Neon gives developers serverless Postgres and the primitives to build a backend around it. pylo gives your whole team the full backend experience: data model, permissions, flows, admin UI, forms and analytics, hosted in Europe and GDPR-compliant.

TL;DR

Neon is serverless Postgres from Databricks, with branching, scale-to-zero and a growing set of primitives around it: auth, a REST Data API, functions, object storage and an AI gateway. With these features, developers assemble a backend in application code and SQL. pylo in comparison is a feature-complete backend with data model, permissions, flows, admin UI, forms, events and AI access, all in one system, for both devs and other team members. If you want raw Postgres with branching for every pull request, Neon is excellent. If you would otherwise spend months building the data model, API, permissions and flows on top of 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 Neon?

Neon is serverless Postgres, now part of Databricks and sold as Lakebase Postgres. It separates storage from compute, so the databases autoscale and suspend when idle. One of its signature feature is branching, you can fork a full copy of the database in seconds, for example for every pull request. Around that database, Neon offers Managed Better Auth, a PostgREST-compatible Data API, Node.js functions, S3-compatible object storage and an AI gateway.

At a glance

A finished backend instead of primitives

Neon and pylo start from different places. Neon hands developers very good building blocks and leaves the assembly to them, with the database as the centerpiece. You write the schema and migrations in SQL, test them on a branch and promote the, you decide which tables the Data API exposes, write the RLS policies, wire up auth, write the functions and build every screen your team needs. That gives you a lot of freedom, but also comes with a lot of work.

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.

Permissions that follow the data everywhere

Neon's Data API has no permission layer of its own, instead every request is authorized only by your Postgres GRANTs and RLS policies, and Neon's own docs warn that a missing policy can expose a table to anyone with the endpoint URL. RLS is powerful, but it is SQL that you write, test and review for every table, and it covers only what goes through Postgres, while your functions, admin tools and integrations each need their own checks. pylo separates tenants with RLS. 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, so 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 Neon, logic lives in Node.js functions next to the database: you write them, deploy them and handle retries, rate limits and logging in your own code. In pylo you build the same logic in a visual workflow engine called pylo flows. 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 Neon console is a developer tool with a SQL editor and a table view, but there are no list views, workflows or role-specific screens for the people who run the business, so you build or buy 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.

Events and dashboards built in with pylo analytics

Neon has no event stream or dashboards for your business data, you only write SQL, add audit tables and triggers or move 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 beautiful customized dashboards directly next to your data and workflows.

AI and MCP with guardrails

Neon's MCP server is built for developers and coding agents: it creates projects and branches, runs SQL and handles schema migrations, which it tests on a temporary branch before applying them. Access follows the database role and API key you connect with, so it's a tool for the people who build the backend, not for everyone who works with the data. pylo's MCP server is made for both, developers who want to use agentic coding and team members who wanna analyze their data. 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

pylo stores files in EU-hosted object storage with public or private links, no file size limit and for any file type. Neon's object storage is S3-compatible and branches with your project, so files and rows stay in sync across preview environments, which is more flexible in development. Access to the files has to be done in code, by you.

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. Neon handles agency setups well too: one account can belong to several organizations with their own plans and the free plan already allows 100 projects. Inside each client's app, however, you build tenant separation roles and the back office workflows yourself.

Pricing

Neon is cheap when databases are idle, because suspended compute costs nothing, but real production apps rarely sleep. A single 1 CU compute that runs all month comes to roughly $77 on Launch and $162 on Scale, before storage, restore history, functions and egress. The API layer, permissions, back office and automation are code your team writes and maintains. pylo only bills records, flow actions and file storage/traffic, and its price already includes pylo flows, the admin UI, forms, analytics and personal onboarding. 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.

Neon runs on AWS and offers an EU region in Frankfurt. Neon belongs to Databricks, a US company. SOC 2, HIPAA and an uptime SLA are available on the Scale plan only.

Where Neon is the better choice

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

• Branching is excellent. Every pull request or test run gets a full copy of the database, with auth and files included. pylo has no branching, schema versioning or rollback yet.

• Scale-to-zero makes idle and preview databases close to free.

• You get real Postgres with extensions like pgvector, PostGIS and TimescaleDB, and it works with any language, framework and ORM.

• Read replicas, instant restore to any point in the history window and autoscaling up to large compute sizes.

• A generous free plan with 100 projects, and auth for up to 1M monthly active users on paid plans.

• Full control over everything above the database, which some teams value highly.

• Databricks behind it, SOC 2 and HIPAA on Scale, public pricing and open signup. pylo is in private beta.

If your developers want Postgres and build everything else themselves, Neon is one of the best places to run it. pylo is for teams that would rather not build the API, permissions, back office and automation on top.

Where pylo is a great Neon alternative

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

• The backend is already built. API, permissions, flows, admin UI, forms, events and MCP come with your data model. You don't assemble them from primitives.

• Schema changes without a deploy. Add an entity or field and the typed GraphQL API is live immediately. You skip the migration file, the type regeneration and the redeploy.

• Permissions you can't bypass. API, admin panel, forms, flows and MCP all go through the same permission layer, down to single fields. You don't write RLS policies per table and hope none is missing.

• 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 compute hours, egress or branches. 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

• Can pylo branch my database like Neon? No. pylo has no branching, schema versioning or rollback yet.

• Is pylo open source? No. 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. If you need specific hosting options, we can discuss them as part of the Enterprise plan.

• Does pylo scale? Yes. Production workspaces already run with millions of records today.

• Where exactly is my data? Content data is in Hetzner 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.