[marknutter]

I've used both Parse and Firebase extensively and I love them both. Parse is far more mature. Not only has it been around for longer but it's owned by Facebook so it has the resources to continue adding amazing stuff, like Cloud Code. Cloud Code is a huge differentiator in my opinion because it takes care of the last mile for BAAS' (back-end(s) as a service) - custom server-side data validation and manipulation.

However, Parse's SDK follows a very Backbone-like syntax with setters and getters which I'm not all that thrilled with (as an Angular developer) and has no real-time functionality to speak of (outside of push notifications). That's where Firebase shines. Firebase is newer but is maturing very quickly. Their system is solid and pretty much "solves" realtime for all intents and purposes. They don't have a Cloud Code equivalent and search is pretty much non-existent at this point but those are solvable problems I'm sure they will tackle in the not-so-distant future.

What it comes down to is what type of app you're building. And by the way, there's no reason you can combine them to get the best of both worlds :)

[aoberoi]

Firebase may not have Cloud Code, but since you have use their npm module and deploy to a free hosting service like Heroku, I actually think its more powerful. The big win: once you are in a full node.js environment you can leverage the power of all the npm modules. Parse's Cloud Code is very isolated from the entire ecosystem.

[coderzach]

I don't think Heroku free tier is a production ready solution.

[bravura]

Could you please elaborate more, perhaps through example, of apps where either parse or firebase would be clearly superior?