtime SSE | Workers Runtime (V8) |
Staxly is an independent catalog of developer platforms. Outbound links to PocketBase and Cloudflare Developer Platform are plain references to their official websites. Pricing is verified against vendor pages at publication time — reconfirm before buying.
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