Zapier connects thousands of apps and moves data between them. pylo gives your automations a place to live: data model, API, permissions, flows, admin UI, forms and analytics in one system, hosted in Germany.

TL;DR

Zapier is the best-known automation tool on the market and it connects more than 9,000 apps and moves data between them, with Tables, Forms, Agents and an MCP server around the core Zaps. Your data still lives in the apps you connect, Zaps only pass it along. pylo starts from the other end: you model your data first and pylo gives you the API, permissions, admin UI, forms and analytics for it, and pylo flows run your automations right on top of that data. If you want to connect two SaaS tools in ten minutes, Zapier is hard to beat, but if your automations have become the backbone of your business and need a real data model underneath or if you need more flexibility on how to automate, 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 Zapier?

Zapier is a US no-code automation platform. A Zap starts with a trigger in one app and runs actions in others, with filters, paths, formatters, delays, loops and code steps in between. Around that core, Zapier offers Tables for storing records, Forms for creating user forms and portals, Agents and Chatbots for AI work, Canvas for mapping out processes and a hosted MCP server that lets AI assistants run actions in your connected apps. With more than 9,000 integrations it has one of the largest app catalogues2 of any automation tool.

At a glance

A data model instead of data in transit

Zapier is built around moving data: a Zap reads a record in one app, transforms it and writes it into another, and the run history keeps what happened for a few weeks. When teams need to keep something in between, a lookup list, a status or a customer record, they reach for Zapier Tables, which are useful, but have clear limits. Records count against one limit for the whole account, from 2,500 on Free to 500,000 on Team, a table holds at most 100 fields and there is no public API to read them from your own app. So the real data ends up spread over a CRM, a spreadsheet, a shop and a handful of Tables, held together by Zaps.

In pylo the data model comes first: most projects start with adding an entity, a field or a relation in the admin panel and the typed GraphQL API updates at once, without any 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. Relations work across your whole workspace, you filter across them and group aggregations by any field. Your flows, admin views, forms and apps all read and write the same records.

pylo flows instead of Zaps

Zapier's builder is excellent at what it does: pick a trigger, pick an action, map the fields, done. Most triggers poll the connected app every 15 minutes on Free, every 2 minutes on Professional and every minute on Team, unless the app supports instant webhooks. Paid plans replay failed steps automatically up to five times over about ten hours and error paths let you catch failures yourself. Code steps run custom Node.js or Python code, but only with a 30 second limit on paid plans.

pylo flows run on your own data. Any create, update or delete in pylo can start a flow the moment it happens, in addition 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; for anything else you write a flow action in TypeScript and it slots into the builder like the built-in ones, with input and output types derived from your code and without any limit on execution time. We have far fewer ready-made integrations than Zapier and we won't pretend otherwise, but what you get instead is automation that knows your data model and your permissions and can be extended for custom usecases a lot more freely.

Permissions that follow the data everywhere

Zapier manages access at the account level, Team members share Zaps and app connections in folders and only Enterprise adds SSO, SCIM and audit logs. What a Zap may do inside a connected app depends on the account that connected it and Zapier Tables have no rules for which user sees which record.

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.

Admin views and forms on the same data

Zapier Forms, formerly Interfaces, lets you build forms and multi-page portals on top of Tables, with Stripe payments and embedded chatbots. It's quick to set up and works well for intake. For anything else, you use the UIs of the tools you connected through Zapier.

pylo's admin UI is built for the people who run the business every day: 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

Zapier keeps a history of every Zap run, so you can see what succeeded and what failed, for 29 to 69 days depending on your plan. It doesn't give you analytics on your business data, because that data lives in the connected apps.

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. Any dataset is stored for as long as your pylo account exists.

AI and MCP with guardrails

Zapier's MCP server gives AI assistants like Claude or ChatGPT access to actions in thousands of apps, it runs with the connecting user's own app connections and each successful tool call costs two tasks from your plan. When the assistant decides to send an email or update a CRM record, the action runs right away. Zapier has no approval step of its own, any confirmation comes from your AI client itself.

pylo's MCP server is made for both, developers who 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

pylo stores files in EU-hosted object storage with public or private links, no file size limit and for any file type. Files are fields on your entities, so they follow the same permissions as the rest of the record. Zapier passes files between apps during a run, where they are stored afterwards depends on the apps you connect.

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 and every plan includes unlimited users, so a client's team can work in their own workspace without extra seats.

On Zapier, Free and Professional are single-user plans and Team covers up to 25 users, so agencies either run a separate account per client or keep several clients' app connections in one account.

Pricing

Zapier's task model is fair in one way: triggers, filters, formatters, paths and failed steps don't count. Every successful action does, so a five-step Zap that runs 1,000 times a month uses 5,000 tasks, annual billing saves a third compared to paying monthly.

pylo's price already includes the backend your automations run on: data model, API, admin UI, forms, analytics and personal onboarding. Every pylo plan has every feature and unlimited users, plans differ only in included usage and the free tier is more generous.

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.

Zapier hosts data on AWS servers in the United States and does not offer EU data residency. It is certified under the EU-US Data Privacy Framework, holds SOC 2 Type 2 and offers a DPA with standard contractual clauses. Every record a Zap touches passes through those US servers and stays in the run history for weeks.

Where Zapier is the better choice

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

• More than 9,000 app integrations. If a tool has an API, Zapier probably connects to it already. pylo covers far fewer systems out of the box.

• Filters, formatters, paths, delays and loops don't cost tasks, and paid plans replay failed steps automatically.

• A broad AI toolset with Agents, Chatbots, AI steps across several models and Guardrails that detect and redact personal data.

• Version history for Zaps, from one month on Professional up to a year on Enterprise. pylo has no versioning or rollback yet.

• Mature enterprise controls with SSO, SCIM and audit logs, SOC 2 Type 2, public pricing and open signup. pylo is in private beta.

If you need to glue together the SaaS tools you already use, Zapier is excellent. pylo is for teams that want their data and their automations in one place.

Where pylo is a great Zapier alternative

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

• Your data has a home. Entities, relations and a typed GraphQL API, so your automations read and write one model instead of passing records between apps.

• Flows that react instantly. A change on your own data starts a flow the moment it happens, there is no polling interval to wait for.

• 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 CRM, spreadsheet and Tables mix to keep in sync.

• Permissions you can't bypass. API, admin panel, forms, flows and MCP all go through the same permission layer, down to single fields.

• Typed custom actions. Custom flow actions are plain TypeScript with statically typed input and output, and they show up in the builder like the built-in ones.

• Non-developers can work without you. Configurable admin views, state-dependent fields and a full form builder let operations teams handle their own changes.

• 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.

• Unlimited users. 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, switch between them with one login and give client teams access without paying per seat.

• 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 connect to as many apps as Zapier? Not out of the box. pylo ships integrations for email sending and a growing selection of third-party systems, but you can write any custom action in TypeScript rather easily and with barely any limits.

• Can I use pylo and Zapier together? Yes. Zapier can call pylo's GraphQL API or a pylo webhook, so you can keep a Zap for an app pylo doesn't cover while your data lives in pylo.

• Do I need to code to build flows in pylo? No, you build flows visually. Code is only needed for custom actions, which you write in TypeScript. If you want to, you can of course create flows through the API, but it's up to you.

• 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.

• 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.