Native runtime for local development
Run a local Supabase project as processes on your machine, without Docker.
The Supabase CLI can run a local Supabase project as native processes instead of containers. Coding agent sandboxes and CI runners often have no Docker daemon. There, supabase stack start downloads verified service binaries and runs Postgres, Auth, Storage, and the other services directly on the host.
It is the same local project you get from supabase start, with the same services and most of the same config.toml settings. The CLI picks Docker when its daemon responds, then Podman, then native. To require one, pass --runtime docker, --runtime podman, or --runtime native.
Key benefits
- Works without Docker: Bring up a real local Supabase project in environments that can't run a container engine.
- Verified binaries: The CLI downloads service archives from Supabase's GitHub releases and checks them before extracting.
- Same project, same services: Postgres with the full extension set, Auth, PostgREST, Realtime, Storage, Edge Functions, Studio, and more.
The native runtime is valuable for:
- Coding agents running in sandboxes with no container engine
- CI jobs on runners without a Docker daemon
The native runtime supports Linux on amd64 and arm64 and macOS on Apple silicon. Windows and Intel Macs use Docker. For several local projects on one machine, Docker remains the recommended runtime. The supabase stack commands are experimental.