AWS Amplify turns TypeScript into AppSync, DynamoDB, Cognito and Lambda in your AWS account. pylo gives your whole team one hosted backend: GraphQL API, permissions, flows, admin UI, forms and analytics, hosted in Germany by a German company.

TL;DR

AWS Amplify is a code-first toolkit: you define your data, auth, storage and functions in TypeScript, and Amplify deploys AppSync, DynamoDB, Cognito, S3 and Lambda into your AWS account, plus hosting for your frontend. It scales as far as AWS does, and you pay each of those services separately. pylo is a hosted backend where data model, typed GraphQL API, permissions, flows, admin UI, forms, events and AI access are one system with one bill. If your company already lives in AWS, Amplify is a strong choice. If you want a backend your developers and your operations team can both work in, without AWS vendor-lockin, pylo is the better fit.

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 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 the tools you already use. With pylo you build apps, automations and products on one coherent data base across your whole team.

What is AWS Amplify?

AWS Amplify is Amazon's toolkit for full-stack web and mobile apps. In Gen 2 you describe models with a.model() in TypeScript, and Amplify, built on the AWS CDK, provisions an AppSync GraphQL API, DynamoDB tables, a Cognito user pool, S3 buckets and Lambda functions in your own AWS account. Every developer gets a cloud sandbox, and every Git branch can become its own environment. Amplify Hosting builds and serves your frontend with SSR. Gen 1 with Amplify Studio and the CLI is in maintenance mode and reaches end of life in May 2027.

At a glance

Data modelling without CDK deploys

In Amplify Gen 2 your schema is TypeScript: you define models and relations in code, run a sandbox that deploys real cloud resources, and ship through Git branches. For developers who think in infrastructure as code that is clean. It also means every new field is a code change and a deployment, and DynamoDB underneath asks you to plan access patterns in advance: filters and limits don't combine the way they do in SQL, and many-to-many relations need a join model you build.

In pylo you add an entity, a field or a relation in the admin panel and the typed GraphQL API updates at once, without a migration or deployment. You filter across relations and group aggregations by any field, even across deeply nested data structures. Field types include relations, enums, JSON, public or private files, rich text, dates, booleans and number/text formatters, with validation built in.

Permissions that follow the data everywhere

Amplify's authorization rules are expressive: owner and multi-owner rules, static and dynamic groups, public and guest access, custom rules in Lambda and field-level rules, with deny by default. You write them in the schema, and every data source and function has its own IAM setup to get right.

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, configured in the admin panel. Every path into the data is GraphQL, so the same rules apply to the API, the admin panel, forms, flows and MCP.

pylo flows compared to Lambda functions

Business logic in Amplify is Lambda functions: executable code in TypeScript, or Python and Go as custom runtimes, triggered by auth events, data changes or EventBridge schedules. For multi-step processes you add Step Functions, SQS or EventBridge yourself, and each one brings its own permissions, logs and bill.

In pylo you build automations in a visual workflow engine called pylo flows. Any event in pylo can start a flow, and so can cron schedules and incoming webhooks. 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 set of third-party systems, and you write your own flow actions in TypeScript. They slot into the builder like the built-in ones, and your operations team can read what a flow does.

Admin UI and forms

Amplify Gen 2 is code-first by design. The visual Studio from Gen 1, including the UI builder and form builder, isn't part of Gen 2. What's left for non-developers is the data manager in the AWS console, which creates, edits and exports records, and forms are React code that the CLI generates.

pylo's admin UI is built for the people who run the business: 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 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. Nobody needs an AWS console login.

Events and dashboards built in with pylo analytics

Amplify's analytics category relied on Amazon Pinpoint, which stops being supported at the end of October 2026. In Gen 2, analytics is something you set up with custom CDK, and logs live in CloudWatch.

In pylo, every create, update and delete emits an event with the full before and after state, which you can enrich with your own event data through the API. You build dashboards on events and regular pylo data right next to your workflows. Event data and the change history of your entities are kept for as long as your account exists, on every plan.

