I'm Duc. Since May 2025 I've been building Excalibase on nights and weekends, next to my day job.
It started as a GraphQL engine for Postgres, because I like SQL. It's now an open-source platform as a service: one place for the database, the API on top of it, auth, and the apps that use it.
What you get
When you create a project, you get:
- A database. Postgres, or MySQL from this week's release. Backups and point-in-time restore are built in.
- A GraphQL and REST API generated from your schema. Add a table and it's in the API.
- Permissions per row and per column, written per role. "Users can only read their own notes" is one rule, and it applies to GraphQL, REST and realtime alike.
- Auth for your app's own users.
- Realtime subscriptions and functions.
- App hosting: your containers run next to the database, so there's no network hop to a database in another region.
- An MCP server, so your AI coding tool can create tables, set permissions and deploy your app. It only gets your token's permissions, and secrets don't show up in the chat.
How the API works
A GraphQL query, nested relations and the permission rules all compile into one SQL statement. One request means one query to the database, whatever the nesting depth, and no N+1.
The permission filter is part of that same SQL, so the database never returns a row the user isn't allowed to see, and the app never has to filter afterwards.
Run it anywhere
- Hosted: free beta at excalibase.io
- One box: Docker or Podman on a single VPS, same features as the hosted version (self-hosting guide)
- Kubernetes: what the hosted version runs on
The engine is open source under Apache 2.0: github.com/excalibase/excalibase-graphql
What's next
Hosting for static frontends on Cloudflare's network is in testing now: React, Vue, Astro, anything that builds to files, with your own domain. After that I'm choosing between ClickHouse, Redis/Valkey and AI agent workflows. There's a poll on X if you want a say.
I post what ships and what breaks every day on X as @dukevu2506.
If you try it, tell me what's confusing or broken. I read every piece of feedback.
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