SnapbackSupabase backup: what daily backups tell you—and what they don't
A backup gives you a previous database state. It does not always tell you which rows changed, which migration caused the problem, or whether the current data is safe to keep.
Start with the recovery point you need
Supabase documents daily database backups for paid plans and recommends that free-tier projects regularly export their data and keep off-site backups. The right baseline depends on how much data you can afford to lose and how quickly you need to recover.
Native backups and CLI exports are still useful. They are the recovery layer; change review is a separate problem.
Backup state is not the same as change history
When a migration or accidental DELETE causes trouble, the first question is often narrower than 'restore everything': what changed, when did it change, and which rows should I inspect? A dump file can preserve a state without making that review easy.
Snapback takes read-only daily snapshots and shows schema and row differences between them. Beta and free accounts keep up to 7 snapshots for 7 days, and Snapback does not write back to your database.
A layered backup workflow
Keep a recovery copy outside the primary database, use the provider's native recovery tools when you need a full restore, and use a change diff to narrow the investigation before deciding what to do.
This separation keeps the read-only review tool from pretending to be a full disaster-recovery system.