Firebase Studio: what it was, why it is shutting down, and how to move your app

What is Firebase Studio?

Firebase Studio was an agentic cloud development environment from Google. The official documentation describes it as a place to build and ship full-stack AI apps, including APIs, backends, frontends and mobile, right from your browser. It combined Project IDX, a browser IDE, with Gemini-powered agents. It ran as a full virtual machine on Google Cloud and was built on the Code OSS project, the open-source base of VS Code.

It supported two ways of working that you could switch between:

• Coding with full control. A Code OSS-based editor where you imported a repository or started from a template. Gemini offered code completion, generation, tests and documentation. You configured the environment with Nix.
• Prompting without coding. The App Prototyping agent, also called Prototyper, created a new workspace from a text, image or drawing prompt. It built a Next.js web app, set up Cloud Firestore and Firebase Authentication if the app needed them, let you roll changes back, and published to Firebase App Hosting.

The docs are explicit that it was a Preview product: not subject to an SLA or deprecation policy and liable to change in backwards-incompatible ways. That turned out to matter.

Is Firebase Studio being shut down?

Yes. Google's sunset and migration page says Firebase Studio is sunsetting on March 22, 2027. Google's stated reason is to simplify its AI developer offerings by moving what it learned from the preview into two flagship tools: Google AI Studio and Google Antigravity.

So if you have a live app, the risk is to your source code and workspace, not to your running site. If you only ever clicked Publish and never exported the code, export it before the deadline.

Can you still build an app in Firebase Studio?

Only if you already have a workspace. The pricing and limits page says that as of June 22, 2026, new workspace creation is disabled, and the workspace limits listed there no longer apply to new registrations. If you never signed up, you cannot start now.

That means the usual how-to (open the site, click a template, prompt the Prototyper) no longer works for a new user. What does work is a short list of things you can do with an existing workspace, and a longer list of ways to rebuild the same project somewhere that will still exist next year.

What did Firebase Studio cost, and what were its limits?

Access was free. The pricing, quotas and limits page says access to Firebase Studio is available at no cost, with some integrations such as Firebase App Hosting needing a Cloud Billing account. As of October 2026 that page also carries a notice that the quotas it lists no longer apply to new workspaces.

• Flutter and React Native with Expo. Without a Premium plan you were limited to two workspaces across both of those types combined.
• Billing side effect. If you linked a Cloud Billing account to a Firebase project created in Firebase Studio, the project was upgraded to the pay-as-you-go Blaze plan and your Gemini Developer API usage moved to the paid tier. You pay for usage beyond the free quotas.
• Data use. Generative AI features were governed by the Gemini API Additional Terms of Service for unpaid services. The docs say to avoid the App Prototyping agent and Gemini assistance if you want to block prompts and responses from being used for model training, and to turn off code completion and indexing to keep your code out of training.

How do you migrate a Firebase Studio app to Google AI Studio?

This is Google's recommended path for apps made with the App Prototyping agent. The steps below follow the migration page.

1. Transfer the workspace. In your Firebase Studio workspace, click Move now at the top, then Prepare for AI Studio. When preparation finishes, click Move to Google AI Studio and accept the terms if asked.
2. Wait for conversion. Your code opens in a new Google AI Studio workspace. It can take several minutes, and AI Studio notifies you when it is done.
3. Choose how to publish. Either keep your existing App Hosting URL (option A) or move to Cloud Run with a new URL (option B).

**Option A: keep your *.hosted.app URL or custom domain.** Firebase Studio had automatically put your Gemini API key from the workspace .env file into an App Hosting environment variable. After migration you must set that variable yourself, because the .env file should not be stored in GitHub. Do it in the Firebase console under App Hosting, open your backend (usually named studio), then Settings, Environment, and add the key. For tighter access control, Google suggests Secret Manager. Then, in AI Studio, open Settings, the GitHub panel, create a repository, check that .env is not in the file list, and commit. Finally, in the Firebase console connect that repository to your App Hosting backend under Settings, Deployment, Connect to GitHub, using the main branch and the root directory.

Option B: new URL on Cloud Run. Open the app in AI Studio, click Publish, import the Firebase project that Firebase Studio used, then publish. A custom domain needs to be mapped to the new Cloud Run service, which Google says can take up to 24 hours and may cause downtime.

How do you migrate to Google Antigravity or export your code?

Choose Antigravity if you used templates, imported a repository, lived in Code view, or outgrew the Prototyper and need a local environment. The prerequisites listed by Google are the Antigravity IDE, Node.js 20 or higher and Firebase CLI 15.10.0 or higher, all up to date.

1. Export. Click Move now in the workspace, then Zip and Download. If no button appears, run the command palette entry Firebase Studio: Zip & Download. Allow pop-ups in your browser if nothing happens.
2. Extract and open the folder in the Antigravity IDE.
3. Automated path. In the Agent pane, enter the prompt shown below and follow the agent's guidance. Google suggests a Gemini Flash model to conserve tokens on this conversion job.
4. Manual path. If you would rather not spend AI tokens, run the export command below. It is optimized for Next.js, Flutter and Angular workspaces; other types may not have every artifact updated.
5. Preview locally from Run and Debug in the sidebar, then tell the agent “Publish my app” and answer Yes when it asks to run firebase deploy. It publishes to your existing URL if you had one on App Hosting.

# Manual export (run in the extracted folder, or pass the zip path instead of .)
npx firebase-tools@latest studio:export .

# Agent prompt for the automated path (type in the Antigravity Agent pane)
@fbs-to-agy-export

# Export to another host, keeping your App Hosting URL
npm install -g firebase-tools
firebase init apphosting   # choose: Link to an existing backend -> the one named studio
firebase deploy

If you want a different platform entirely, the exported code is a standard web application. You can host it with any provider, though a new host means a new URL. Core services like Firestore and Authentication keep working regardless of where the front end lives.

What should you save before March 22, 2027?

Data left in Firebase Studio after the shutdown date is permanently deleted. Work through this list while you still have time. Chat history is easy to forget: Google says agent chat history is not part of the exported zip.

[ ] Zip and download every workspace (Move now > Zip and Download), or push it to GitHub
[ ] Copy chat history: in the workspace, File > Open Folder, accept /home/user,
    right-click .idx/ai > Zip and Download (prompts and responses for all chat modes)
[ ] Prototyper sessions: save the prompts from `git log` in Code view as well
[ ] Note your App Hosting backend name (usually "studio") and your *.hosted.app URL
[ ] Move the Gemini API key from .env into an App Hosting environment variable or Secret Manager
[ ] Confirm .env is NOT in any GitHub repository you create
[ ] Pick a destination: Google AI Studio (web) or Google Antigravity (local)
[ ] Publish once from the new place and open the live URL to test it
[ ] Check the custom domain, if any, still resolves after the move
[ ] Only then delete the old workspace

What should you use instead of Firebase Studio?

Google's own answer is two tools. For a browser-based prompt-to-app workflow, use Google AI Studio's Build mode, which now has Firestore and Authentication built in. For code-first agent work on your own machine, use Antigravity. Beyond Google, the tools that cover the same ground are covered in the best AI app builders list and, for developers, best AI coding tools.

If you are starting with an idea and not with a workspace to rescue, the shortest route is to pick the idea first. The board has ideas by category and each one carries a build prompt you can paste into whichever builder you choose. If you have an idea you will not build yourself, post it.