Tools / Convex / Convex vs Supabase
Reactive backend: database, functions, realtime in one.
Convex is a backend platform built around TypeScript. You write functions in TypeScript and the platform handles the database, serverless functions, realtime sync, search, workflow, and file storage. Data changes propagate to connected clients automatically, so the frontend stays up to date without you writing polling or websocket plumbing. The platform covers several pieces you'd otherwise assemble yourself: a document database with queries and mutations, authentication with 80+ OAuth integrations, scheduled and background workflows, full-text and vector search, and file storage. There's also an AI Gateway that lets you call major AI models through a single API, and "Components" — independent, modular TypeScript building blocks you can drop into a backend. Convex is open source and can be self-hosted or developed locally. It ships with AI coding support, including setup prompts and plugins for agents like Claude Code and Codex, plus templates for getting started with popular frameworks. The homepage shows comparison pages against Firebase, Supabase, and traditional SQL stacks.
Postgres plus auth, storage, and realtime — the open Firebase.
Supabase gives every project a full Postgres database and layers commonly needed backend services on top of it: authentication with Row Level Security, auto-generated REST APIs, Edge Functions, file storage, realtime data sync, and vector embedding support for AI workloads. You can use one product or all of them, and manage everything from a dashboard with a table editor, SQL editor, and RLS policy tools. It's open source (the GitHub repo shows over 111K stars) and the database is portable, so you're not locked into a proprietary data format. Client libraries exist for frameworks like React and Flutter, and the site offers starter templates including a Stripe subscriptions kit, a Next.js app with cookie-based auth, an AI chatbot template, and a LangChain starter.