What Is Etebase and What Can You Build With It?

Etebase is an open-source SDK and backend for building end-to-end encrypted applications. It handles the encryption and its related challenges so you can sync user data without building cryptography yourself. It fits projects that need private, cross-device sync — task managers, note apps, and similar tools — where the server should never be able to read user data. If you just need a plaintext cloud database, Etebase is more machinery than you need.

What Etebase actually provides

Etebase describes itself as "Firebase but encrypted in a way that only end-users can access their data." Concretely, it's two things:

• Client libraries for desktop, mobile, and web, so you can build apps without worrying about the infrastructure or the encryption.
• A server that stores only encrypted data.

The server never holds the keys, so it cannot read what it stores. Everything — clients and server — is open source, which means you can verify the behavior rather than trust a claim.

Core capabilities

A minimal example

The documented flow is short: log in, get a collection manager, create an encrypted collection, upload it.

// Setup encryption and login to server
const etebase = await Etebase.Account.login("username", "password");
const collectionManager = etebase.getCollectionManager();

// Create, encrypt and upload a new collection
const collection = await collectionManager.create(
  "collection.type",
  { name: "My data" },
  "My private data!"
);
await collectionManager.upload(collection);

The encryption happens client-side before the upload, which is why the server only ever sees ciphertext.

Why teams choose it

• Users care about privacy. Etebase's pitch is that privacy and security are increasingly a purchase criterion, and this gives you both without designing a crypto scheme.
• Breach protection. Encrypted data stays safe in a breach and, per Etebase, isn't even considered a data breach under GDPR and HIPAA.
• Easier compliance. End-to-end encryption makes complying with GDPR, HIPAA, CCPA, and FERPA substantially easier.
• Cryptography is hard. It's easy to get wrong, hard to get right, and even harder to know whether you got it right — so delegating it is a reasonable trade.

What it's built on

Etebase uses libsodium, a widely used and audited cryptography library, and is based on the code that powers EteSync. That lineage matters: it's battle-tested code rather than a fresh implementation. Tasks.org is listed as a user, which is a useful signal that the model works for a real, privacy-sensitive app.

When Etebase is the right fit

Choose it when:

• Your app syncs user data across devices and users expect that data to be private.
• You want to avoid implementing and maintaining your own encryption.
• You need sharing, access control, or revision history as part of the sync layer.
• Compliance with privacy regulation is a requirement, not an afterthought.

Look elsewhere when your data is genuinely non-sensitive, or when you need server-side querying and processing of plaintext — Etebase's design deliberately prevents the server from reading your data, which rules those use cases out.

Getting started

The site offers documentation, a sign-up path, and a login for existing users, plus a public roadmap and source code. Pricing details are published on a dedicated pricing page — check that page directly for current terms rather than assuming a free tier.