Why Is Supabase Banned in India? Section 69A Explained

What happened

In February 2026, Indian ISPs including Jio, Airtel, and ACT Fibernet began DNS-blocking all subdomains under *.supabase.co. The block was not announced publicly -- developers discovered it when their production apps stopped working.

The block affects only the API domain (supabase.co), not the marketing website (supabase.com). This means developers can still access the Supabase dashboard and documentation, but their apps cannot reach the Supabase API, authentication, storage, or realtime services.

No official government statement has been issued explaining why Supabase was blocked. This silence is typical -- and it is a direct consequence of how Section 69A of India's Information Technology Act works.

What is Section 69A?

Section 69A is a provision in India's Information Technology Act, 2000 (amended in 2008). It grants the central government the power to direct any government agency or intermediary (including ISPs) to block public access to any information generated, transmitted, received, stored, or hosted on any computer resource.

The section can be invoked on the following grounds:

The critical aspect of Section 69A is that blocking orders issued under it are confidential. ISPs that receive these orders are legally prohibited from disclosing them. This is why there is never a public announcement when a website or service is blocked, and why ISPs cannot explain to their customers why a service is unreachable.

How blocking orders are issued

The process for issuing a blocking order under Section 69A follows a defined procedure laid out in the Information Technology (Procedure and Safeguards for Blocking for Access of Information by Public) Rules, 2009:

What ISPs are required to do

When an ISP receives a blocking order under Section 69A, they must:

• Implement the block within the timeframe specified in the order
• Maintain strict confidentiality about the order -- they cannot disclose its existence to anyone, including the affected users or the blocked service
• Not show a block page -- most ISPs simply DNS-poison the domain so the connection silently times out, making it look like a network issue rather than an intentional block

Failure to comply with a blocking order can result in imprisonment up to seven years and a fine. This is why ISPs implement blocks quickly and without public explanation.

The most common implementation method is DNS poisoning. The ISP configures their DNS resolvers to return a sinkhole IP address for the blocked domain instead of the real IP. This is cheap, fast to deploy, and works at scale. However, it is also the easiest blocking method to bypass with a proxy.

Why Supabase specifically?

No official reason has been given for the Supabase block. Given the confidential nature of Section 69A orders, we can only observe the patterns:

This is the core dilemma with platform-level blocks. Thousands of legitimate developers and businesses are affected because of the actions of a few (or even one) bad actor on the platform.

Previous developer tool blocks in India

Supabase is not the first developer tool to be blocked in India. The pattern of ISP-level blocks affecting development infrastructure has been recurring:

Will the block be lifted?

There is no way to know for certain. Historically, some blocks in India have been temporary while others have persisted for years:

Supabase has acknowledged the block and stated they have reached out to Indian government officials. However, there is no confirmed timeline for resolution. The confidential nature of 69A orders means there is no formal appeals process that users or the blocked company can easily use.

Given this uncertainty, developers building production apps for Indian users should not wait for the block to be lifted. A proxy solution ensures your app works regardless of whether the block continues or not.

What developers can do

There are both immediate technical fixes and longer-term advocacy steps developers can take:

How JioBase works around the block

JioBase is a managed reverse proxy built on Cloudflare Workers. It provides each Supabase project with an unblocked proxy URL on the jiobase.com domain.

The concept is straightforward: since jiobase.com is not on the blocking order, ISP DNS resolves it normally. The Cloudflare Worker receives the request at the nearest edge node and forwards it to your Supabase project server-side, where there are no ISP blocks.

The entire setup takes under 60 seconds. Run npx create-jiobase to self-host your own proxy, or use the managed service. You change one URL in your Supabase client initialization. Everything else — your anon key, RLS policies, database schema, auth rules — stays exactly the same.

import { createClient } from '@supabase/supabase-js'

// Before: blocked by Indian ISPs
// const supabase = createClient('https://abcdefgh.supabase.co', key)

// After: works everywhere
const supabase = createClient(
  'https://myapp.jiobase.com',
  'your-anon-key'
)

Frequently Asked Questions