TL;DR
Appwrite is an open-source backend platform with auth, databases, storage, functions, messaging, realtime and web hosting, available in the cloud or self-hosted. Developers get a broad set of services with SDKs for almost every platform and build the app logic on top. pylo is a backend platform where data model, permissions, flows, admin UI, forms, events and AI access are one integrated system, for developers and the rest of the team. If you build a mobile or web app and want open source with many SDKs, Appwrite is a strong choice. If you would otherwise build permissions, automation and a back office around it, pylo gives you all of that from day one.
What is pylo?
pylo is a Backend-as-a-Service platform from Germany that you can use to build the operating system for your company. You model entities, fields and relations in the admin panel or through the API, and pylo generates a typed GraphQL API made for fellow developers instantly. The same permission model governs that API, the admin UI, forms, flows and the MCP server. pylo flows run business processes and automations on top of your own data model and connect to most tools you already use. With pylo, you focus on building apps, business automation and products on one coherent data base.
What is Appwrite?
Appwrite is an open-source backend platform under the BSD-3 license, run by Appwrite Code Ltd. It covers auth with more than 30 OAuth providers and MFA, databases organized in tables and rows, storage with image transformations, functions in more than ten runtimes, messaging via email, SMS and push, realtime subscriptions and Sites for web hosting. Appwrite 2.0, released in August 2026, added native Postgres and MySQL databases, vector databases and an OAuth server. You can use Appwrite Cloud or self-host it with Docker.
At a glance
Appwrite | pylo | |
|---|---|---|
What you get | Backend services: auth, databases, storage, functions, messaging, realtime, hosting | A finished backend: data model, API, permissions, flows, admin UI, forms, analytics |
Data model | Tables, rows and columns in the console, CLI or API, plus native Postgres and MySQL since 2.0 | Entities, fields and relations, visual or through the API, live in the admin panel |
API | REST, Realtime, GraphQL generated from the REST endpoints | Typed GraphQL, schema auto-generated per user |
Permissions | Table- and row-level permissions for users, teams and labels, no column-level permissions released yet | Tenant isolation plus configurable ARO/ACO with hierarchy and field-level access |
Auth | Email, phone, magic links, email OTP, 30+ OAuth providers, MFA, teams | Email/password, Microsoft and Google SSO, API keys |
Business logic | Functions in 10+ runtimes that you write and deploy, triggered by events, cron or HTTP | Visual flow engine with cron, webhook and event triggers, pre-defined integrations plus TypeScript custom actions |
Admin UI for non-devs | Developer console, with Editor and Analyst roles for others | Configurable list/detail views with state-based field visibility and different components for different datatypes |
Forms | Build your own | Built in, powerful editor, public or authenticated, directly mapped to entities |
Analytics | Usage metrics for the project, business reporting you build yourself | Every change emitted as an event with before/after values, you can bring your own events and build dashboards on everything with deeply integrated permissions |
AI access | MCP server for developers with full read and write access to the project | MCP with the user's permissions; writes become proposals you approve |
Open source / self-host | Yes, BSD-3 | No |
Hosting | Cloud regions including Frankfurt, or self-hosted | Hetzner, Germany |
Data modelling for the whole team
Appwrite organizes data in databases with tables, rows and columns, which you set up in the console, with the CLI or through the API; relationships between tables exist, but Appwrite's docs still mark them as experimental. Since Appwrite 2.0 you can also run native Postgres or MySQL with direct SQL access, which gives developers a lot of freedom and leaves the rest of the backend to them.
In pylo you add an entity, a field or a relation in the admin panel and the typed GraphQL API updates at once, without any kind of migration or redeployment. Field types include relations, enums, JSON, public or private files, rich text, dates, booleans and number/text formatters, with validation built in. You filter across relations and group aggregations by any field, even across deeply nested data structures. The people who understand the data can change the model, not only the developers.
Permissions that follow the data everywhere
Appwrite permissions work on tables and, with row security turned on, on single rows. You grant read, create, update and delete to roles like any, users, a specific user, a team, a team role or a label. That covers many app scenarios, but things are missing today: there are no permissions per column yet and there are no rules derived from a row's values, so if a customer gets a new account manager, your own code updates that row's permissions.
pylo separates tenants at the row level. Inside a tenant, any entity can act as the requester (ARO) and any entity as the requested object (ACO), with hierarchies and field-level rules. Every path into the data is GraphQL, so the same rules apply to the API, the admin panel, forms, flows and MCP.
pylo flows instead of hand-written functions
On Appwrite, logic lives in Functions, which you and your team can write them in Node.js, Python, PHP, Go or one of the other runtimes, deploy them and trigger them through events, cron schedules or HTTP. Retries, rate limits, logging and connections to other systems are code you write.
