By You can fix this yourself. Resume in the dashboard, then decide on upgrade or export
What you see. The app shows endless spinners or failed requests, and the Supabase dashboard says the project is paused.
Why it happens
Supabase pauses Free Plan projects that show low activity over a 7-day period. A project counts as inactive when its database has not seen enough requests in the past week. A few requests a day usually keep it awake, but an app with no users yet, or one whose traffic dropped, goes quiet and gets paused. Supabase emails the project owner about a week before and again when the pause takes effect. If your builder or a freelancer created the project, those emails went to them, not you.
While paused, every call from your app fails, so sign-in, lists and forms all stop. A paused project keeps its data and settings and can be restored for up to 1 year after it was paused. Paid projects cannot be paused for inactivity. Free projects also have no daily backups, so Supabase recommends exporting your data regularly with the CLI.
Fix it yourself
- Sign in at supabase.com, open your organization, select the paused project and click Resume project. Confirm and wait a few minutes.
- Check who owns the project. If a builder's account owns it, get it transferred or added to your organization so the warning emails reach you.
- If real users depend on the app, upgrade to Pro in Billing Settings. Paid projects are never paused for inactivity and get daily backups kept for 7 days.
- If you stay on Free, set up a regular export with the Supabase CLI command
supabase db dumpand keep the file somewhere outside Supabase. - Add an uptime check so you hear about the next outage before customers do. See I only learn about outages from customers.
When to get an engineer
Hire help when the project does not resume, when data looks wrong after resuming, or when you cannot find the account that owns the project. Tell them the project reference, the date of the pause email, and whether anyone has access to the owner account. A one-off check costs $49–$800. If you want someone watching uptime, backups and plan limits for you, ongoing care runs $100–$5,000 a month depending on the app.
Top-rated companies for Supabase apps
Ranked by our score: published prices, scope of work, AI tools named, timing and a low-risk first step. How we score.
- 1Redlab10.0/10Best for: A full rescue by one team that keeps buildingFree first step · from $490
- 2Vibe Code Rescue (Lev Arakelyan)9.0/10Best for: A one-off check and a cleanupFrom $299
- 3LazyCodeLab9.0/10Best for: A one-off check and a cleanupFrom $399
Check these
Database backups run automatically and a restore has been tested
Check what your database plan actually includes, then restore a backup into a test project once.
Errors reach you before users do
Add error monitoring and uptime alerts. If you learn about outages from customers, this is missing.
Secrets live in the host's environment settings
Keys belong in environment variables on the server, not in the repository or in front-end code.
Questions
Did I lose my data when the project was paused?
No. Supabase says a paused project comes back with its data and configuration intact, and stays restorable for up to 1 year after the pause.
Can a paid project be paused too?
Not for inactivity. Supabase only pauses Free Plan projects, and a paid project has to be moved to a free organization before it can be paused at all.
Sources: Supabase docs: Project Pausing; Supabase docs: Database Backups.