India blocks Supabase under Section 69A, Jio and Airtel users hit

A source familiar with the matter said India issued a blocking order on February 24 under Section 69A of the Information Technology Act that instructed internet providers to restrict access to Supabase’s developer infrastructure, producing patchy or complete loss of connectivity for users on Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel, ACT Fibernet and other networks.

Supabase, the open-source backend platform used by many startups and independent developers, confirmed in status updates that its public site remained reachable but that a subset of users in India could not reach project backends. “We are currently aware of an issue affecting reachability of Supabase projects for a subset of users based in India. Supabase infrastructure remains fully operational,” the company said in a Feb. 26 status post, adding that its projects were reachable from regions outside India.

Supabase’s investigation, the company wrote, found that “a service provider in the region is not serving the correct DNS responses for Supabase projects from their internal DNS resolvers.” In a separate Feb. 27 update it urged affected customers to use alternative DNS providers or a VPN as interim fixes and suggested “for some customers, custom domains may also be a viable solution.” The status page listed specific DNS alternatives: Cloudflare (1.1.1.1), Google (8.8.8.8) and Quad9 (9.9.9.9).

On social media the company tagged India’s Union minister for electronics and information technology, Ashwini Vaishnaw, asking: “@AshwiniVaishnaw We have recently become aware that the domain is inaccessible to users across multiple Indian ISPs, including Jio, Airtel, and ACT Fibernet, due to a ministry order. Supabase is used by millions of developers worldwide, and millions of users in India are currently unable to access our platform due to these blocks. Could we talk to someone in your team about this?” Supabase later removed the public post but continued to publish status updates and technical guidance.

Developers in India reported immediate service disruptions consistent with a DNS- or ISP-level block. A community post in the Supabase forum summarized user reports: “Supabase backend access is currently restricted across multiple Indian ISPs. Confirmed issues: Auth failures; Database not responding; API endpoints (.supabase.co) unreachable; .supabase.co; Apps appear broken despite infrastructure being operational globally. This is not a Supabase outage. Access is being restricted at the ISP/DNS level inside India.”

The block carries economic and operational weight: data from Similarweb show India is Supabase’s fourth-largest source of traffic, accounting for roughly 9 percent of visits. The platform’s global traffic rose by more than 111 percent year over year to about 4.2 million visits in January; Indian visits increased roughly 179 percent to about 365,000 in the same month.

The government has not publicly stated a reason for the ministry order, and it remains unclear whether the action is linked to cybersecurity, copyright or another issue. Civil liberties advocates warned the incident underscores broader risks for online services. “The incident highlights broader concerns about India’s website blocking regime,” said Raman Jit Singh Chima, Asia Pacific policy director at Access Now.

Supabase has asked users to report problems to their ISPs and to contact support for alternatives while it pursues resolution through multiple channels. Journalists and developers seeking clarity will be watching for the ministry order text, official confirmation from named ISPs, and technical traces that show whether the block targets *.supabase.co domains, specific IP addresses, or DNS responses from internal resolvers.