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Convex is the closest sibling to Pylon — both pitch “TypeScript backend with reactive queries and managed sync.” If you’re choosing between them, here’s an honest comparison.

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TL;DR

  • Choose Convex if you want a polished pure-TS experience, you’ll stay on their cloud (or accept their FSL-licensed self-host), and you don’t need game shards or facets.
  • Choose Pylon if you want a single-binary self-host, FOSS 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. For a production deployment, both work; the operational story is different.

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License

Convex’s license bars you from offering a competing managed Convex service for the first 2 years after each release. For 99% of users this is irrelevant; it matters if you’re building a BaaS-on-top-of-a-BaaS. Pylon’s MIT/Apache means you can do anything. Convex has full-text search — keyword + prefix matching. It does not have native facets — you’d build them with regular queries on top. Pylon ships SQLite FTS5 + roaring-bitmap facets out of the box. useSearch("Post", { facets: ["tags", "authorId"] }) returns hits + live facetCounts in one call. For an Algolia-style faceted UI without paying Algolia, Pylon is the cleaner story.

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Game shards

Convex has no concept of authoritative tick-based game state. If you’re building a Slack-like app, you don’t need it. If you’re building a multiplayer game or a Figma-style cursor-presence app, Pylon’s Shard<S: SimState> primitive is a real thing Convex doesn’t replicate. One caveat to be clear about: that shard simulation is authored in Rust (the pylon_realtime crate), with a useShard React hook to connect from the client — there’s 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/trees — true CRDTs with conflict-free convergence. Convex has reactive queries that automatically reconcile updates, but does not ship a CRDT library; for collaborative editing you’d 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) and background jobs too, but Convex’s scheduler UI is more polished. (Pylon’s multi-step durable @pylonsync/workflows package is still early / not yet published.)
  • Convex Vector Search — first-class vector search; Pylon has the vector_search plugin but Convex’s is more featureful.

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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 — first-class 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.
  • Plugin ecosystem — 20+ built-in plugins (TOTP, audit log, webhooks, MCP, etc.) you flip on in the manifest.
  • Self-host on day one — Convex’s self-host is recent and the OSS bundle hasn’t reached the polish of their hosted offering yet.

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Migrating from Convex

Most of the dev surface is 1:1. The biggest delta is the codegen step (Pylon) vs. inline TS types (Convex) — one extra CLI call.

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Honest weakness

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

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Both / and

Convex on web + Pylon for game shards is a legitimate combo if your team prefers Convex’s TS surface for app data and you need authoritative tick-based simulation for a multiplayer feature — bearing in mind that the shard simulation itself is written in Rust. The wire formats are different — you’d be running both backends — but it’s a real option.