Launching today
Instant turns your favorite AI into a full-stack app builder. You get auth, permissions, storage, presence, and streams — everything you need to ship apps your users will love. Free to use, 100% open source. and works well for both vibe coding and production apps! You can get started by simply running `npx create-instant-app` in the terminal or just add “Read getadb.com first” to any prompt
InstantDB
Hey PH! After 4 years of building, we want to introduce you to Instant!
We think Instant is the best backend for AI-coded apps. It gives you three things in one package: unlimited apps, a sync engine in every app, and batteries-included services.
Here's what that means:
Unlimited apps. Most platforms cap your free projects or freeze them when they go idle. Instant never does. An app on Instant is just a few rows in multi-tenant Postgres, so there are no VMs to spin up and nothing to pause.
A sync engine. All your apps will be real-time and work offline out of the box. This is the same kind of technology that powers the best apps today like Figma, Notion, and Linear.
Batteries included. Auth, file storage, and streams all live in the same database. Everything you need to build a modern app is built in, so you can focus on shipping.
And every line of Instant is open source! If you want to dive deeper on how we make this all work, you can check out our architecture essay at https://www.instantdb.com/essays/architecture
Thousands of developers have trusted us to run their core infrastructure. If you're building with agents, we think you will love using us.
You can use Instant without even having to sign up. Just add “Read getadb.com first” to any prompt and the AI will automatically get a database to use.
And if you prefer the terminal you can get a full project set up by just running `npx create-instant-app`
findable.
@nezaj love the 'getadb.com' affordance to get an agent started
kudos @ launching! ⚡️⚡️⚡️
InstantDB
@__tosh Thank you! We wanted to make it as easy as possible for folks to give Instant a shot!
@nezaj For someone juggling workshop feedback sheets + real-time PH comment analysis pulling upvotes, Hunter data, how smooth is the sync engine when formulas reference across apps? Like auto-updating a master "lead gen dashboard" from separate niche trackers without manual refreshes?
InstantDB
@dayal_punjabi As long as your querying data from the same app_id it should just refresh everywhere!
@nezaj How does Instant handle schema evolution or migrations for apps where agents iteratively tweak data models over time?
InstantDB
@swati_paliwal Agents can use the cli to modify schema on the fly. Connected clients will receive updates with changes in attributes!
PicWish
@nezaj Congrats team! super impressive 4 year build. btw how straightforward is self-hosting if we want to deploy this entirely on our own AWS infra?
InstantDB
@mohsinproduct self-hosting on AWS should be the easiest since that's what we use ourselves. We're also working on a PR to make it easier to self-host on any cloud!
Product Hunt
InstantDB
@curiouskitty Great question!
With Supabase you get postgres, but no optimistic updates or offline mode.
Firebase gives full sync engine, but no relations.
Convex has sync, but no offline mode.
Instant gives you unlimited apps, relations, and sync.
One tradeoff with Instant is you can't bring your own postgres (yet). We wanted to get the DX and AX right with Instant first.
Netlify
Codex just eats instantdb up, it's so cool to see it build a full stack app single shot with permissions, real-time sync, presence, etc.
Normally codex would spend ~1B tokens over hours and hours to cobble together a sort of real-time app with so-so permissions, etc. using postgres or something like that (and I'd still be suspicious), but it turns out if you make good abstractions and push the complexity down into the system, the codex can cut its token usage by 10-100x, and I can read enough of the app to trust it's written well. It's just not possible to move at that speed without something like instant (at least I haven't found anything like that yet)!
InstantDB
@sgrove Heck yeah Sean! Yes abstractions for agents are great for saving tokens and making agents go further faster!
Your Next Store
One of the strongest database products from the «newer wave»!
Super easy to get started: setup is fast and the whole thing feels lightweight without cutting corners. It integrates really nicely with the React & Next.js ecosystem (matters a lot in my day-to-day work) Under the hood it's built on a solid foundation with clear innovation happening, not just a wrapper around old ideas.
Small detail but I really appreciate the use of Clojure, not something you see often and it shows a certain level of taste in engineering. :)
On the downside, search could be better, the main thing I'm looking forward to improving.
I'm somewhat biased since I know the team, but even that aside, this is already one of my favorite db/dev tools.
InstantDB
@zaiste Appreciate the thoughtfulness. And yes Clojure is awesome :) Hear you on making search better, something we want to unlock!
I love this backend stack. Simple to use, LLM friendly, free for all small projects - no weekly disabling.
This just works
The instantdb client just works also, multi-player backend updates show instantly in your app without refresh.
I have built several apps with this and can reccomend it to anyone needing a backend as a service for their mobile or web app.
InstantDB
@dan_co Love hearing it!
Mentor
Congrats on the launch!
Been building on Instant with a small team for over 2 years and it's been a game changer. Real time sync between our WhatsApp bot and web dashboard just works with no extra effort. The DX is excellent (shoutout to schemas, perms and recovery). Highly recommend 🚀
Congrats on the launch. 4 years is a long time to keep pushing on something this hard.
InstantDB
@rc397 Thank you, and yea four years and a lot has been added into Instant!