For vibe coders is it really “hours” setting up a database these days? GCP cloud sql + drizzle ORM is minutes and actually scales unlike a spreadsheet, heck Claude can even write you a deployment script and run it over GCP CLI.
A spreadsheet is a misclick away from corruption, why not spend another prompt on getting Claude to configure a db?
It's a shame that Google haven't managed to come up with a scale to zero option or serverless alternative that's compatible.
Using Google spreadsheets as a backend will just cause them to charge everyone later.
Sheet Ninja isn't free. Even on their side, "free" does not mean what you think it means.
But what would scare me the most, is that google can easily shut this thing down.
Unless things have improved it's also hideously slow, like trivial queries on a small table taking tens of milliseconds. Though I guess that if the alternative is google sheets that's not really a concern.
Except the sheets-to-api SaaS charges $9/month if you want more than 250 requests.
WTF is "Cloud SQL"?
I have a postgresql server running on a $5/m VPS that I add DBs to as and when I explore some new idea.
db-f1-micro is about $10pm inc storage for something that just works and can scale, be shifted on prem etc. you can run all your vibe coded slop on one instance.