Supabase Edge Functions Has a Free API — Deploy Deno Functions Globally

#supabase #deno #typescript #serverless

What if your Supabase project included serverless functions — running on Deno at the edge, with direct access to your database?

Supabase Edge Functions lets you deploy TypeScript functions that run close to your users worldwide.

Why Supabase Edge Functions

Deno runtime — modern TypeScript, web standard APIs
Direct DB access — query your Supabase database without REST
Edge deployment — low latency globally
Built into Supabase — no separate hosting to manage
Free tier — 2M invocations/month

Quick Start

supabase functions new hello-world

// supabase/functions/hello-world/index.ts
import { createClient } from "https://esm.sh/@supabase/supabase-js";

Deno.serve(async (req) => {
  const supabase = createClient(
    Deno.env.get("SUPABASE_URL")!,
    Deno.env.get("SUPABASE_SERVICE_ROLE_KEY")!
  );

  const { data, error } = await supabase
    .from("users")
    .select("*")
    .limit(10);

  return new Response(JSON.stringify(data), {
    headers: { "Content-Type": "application/json" },
  });
});

Deploy:

supabase functions deploy hello-world

Use Cases

Webhooks — process Stripe, GitHub, or custom webhooks
Custom auth — complex authorization logic beyond RLS
AI/LLM — call OpenAI/Anthropic with server-side API keys
Email/SMS — send notifications via SendGrid, Twilio
Data transformation — ETL pipelines triggered by database changes

Real Use Case

A SaaS needed to process Stripe webhooks. Instead of setting up a separate Express server, they deployed one Edge Function. It verified the webhook signature, updated the database, and sent a confirmation email — all in 40 lines of TypeScript, deployed in under a minute.