parse-community/parse-server

Parse Server is an open source backend for mobile and web applications. It started life inside a company called Parse, which was bought by Facebook and then shut down in 2017. The community took the source code and has continued developing it ever since under the parse-community organisation on GitHub. The idea is that a developer writing a mobile or web app can install Parse Server on their own infrastructure and get a ready-made set of backend features rather than building login, data storage, and push notifications from scratch. The project is a Node.js package that works with the Express web framework. You can run it as a standalone server or mount it into an existing Express application. It stores data in either MongoDB or PostgreSQL, with the PostGIS extension recommended on Postgres for location queries. Supported Node.js versions are 20, 22, and 24, and the README lists the matching tested versions of MongoDB and PostgreSQL. You can run it directly with Node, inside a Docker container, or on any cloud platform that supports Node.js workloads. The feature set covers the parts of a backend that most apps need. You get object storage and queries through client SDKs, file storage, user accounts with email verification and password reset, configurable password and account policies, custom server-side logic written in JavaScript called Cloud Code, a GraphQL API that is generated from your data classes and can be extended, a Live Query system that pushes changes to clients in real time, idempotency enforcement, multi-tenancy, localization for emails and pages, custom routes, custom adapters for files and authentication, and a logging and health-check setup for production deployments. The project follows a long term support model. There is a current release branch and an alpha branch where new development happens, plus LTS branches such as release-5.x.x that get security fixes for one major version back. The wiki, the official Parse Platform guide, an API reference, and a Cloud Code guide are linked from the README as the main documentation. There is also an active community on a Discourse forum, a Slack chat, and Twitter, and a list of sponsors on Open Collective who fund ongoing maintenance.