In pylo you build the same logic in a visual workflow engine called pylo flows, where any event in pylo can start a flow, additionally you can use cron schedules and incoming webhooks.
pylo flows include retries, custom rate limiting, error handling and full event logs and everything is statically typed. pylo ships integrations for email sending and a growing selection of third-party systems, but you can easily code your own flow actions in TypeScript.
An admin dashboard your operations team will actually use
The Appwrite console is a developer tool: Editor and Analyst roles let other people in, but there are no list views per role, no state-dependent fields and no screens made for the people who run the business, so teams build a back office on top.
pylo's admin UI is built for your whole team, no matter if they are fellow developers or not: you compose list and detail views from predefined components, decide who sees what and show or hide fields depending on a record's state.
The pylo form builder maps forms directly to your entities, including relations, with public or authenticated access, hidden fields, conditional rendering and submission limits per form or per user.
Events and dashboards built in with pylo analytics
Appwrite emits events that functions and realtime clients can subscribe to, and the console shows usage metrics for your project. Reporting on your business data means building it yourself or moving the data into an analytics tool.
Every create, update and delete in pylo emits an event with the full before and after state, which you can enrich with your own event data through our API. On top of your events and regular pylo data you can build customized dashboards directly next to your data and workflows.
AI and MCP with guardrails
Appwrite runs a hosted MCP server with OAuth login and a local one that uses API keys; both are made for developers working in Claude Code, Cursor or Codex and give the agent full create, read, update and delete access to the project, writes apply directly.
pylo's MCP server is made for both, developers who want to use agentic coding and team members who wanna analyze their data. The AI gets exactly the connected user's read permissions, nothing else. pylo never applies an AI's writes directly, instead they arrive as proposals that a human accepts or declines, so you can benefit from the speed of AI without kicking the human out of the loop.
File handling
Appwrite offers more media-functionality out of the box: its storage comes with image transformations like resizing, cropping and format conversion on paid plans and since 2.0 with an S3-compatible API.
pylo stores files in EU-hosted object storage with public or private links, no file size limit and for any file type. You can build any kind of file-based functionality in your custom pylo flows, of course.
Agencies and multi-tenant work
With pylo, agencies can run many client workspaces from one user account; each workspace is its own tenant separated by RLS and one login switches between them.
Appwrite works well for agencies too: the Pro plan includes unlimited organization members and each client can get its own project for $15 per additional project. Inside each client's app, however, you build tenant separation, roles and the back office yourself.
Pricing
Appwrite | pylo | |
|---|---|---|
Free | $0, 2 projects, per project 75k MAU, 2 GB storage, 750k function executions, paused after 7 days without console activity | 0€, 5,000 records, 500 flow actions, 1 GB files, unlimited users and API requests |
Entry paid | Pro $25/month, per project 200k MAU, 150 GB storage, 3.5M executions, $15 per additional project | Starter 49€ per workspace/month, including 100k records, 5k flow actions with additional overages |
Larger | Enterprise, custom pricing | Business 999€/month, including 2M records, 250k flow actions, with additional overages |
Users | Unlimited organization members on Pro, monthly active users included per project | Unlimited on every plan |
Metered | Bandwidth, storage, compute, database reads and writes, image transformations, additional projects | Only flow actions, records, and file storage/traffic |
For a pure app backend, Appwrite Pro is cheaper to start with and self-hosting the open-source version costs only your servers and the time to run them.
pylo's price already includes pylo flows, the admin UI, forms, analytics and personal onboarding, which on Appwrite you would build or buy separately. Every pylo plan has every feature and unlimited users, plans differ only in included usage.
Hosting, compliance and reliability
All pylo content data, data models and databases live in data centres in Germany, our subprocessor list is public and names every non-EU parent company openly. A GDPR data processing agreement is part of the terms and we never use customer data to train AI models. Paid plans come with a 99.5% availability SLA, hourly encrypted backups kept for 30 days at a separate German location and support from the team that builds the product.
Appwrite Cloud offers regions in Frankfurt, New York, San Francisco, Toronto, Sydney and Singapore. Appwrite Code Ltd. operates under Israeli law and transfers EU data based on the EU adequacy decision for Israel and standard contractual clauses. Appwrite states SOC 2, GDPR and HIPAA compliance, and Pro comes with a 99.5% SLA and daily backups kept for 7 days. If you self-host, all of that is up to you.
