The self-hosted Firebase Hosting alternative you own
AppCrane runs the whole app, front end, backend and database, on a server you own, GitHub-native and agent-deployed, with a per-user audit trail stored on that server.
Firebase Hosting serves web content from Google's CDN, priced by storage and data transferred, with no-cost amounts before the Blaze plan bills. For server-rendered Angular and Next.js apps, Firebase points to its separate App Hosting product.
| AppCrane | Firebase Hosting | |
|---|---|---|
| Where it runs | A server you own — any Ubuntu box | Google's CDN, in a Firebase project |
| Where code & data live | On that server; AppCrane sends one anonymous daily install check-in (counts and version, no app data), off with APPCRANE_CHECKIN=off | In your Firebase project, on Google's infrastructure |
| Pricing model | Free and open source on a server you already pay for — no per-seat, per-request or bandwidth metering | Hosting storage (GB) and data transfer (GB per month); usage past the no-cost amounts is billed on the Blaze plan |
| Deploys | GitHub-native push-to-deploy, zero-downtime releases (start new, health check, swap, drain old), rollback to a kept release that restarts its image instead of rebuilding | Managed build and deploy pipeline |
| Agent-native (MCP) | 74 tools on an MCP server on your own box — your AI agent deploys, sets env, reads logs, rolls back and promotes, and each call is audited against its user | Firebase's MCP server, run locally: deploys what firebase.json configures; App Hosting and Functions log tools |
| Single sign-on | SAML 2.0, OIDC and SCIM in the AGPL-3.0 build, nothing to activate | See the provider’s identity documentation |
| Isolation & TLS | Per-app Docker containers, auto-HTTPS via Caddy | Google's CDN for static content; App Hosting for server-rendered apps |
| Openness | Open source (AGPL-3.0), standard Docker + Caddy — you run the control plane | Vendor-operated managed service |
| Audit | Per-user audit: who deployed what, which environment, when — stored on your server | See the provider’s logging documentation |
Firebase Hosting is a good fit when you want someone else to own the servers. Choose AppCrane when the apps are agent-built, the agent should do the deploying, and your code, data and audit trail should stay on infrastructure you own. It’s open source — read every line.