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Convex is the product most similar to Pylon. Both offer a TypeScript backend with reactive queries and managed sync. They differ in deployment, licensing, search, and game-server support.

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TL;DR

  • Choose Convex if you want a polished, pure-TypeScript experience, you will stay on their cloud (or accept their FSL-licensed self-host), and you do not need game shards or facets.
  • Choose Pylon if you want a single-binary self-host, an open-source license, native faceted search, or in-process functions that share a transaction with your writes.

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Same shape

Both ship:
  • Reactive queries that auto-update the UI when data changes
  • TypeScript-first server functions (mutation / query / action)
  • Schema as code
  • Real-time WebSocket sync
  • Built-in auth + file storage
  • Self-host options
  • React, React Native, and Next.js SDKs

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Where they differ

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Process model

Pylon ships as one Rust binary. Convex’s self-hosted product can run from Docker or a prebuilt backend binary, with the dashboard and CLI included. For a hobby project on a $5 VPS, Pylon installs in 30 seconds with no Docker. Both work for a production deployment, but the operational details differ.

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License

Convex’s license bars you from offering a competing managed Convex service for the first two years after each release. This does not matter for most users. It matters only if you are building a backend-as-a-service on top of Convex. Pylon’s MIT/Apache license has no such limit. Convex has full-text search: keyword and prefix matching. It has no native facets. You build facets yourself with regular queries on top of Convex. Pylon ships SQLite FTS5 and roaring-bitmap facets, built in. useSearch("Post", { facets: ["tags", "authorId"] }) returns hits and live facetCounts in one call. For an Algolia-style faceted UI without paying for Algolia, Pylon is the simpler option.

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Game shards

Convex has no concept of authoritative tick-based game state. If you are building a Slack-like app, you do not need it. If you are building a multiplayer game or a Figma-style cursor-presence app, Pylon’s Shard<S: SimState> primitive is a real feature that Convex does not have. The shard simulation is authored in Rust (the pylon_realtime crate), and a useShard React hook connects it to the client. Pylon has no TypeScript API for the server-side shard logic today.

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Pricing

Pylon Cloud pricing is based on a platform plan plus machine compute and included quotas. Convex’s pricing page combines hosted usage, team seats, and higher-tier minimums.

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Editor / Studio

Both have web-based inspectors. Pylon’s runs against your local binary by default. Convex’s hosted dashboard is the default for cloud projects, and the self-hosted product includes its own dashboard.

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CRDTs

Pylon integrates Loro for collaborative text, lists, maps, and trees. Loro provides true CRDTs with conflict-free convergence. Convex has reactive queries that automatically reconcile updates, but it does not ship a CRDT library. For collaborative editing, you would integrate Yjs or Loro yourself.

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Where Convex is better

  • Pure-TS dev loop — Convex has invested heavily in DX polish. Type inference flows end-to-end without codegen. Pylon requires pylon codegen (one CLI call); Convex’s TypeScript flow is a bit tighter.
  • Larger team behind it — well-funded YC company, more docs, more examples.
  • Scheduled functions — Convex has clean durable primitives for scheduled jobs. Pylon has a durable scheduler (ctx.scheduler.runAfter), background jobs with exponential retry back-off, and durable multi-step workflows (completed results replay, sleeps span days, events resume paused runs). Convex’s scheduler UI is more polished.
  • Convex Vector Search at scale — Convex’s vector indexes are approximate and built for large tables. Pylon’s built-in vector search (field.vector(dims) + ctx.llm.embed + ctx.db.vectorSearch) is exact k-NN, with perfect recall and zero index maintenance, good up to about 100k rows per entity. Past that, Convex’s ANN indexes win.

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Where Pylon is better

  • Small footprint — install the pylon binary + Bun on a VPS, or pylon deploy. No Docker daemon.
  • Faceted search — built in, with live counts. Convex requires custom queries.
  • Game shards — Shard<S: SimState> for tick-based authority (authored in Rust; useShard hook on the client).
  • Open license — MIT/Apache, not FSL.
  • Built-in features — TOTP, audit log, webhooks, rate limiting, file storage, faceted search, and vector search ship in the binary, configured from the manifest or env. No marketplace of third-party components is required.
  • Self-host on day one — Convex’s self-host is recent, and the OSS bundle has not reached the polish of their hosted offering yet.

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Migrating from Convex

Most of the development surface maps directly. Pylon adds a code-generation step; Convex provides inline TypeScript types.

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Pylon tradeoffs

Convex has a larger developer community and more polish on edge cases (reactive query batching, type inference depth, IDE integration). If you want the most polished pure-TypeScript reactive backend and do not need single-binary self-host, faceted search, or Rust game shards, Convex is a great choice.

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Using both

Using Convex on the web and Pylon for game shards is a legitimate combination if your team prefers Convex’s TypeScript surface for app data and needs authoritative tick-based simulation for a multiplayer feature. Keep in mind that the shard simulation itself is written in Rust. The wire formats differ, so you would run both backends side by side, but it is a real option.