Where Appwrite is the better choice
We would rather tell you than have you find out later:
Appwrite is open source under BSD-3 and self-hostable with one Docker command; pylo is not.
It offers far more auth options: phone, magic links, email OTP, anonymous sessions, more than 30 OAuth providers and MFA. pylo offers email/password, Microsoft and Google SSO and API keys.
SDKs for web, Flutter, React Native, iOS and Android plus ten server languages. pylo currently ships a Next.js SDK plus MCP.
Native Postgres and MySQL with direct SQL access, plus vector databases since Appwrite 2.0.
Messaging via email, SMS and push, realtime subscriptions and web hosting with Sites come out of the box; in pylo you need to built this yourself.
Image transformations and an S3-compatible storage API.
A large community and eco-system
If you build mobile or web apps and want open source with SDKs for every platform, Appwrite is an excellent choice. pylo is for teams that would rather not build permissions, automation and a back office on top of their backend.
Where pylo is a great Appwrite alternative
We think these are the main reasons to pick pylo over Appwrite:
The business layer is already built. API, permissions, flows, admin UI, forms, events and MCP come with your data model. You don't write them in functions and frontends yourself.
Schema changes without a deploy. Add an entity or field and the typed GraphQL API is live immediately. You skip the migration, the type regeneration and the redeploy.
Permissions down to the field. API, admin panel, forms, flows and MCP all go through the same permission layer, with hierarchies and field-level rules that follow your data model instead of being set on every row.
Business logic without deployments. The flow builder covers event, cron and webhook triggers, with retries, rate limiting, typed actions and full logs. Custom actions are plain TypeScript.
Non-developers can work without you. Configurable admin views, state-dependent fields and a full form builder let operations teams handle their own changes. Not every change has to become a developer ticket.
Analytics you don't have to instrument. pylo records every change as an event with before and after state, and dashboards sit right next to the data.
AI access that's safe for production. MCP runs with the connected user's exact read permissions, and every write goes through human approval as a proposal.
Predictable pricing. pylo doesn't bill bandwidth, compute or database reads. You get unlimited users and API requests and all features on every plan. Only three meters are billed: flow actions, records, and file storage/traffic.
Built for agencies. You can run many client workspaces with separate tenants and permissions, and switch between them with one login.
German hosting from a German company. pylo hosts user data in Germany and the DPA is part of the terms. You get a 99.5% SLA from the first paid plan, hourly backups with 30-day retention, and personal support from the people who build the product.
FAQs - Questions and answers about pylo
Does pylo have SDKs for mobile apps? Not yet. pylo currently ships a Next.js SDK and any platform can use the typed GraphQL API directly. With our developer-friendly APIs and the pylo MCP you can easily build mobile apps on top of pylo though.
Is pylo open source? No, but you can export all data at any time as CSV or JSON or through the API. The data models, flow definitions and generated SDK code are yours to keep, even after you leave.
Can I self-host pylo? No, but if you need specific hosting options, we can discuss them as part of the Enterprise plan.
Does pylo scale? Yes, production workspaces of our customers already run with millions of records today.
Where exactly is my data? Content data is in data centres in Germany and backups are kept at a different German location.
Can I get access now? pylo is currently in private beta. Request access and we will set up your first entities with you on a call and onboard you personally for your first project.
The short answer
Pick the one that fits the team you have.
Pick Appwrite if…
Choose Appwrite if you want an open-source backend you can self-host, need SDKs for mobile and web platforms, many auth methods, messaging and realtime and you are happy to write your business logic in functions yourself.
Pick Pylo if…
Choose pylo if you would otherwise build permissions, automation and a back office on top of your backend: you get a live data model, permissions that hold everywhere down to single fields, flows, admin views and forms your non-developers can use, built-in event analytics and AI access with approval. It is also the better fit if you want predictable costs and hosting in Germany by a German company.
Moving over
Bring your schema, keep your data.
Appwrite tables map onto pylo fairly directly: each table becomes an entity, columns become fields and relationships become relations. Model the entities in pylo first, then export your rows through the Appwrite API or with standard dump tools if you use the native Postgres or MySQL databases, and load them as CSV or JSON with pylo's import profiles. Import profiles let you map columns to fields, use any field as the matching key and apply regex transformations during import. We handle large datasets of multiple gigabytes and you can re-run your import in dry-run mode until the mapping is right.
Table and row permissions become pylo permissions, which usually end up simpler because the rules follow your data model instead of being set per row. Functions and event subscriptions become pylo flows. You can migrate users, but you need to reinvite them and have them choose a password again. Talk to us at any point of your migration and we will go through your schema with you and plan the migration together.
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