Picture this: you're building your next project, and you know you need authentication, a database, and maybe storage. You could spend days configuring Postgres, setting up auth from scratch, and managing deployment—or you could have it all running in under 5 minutes.
In the vibe coding era, tools like Supabase and Firebase are winning because they solve this exact problem. They let you ship fast without wrestling with infrastructure.
But here's where it gets interesting: when you combine Supabase with your own NestJS backend, you're not sacrificing control for speed—you get both. Full control over your database logic, custom business rules, your own auth flow, and the ability to scale exactly how you want. No vendor lock-in, no "this feature isn't supported" roadblocks.
In this post, I'll show you how to set up Supabase as the foundation for a NestJS API that gives you the best of both worlds.
Understanding Postgres + Auth
Here's what makes Supabase special: you're not just getting a database and auth as separate tools. You're getting a database that knows who your users are.
Postgres Database
Supabase gives you a production-grade PostgreSQL database with three ways to access it:
Direct connection: Connect with any Postgres client using the connection string (this is what we'll use with Drizzle)
REST API: PostgREST automatically generates a RESTful API for your tables—no backend needed
Realtime subscriptions: Listen to database changes in real-time (think collaborative docs, live dashboards)
Why does this matter? Flexibility. Start with direct connection for your NestJS API, but if you need to prototype a quick feature, you can hit the REST API directly from your frontend. Need live updates? Turn on realtime subscriptions. Same database, multiple access patterns.
Authentication System
Supabase Auth handles everything you'd expect:
Email/password and magic links
OAuth providers (Google, GitHub, etc.)
JWT token generation and validation
User management and sessions
Imagine you have a transactions table. Normally, you'd write backend logic to ensure users can only see their own transactions. With RLS, you write that rule once at the database level:
But here's where it gets powerful: Row Level Security (RLS).
CREATE POLICY "Users can only see their own transactions"
ON transactions FOR SELECT
USING (auth.uid() = user_id);
Now your database automatically enforces this. Whether you access it via your NestJS API, the REST API, or directly—users can only see their own data. No leaked queries, no forgotten permission checks in your code.
And because Supabase stores auth data in the auth schema of the same database, you can join auth tables in your queries, extend user profiles, or add custom claims—all in Postgres.
Creating Your Supabase Project
Alright, let's get your hands dirty. Head over to supabase.com and spin up a new project. The process takes about 5 minutes total, and here's what you need to do:
1. Sign in and start a new project
Sign in to your Supabase account (or create one if you haven't)
Click "New Project"
Choose your organization or create a new one
2. Configure your project
- Name your project (e.g., "Finance-API")
Set a database password: Click the "Generate a password" button. This is your Postgres database password, so save it somewhere safe (password manager,
.envfile, wherever you keep secrets). You'll need it later.Select your region: Choose the one closest to your users. This affects latency—a project in
us-east-1will be noticeably slower for users in Europe or Asia. If you're not sure, pick the region closest to you for now.
3. Wait for provisioning
Click "Create new project" and wait 2-3 minutes. Supabase is spinning up your Postgres instance, setting up auth, and configuring everything behind the scenes.
Once it's ready, you'll see your project dashboard with all your connection details, API keys, and database info. Before we connect anything, though, we need to understand how Supabase's API keys work—because using the wrong one can create security issues.
A Quick Note on API Keys
Before we move forward, you might notice that Supabase provides two API keys in your dashboard: a publishable key and a secret key. Here's the thing: we won't be using either of them for this project.
We're connecting to Supabase using the direct Postgres connection string with Drizzle. This gives us full control over our database queries and lets us use Drizzle's type-safe ORM instead of Supabase's client libraries.
So why mention the API keys at all? Because they're still useful to understand:
Publishable Key (anon key)
Safe to expose in client-side code (React, Vue, mobile apps)
Respects Row Level Security policies
Perfect if you want your frontend to talk directly to Supabase
Secret Key (service_role key)
Bypasses ALL security policies—treats you as admin
Backend-only, never expose this
Useful for migrations, admin scripts, or background jobs
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For this series: We're using the connection string for our NestJS backend. But if you later want to add a React frontend that reads data directly from Supabase, you'd use the publishable key there. Different tools for different jobs.
Alright, with that cleared up, let's talk about what we actually covered in this post.
Wrapping Up
At this point, you've got a production-ready Supabase project with Postgres and Auth configured. Here's what you now understand:
Why Supabase + NestJS is powerful: You get the speed of a BaaS with the control of your own backend
How Postgres and Auth integrate: Row Level Security lets your database enforce permissions automatically, eliminating entire classes of security bugs
Your connection options: Direct connection (what we'll use), REST API, or Realtime—each serving different use cases
The foundation is ready: Your Supabase project is live and waiting for a connection
The next step? We need to connect our NestJS app to this Supabase instance using Drizzle. That means setting up a config module to handle our database credentials securely.
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I'll cover that in the next post. We'll wire up the connection string, configure Drizzle, and get ready to start building our Finance API.
See you there! 🚀
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