How to Cancel Firebase in 2026 (Blaze Plan + Stop Surprise Bills)

Firebase's Blaze plan is "pay as you go" with no spending cap by default. Developers regularly get surprise $50-500+ bills from forgotten projects or traffic spikes. Here's how to shut it all down.

Step 1: Check Your Current Usage & Bill

1. Go to console.firebase.google.com
2. Select your project
3. Click Usage and billing (left sidebar) or go to GCP Console → Billing
4. Review current month charges: Firestore reads/writes, Cloud Functions invocations, hosting bandwidth, storage
5. Check ALL projects — you might have forgotten test/staging projects still running

Step 2: Export Your Data

• Firestore: Use gcloud firestore export gs://your-bucket or the Firebase Admin SDK to export collections
• Realtime Database: Console → Database → kebab menu → Export JSON
• Auth users: Use firebase auth:export users.json (exports emails + metadata, NOT passwords)
• Storage files: Use gsutil -m cp -r gs://your-bucket ./local-backup
• Cloud Functions code: Already in your repo (you deployed from source)
• Hosting: Already in your repo

Step 3: Disable Services (Stop Charges Immediately)

Before deleting the project, disable active services to stop billing:

1. Cloud Functions: Delete all functions via firebase functions:delete --all
2. Hosting: firebase hosting:disable
3. Firestore rules: Set rules to deny all reads/writes to stop client usage
4. API keys: Restrict or delete API keys in GCP Console → APIs & Services → Credentials

Step 4: Downgrade or Delete

Option A: Downgrade to Spark (free):

1. Go to Firebase Console → your project → Usage and billing
2. Click Modify plan → select Spark (free)
3. This disables Cloud Functions and paid features but keeps your data

Option B: Delete the project entirely:

1. Go to Project Settings (gear icon)
2. Scroll to bottom → Delete Project
3. Confirm by typing the project ID
4. This is irreversible after 30 days (Google keeps data for 30 days before permanent deletion)

Step 5: Remove the Billing Account

Even after deleting projects, your GCP billing account stays active:

1. Go to console.cloud.google.com/billing
2. Select your billing account
3. Unlink all projects
4. Close the billing account to prevent future charges

Firebase Alternatives

• Supabase (free tier): Open-source Firebase alternative. Postgres database, auth, storage, edge functions. 500MB database free. The clear modern replacement.
• PocketBase (free, self-hosted): Single binary backend. SQLite-based. Zero infrastructure cost on any VPS.
• Appwrite (free tier): Self-hosted or cloud. Database, auth, storage, functions.
• Convex (free tier): Real-time backend with TypeScript. Good for apps that need Firebase-like real-time features.
• Neon (free tier): Serverless Postgres. If you just need a database without the BaaS wrapper.