Somewhat off topic question though: if you guys are such skilled developers to be building something as involved as this, why not just use something other than Firebase? I used Firebase mainly as a crutch when I was first getting into web dev, but feel that I’ve sorta outgrown it. Do you feel Firebase still serves developers like you well or are you developing this moreso for people like my old self?
This is really neat! I've been working on an open-source version of the Firebase Realtime Database as well that might be of interest[1]. Also written in Rust! Might be a good basis for building out the Realtime Database part of Firenook if you have any interest in supporting that as well.
Awesome, not surprised to hear that Google still neglects to improve this experience, but you called out exactly why:
> [...] the only way Firebase developers can build apps without directly costing them is using the official Firebase Emulator Suite
We had started on the management UI portion of this at my old job out of similar frustrations. Felt awful seeing what should be a small/medium sized development-only application spew forth Java flotsam.
If you can get application integrations running on an emulator I would seriously consider switching my team over. I know that's technically outside of Firebase, but we use a Frankenstein's monster of GCP and Firebase for our services.
Show HN: Firenook – Firebase emulators in Rust: 40× faster writes, 10× less RAM
(firenook.dev)167 points by sanjevirau 5 November 2026 | 30 comments
Comments
Somewhat off topic question though: if you guys are such skilled developers to be building something as involved as this, why not just use something other than Firebase? I used Firebase mainly as a crutch when I was first getting into web dev, but feel that I’ve sorta outgrown it. Do you feel Firebase still serves developers like you well or are you developing this moreso for people like my old self?
Again, nice work!
[1] https://github.com/lark-sh/lark
> [...] the only way Firebase developers can build apps without directly costing them is using the official Firebase Emulator Suite
We had started on the management UI portion of this at my old job out of similar frustrations. Felt awful seeing what should be a small/medium sized development-only application spew forth Java flotsam.