Supabase gives developers a superb Postgres toolkit. Pylo gives the whole team one system: data model, permissions, flows, admin UI, forms and analytics, hosted in Europe.

TL;DR

Supabase is a developer platform built around Postgres. You get the database, auth, storage, realtime and edge functions and you build everything else yourself. pylo is a backend platform where the data model, permissions, automation, admin UI, forms, events and AI access are one integrated system. The more of it you use, the less glue code you write and the more your non-technical team members can do without a ticket.

What is pylo?

pylo is a Backend-as-a-Service platform from Germany that allows you to create the operating system for your company. You model entities, fields and relations in the admin panel, and pylo instantly generates a typed GraphQL API. The same permission model governs that API, the admin UI, forms, flows and the MCP server. With pylo flows you can easily setup automation for workflows on top of your custom data model that integrates into almost any tool you can think of. pylo helps you to build apps, automations and products fast.

What is Supabase?

Supabase is an open-source backend platform built on Postgres, with auth, storage, realtime subscriptions, edge Functions and vector search. You can use it as a hosted service or host it yourself. It is the best-known open-source Firebase alternative and has a huge, helpful community.

At a glance

Data modelling without migrations

In pylo you add an entity or a field in the admin panel and the API is updated at once. There is no migration file, no type regeneration and no redeploy. Field types include relations, enums, JSON, files (public or private), rich text, dates, booleans and number/text formatters, with validation built in. Supabase gives you the full power of Postgres and SQL, and your schema lives in version control. If you want migrations in pull requests, that is a real advantage. If the people who understand the data are not the ones who write SQL, pylo is the faster and easier path.

Permissions that follow the data everywhere

Supabase secures data with Row Level Security policies written in SQL. They are powerful, but you write, test and maintain every one of them. 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. Because every path into the data is GraphQL, the same rules apply to the API, the admin panel, forms, flows and MCP. You cannot forget a policy on a side door, because there is no side door.

Automation: pylo flows instead of glue code

On Supabase, logic lives in Edge Functions, database triggers and pg_cron, which you write and deploy. In pylo, you can use a visual workflow engine called pylo flows: any event in pylo can start a flow and so can cron schedules and incoming webhook events. Flows include retries, custom rate limiting, error handling and full event logs, and everything is statically typed. There are integrations for a variety of systems inside pylo, for email sending and third-party systems. For anything custom you write a new flow action in TypeScript, and it slots into the builder like the built-in ones, deriving input and output types through the TypeScript types.

An admin dashboard your operations team will actually use

Supabase's dashboard is built for developers, where 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 entity instance's state. Forms come with it too: public or authenticated, hidden fields, conditional rendering, direct mapping to your entities, and submission limits per form or per user.

Events and dashboards built in with pylo analytics

Every create, update and delete in Pylo emits an event with the full before and after state. You can also bring in external events through the API. On top of your data, easily build dashboards and charts and define who may see them. With Supabase you would typically add a separate analytics product and instrument it yourself.

AI and MCP with guardrails

pylo's MCP server is live for customers. Connect it as a specific user and the AI gets exactly that user's read permissions, nothing else. Writes are never applied directly: they arrive as proposals that a human accepts or declines. That makes it safe to let an assistant work on production business data.

File handling

pylo stores files in an EU-hosted object storage, with public or private links, with no file size limit and any file type you can imagine. Supabase is ahead here, with a CDN and image transformations already built into their platform.

Agencies and multi-tenant work

Agencies can run many client workspaces from the same user account. Each workspace has its own tenant and permissions and one login switches between them. Each tenant is separated with RLS on database-level.

Pricing

For a pure database, Supabase is cheaper to start with. pylo's pricing already includes the pylo flows feature, admin UI, forms, analytics and personal onboarding, which on Supabase you would build or buy separately. Every pylo plan has every feature and can be used by unlimited users; plans differ only in included usage.

Hosting, compliance and reliability

All pylo content data, data models and databases live in Hetzner 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 no customer data is used 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.

Supabase offers EU regions on AWS. The company is US-based and holds SOC 2 and ISO 27001 on the Team plan. Uptime SLAs start at the Enterprise plan.

Where Supabase is the better choice

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

• Supabase is open source and self-hostable; pylo is not.

• You get raw SQL and the entire Postgres extension ecosystem, including pgvector for vector search.

• It offers more auth options (magic links, many OAuth providers, SAML, MFA) and SDKs for many languages. pylo currently ships a Next.js SDK plus MCP.

• Supabase has database branching and schema history in git. pylo has no schema versioning or rollback yet.

• It has a CDN and image transformations for files, in pylo you can build your own transformations as custom pylo flow actions.

• It holds formal SOC 2 and ISO 27001 certifications.

• It has a far larger community and ecosystem, and open signup.

If raw infrastructure is what you want, Supabase is excellent. pylo is for teams that would rather not build the business layer on top of it completely from scratch.

Where pylo is a great supabase alternative

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

• One system instead of a stack. The data model, API, permissions, flows, admin UI, forms, events and MCP are all one product. There's no glue code between five vendors and no second place to keep in sync.

• 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. Every path into the data goes through the same permission layer: API, admin panel, forms, flows and MCP. That includes hierarchies and field-level rules, with no SQL policies to write.

• 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. Every change doesn't have to become a developer ticket.

• Analytics you don't have to instrument. Every change is recorded 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. You get unlimited users and API requests on every plan, and all features on every plan. Only three meters are billed: flow actions, records, and file storage/traffic. There's no MAU billing, no compute sizing and no paid add-ons for features.

• 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. User data is hosted in Europe 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

• 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 any specific hosting options, they can be discussed as part of the Enterprise plan.

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

• Where exactly is my data? Content data is in Hetzner data centres in Germany and backups are kept on 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.