Pocketbase — Open Source real-time back-end in 1 file

Brian Scott
2 min readJul 16, 2022

I’m here today to talk about Pocketbase!, an Opensource back-end that is distributed in a single Go binary. More in the docs page

You heard me right, a single file. The magic behind this project is Go, compiled and built to use SQLite as it’s database with a REST-ish API that packs a whole set of features. At the time of writing, a Javascript SDK exists to easily add on top with Svelte, React or what ever other front-end framework you like to use.

  • Real time database (Powered by SQLite)
  • File Storage — Integrates with S3, more Object Storage support is coming.
  • Authentication
  • Full Featured Admin UI — To manage users, collections & more
  • Extendable via Go Programming Language to extend functionality

This is great for a Micro-SaaS, Mobile back-end or even your next hobby project. Coupled with something such as Litestream by Ben Johnson for SQLite replication for real-time backups and FlyIO for Hosting can really be your goto stack.

Several Docker images are being built, even mine and hopefully soon an Official Docker Image.

In my next post, I’ll walk through how to setup Pocketbase with a Simple front-end using Fly hosting.

Thanks for Reading!

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Brian Scott

A DevOps Badass/Dad. Who likes to work with Containers/Serverless/Golang, Manager of Systems Engineering @ Disney, Automation and improving Web Operations.