Encore review: open-source TypeScript/Go backend framework with automated cloud infrastructure. Compare pricing, features, and alternatives like Supabase.
Encore is an open-source backend framework for TypeScript and Go, paired with a cloud platform (Encore Cloud) that automatically provisions the infrastructure a backend needs directly inside a developer's own AWS or GCP account.
Founded in 2020 in Stockholm, Sweden by ex-Spotify engineers André Eriksson and Marcus Kohlberg, Encore raised a $3 million seed round led by Crane Venture Partners and has positioned itself as an alternative to both schema-first backend-as-a-service platforms and manual infrastructure-as-code tooling.
Developers declare infrastructure such as databases, Pub/Sub topics, cron jobs, and storage buckets as typed objects directly in application code, and Encore's tooling provisions matching resources automatically, both locally for development and in production inside the customer's own cloud account.
Local development tooling, including infrastructure emulation, distributed tracing, and an API explorer, has been fully open source since May 2024 and requires no Encore account, while the managed Encore Cloud platform adds preview environments, production observability, and automated DevOps workflows.
Encore's framework and local development tools are free and open source. Encore Cloud offers a free tier with two development environments and 1 million tracing events per month, suitable for hobby projects.
The Pro tier starts at $49 per member per month plus $99 per month per deployed cloud environment and roughly $2.50 per month per resource, adding preview environments, custom domains, and integrations. An Enterprise tier with custom SLAs and compliance support is available at custom pricing.
The Encore framework and local development tooling are free and fully open source. The managed Encore Cloud platform has a free tier for hobby projects, with a paid Pro tier starting at $49 per member per month plus environment and resource fees.
Encore currently supports TypeScript and Go for building backend services.
Encore Cloud provisions and deploys infrastructure directly inside your own AWS or GCP account, rather than hosting it on Encore's own infrastructure.
Encore was founded in 2020 in Stockholm, Sweden by André Eriksson and Marcus Kohlberg, both former Spotify engineers, and has raised a $3 million seed round led by Crane Venture Partners.
Supabase is a backend-as-a-service platform where you define a database schema and it auto-generates APIs; Encore has you write full backend services in code and automatically provisions matching infrastructure inside your own cloud account.
Yes. The `encore build docker` command generates a standard Docker container from an Encore application, which can be deployed and run outside of Encore Cloud.