AI and MCP with guardrails

Amplify's AI Kit lets developers add chat and generation routes backed by Amazon Bedrock models, with tool calling against your data. AWS also publishes MCP servers, which manage infrastructure such as AppSync APIs rather than your app's records. Neither has a human approval step for individual record changes.

pylo's MCP server is made for developers who use agentic coding and for team members who want to analyze their data. The AI gets exactly the connected user's read permissions, nothing else. pylo never applies an AI's writes directly: they arrive as proposals that a human accepts or declines inside pylo.

File handling

Amplify stores files in S3 with authorization rules per path, and you can add CloudFront and image processing from the AWS toolbox.

pylo stores any file type in EU-hosted object storage with public or private links, a file library and no file size limit. You can build file processing as custom pylo flow actions.

Agencies and multi-tenant work

With Amplify, agencies usually run one AWS account or app per client, each with its own IAM, billing and environments. Multi-tenancy inside one app is something you design into your authorization rules.

With pylo, agencies run many client workspaces from one user account. Each workspace is its own tenant separated by RLS, and one login switches between them, with unlimited users on every plan and one invoice per workspace.

Pricing

For a small app, Amplify can cost close to nothing, and the per-request model scales down well. The bill comes from six or more services with their own meters, so growth in users, realtime traffic or SSO logins changes the total in ways that are hard to forecast, and the free plan for new AWS accounts ends after six months.

pylo has one price per workspace. It already includes hosting, flows, the admin UI, forms, analytics and personal onboarding, and every plan has every feature. Plans differ only in included usage for records, flow actions and file storage.

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.

Amplify runs in 20 AWS regions, including Frankfurt, Ireland and Paris. AWS is a US company; it covers the services behind Amplify under the German BSI C5 attestation, includes standard contractual clauses for GDPR, and offers a 99.95% SLA for the Amplify console. Backups, monitoring and incident handling for the services in your account are part of your AWS setup.

Where AWS Amplify is the better choice

We would rather tell you than have you find out later:

• Amplify scales with DynamoDB, Lambda and AppSync, and you can reach any other AWS service through CDK.

• Your backend lives in Git as code, with a sandbox per developer and an environment per branch. pylo has no staging or schema versioning yet.

• It has client libraries for React, Next.js, Vue, Angular, Swift, Android and Flutter. pylo ships Next.js and Node SDKs plus MCP.

• It hosts your frontend with SSR and a CDN in the same product.

• If your company has already approved AWS, there is no new vendor to review.

If your team is deep in AWS and wants infrastructure as code, Amplify is excellent. pylo is for teams that want a finished backend instead of an AWS architecture to maintain.

Where pylo is a great AWS Amplify alternative

We think these are the main reasons to pick pylo over AWS Amplify:

• One product instead of six AWS services. Data model, API, permissions, flows, admin UI, forms, events and MCP are one system, with one bill and no IAM to configure.

• Schema changes without a deploy. Add an entity or field and the typed GraphQL API is live immediately, without a CDK deployment.

• Relational data without access-pattern planning. Filter across relations and aggregate by any field, without designing around DynamoDB.

• Business logic without Lambda plumbing. Event, cron and webhook triggers with retries, rate limiting, typed actions and full logs, and custom actions in plain TypeScript.

• Non-developers can work without you. Configurable admin views, state-dependent fields and a form builder, with no AWS console access needed.

• Analytics you don't have to instrument. Every change is recorded as an event with before and after state, on every plan.

• AI access that's safe for production. MCP runs with the connected user's exact read permissions, and every write goes through human approval in pylo.

• Predictable pricing. Unlimited users and API requests and all features on every plan. Only three meters are billed: flow actions, records, and file storage/traffic.

• German hosting from a German company. Data stays in Germany with a German provider, 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

• Can I keep hosting my frontend on Amplify or Vercel? Yes, pylo is the backend; your frontend talks to it through the GraphQL API or the typed Next.js SDK, wherever it is hosted, only the admin dashboard is hosted by us.

• Does pylo support realtime like AppSync subscriptions? Yes, pylo supports GraphQL subscriptions and webhooks.

• 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.