60.7k stars · MIT · v0.40.4 (2026-09-12), read from /releases/latest · Track this in Scout
One downloaded program that gives you a database, user accounts, file storage and an admin screen.
▶Repo detailsthe review · specs · pros & cons · install
What it is
A backend written in Go and shipped as a single executable. It carries an embedded SQLite database, a REST-style API generated from your collections, realtime subscriptions over a socket, user authentication with OAuth2 providers, file storage, and an admin dashboard in the browser. You can also import it as a Go library and build your own program around it.
What it is good for. Any solo builder who wants to find out whether an idea works before committing to a real stack. The problem it removes is the first day. You are writing screens within ten minutes instead of configuring a database, and the thing you end up with is good enough to put in front of real users. It is also the right answer for small internal tools that nobody wants to maintain.
- One file. There is nothing to install, nothing to configure, and backing it up is copying a folder.
- The admin screen is genuinely good, so you can fix a bad row by hand instead of writing a script.
- MIT licence, which means you can use it in a paid product with no conditions attached.
- It uses SQLite, which keeps everything in one file on one machine. That is fine for a lot of apps and wrong for anything that needs several servers.
- The version number is 0.40.4, so it is still before 1.0 and things do change between versions. Pin the version you use.
- Extending it beyond the built-in features means writing Go, or running a second program beside it.
- supabase/supabase
The same idea at a much larger size, built on a real PostgreSQL database rather than SQLite, so it scales further but asks a lot more of you to run yourself.
Track this in Scout - appwrite/appwrite
Also gives you auth, a database, storage and functions behind one API, but it arrives as a set of containers rather than one file.
Track this in Scout - nhost/nhost
The same job again, built on PostgreSQL and Hasura, and it hands your data to you as GraphQL instead of REST.
Track this in Scout
# Download the Linux build from the releases page: # https://github.com/pocketbase/pocketbase/releases/latest # then unzip it and run it: unzip pocketbase_*_linux_amd64.zip ./pocketbase serve # It prints two addresses. Open the admin one in a browser and # create the first account. That is the whole setup. # To build it from source or use it as a Go library you need Go 1.25+: go install github.com/pocketbase/pocketbase@latest
