Appwrite

Appwrite — Open-source backend platform: databases, auth, storage, functions, self-hostable. Appwrite is a batteries-included backend you can run on your own Docker host, with a console-driven model where collections, attributes, indexes and permissions are configured through a UI or CLI rather than a schema file in your repo. It stores data in MariaDB but exposes only its own REST and SDK API. Realtime is a websocket subscription to document events rather than reactive queries. Founded 2019. Venture-backed. Open source under BSD-3-Clause.

We track it in 1 comparison — Convex alternatives — so every claim below is a cell in a table you can open and check rather than an impression. Across those rosters it sits against 10 other tools, and what follows is where it visibly separates from them.

Where it gives ground.

• Transactions — none, the weakest of the 11 here. Supabase records mvcc.
• Vector search — No. Convex records Yes.
• Raw SQL — No. Supabase records Yes.
• Optimistic writes — No. Convex records Yes.

None of these disqualify it on their own. They are the fields to check against your own requirements before you commit, because they are the ones where a competitor genuinely does better.

Provenance. 26 of 26 tracked fields carry a value for Appwrite, and 10 of those cite a document you can open. Last verified 2026-07-20. Every figure keeps its own provenance — measured by us, claimed by the vendor, inferred, or community-reported — and we would rather print a dash than a guess.

Its nearest neighbour in our data is Convex. Appwrite is ahead on Auth (built-in against first-party-addon) and GitHub stars (52,000 against 8,000). Convex takes Optimistic writes (Yes against No) and Vector search (Yes against No). That pattern repeats across the rest of the roster — see Appwrite alternatives for the other rivals, each compared the same way.

Founded

2019

Funding

Venture-backed

Licence

BSD-3-Clause (open source)

Fields we track

26 of 26

Last verified

2026-07-20

The most complete self-hostable batteries-included option, with the widest OAuth and SDK coverage here. Held back by a console-first model that keeps your schema out of your repo, and by the weakest transaction story on the page.

Transactions

none11th of 11

Inferred

Vector search

○No8th of 11

Inferred

Reactivity

push1st of 11

Vendor-claimedverified 2026-07-20source

Self-hostable

●Yes1st of 11

Vendor-claimedverified 2026-07-20source

Local-first sync

○No6th of 11

Inferred

Raw SQL

○No7th of 11

Inferred

Function timeout

15 min2nd of 4

Inferred

Optimistic writes

○No7th of 11

Inferred

Appwrite is the right call in these situations, each one drawn from a field we actually record:

• Teams that must run the whole backend on their own infrastructure.
• Apps with many client platforms — the SDK matrix is the broadest here.
• Products where auth provider breadth matters more than query power.

Reach for something else when any of the following is a requirement rather than a nice-to-have:

• Transactions. Appwrite records none, the weakest of the 11 tools in the Convex alternatives roster. Supabase records mvcc on the same field. If that is a hard requirement rather than a preference, start elsewhere.
• Vector search. Appwrite records No on the Convex alternatives table. Convex records Yes on the same field. If that is a hard requirement rather than a preference, start elsewhere.
• Raw SQL. Appwrite records No on the Convex alternatives table. Supabase records Yes on the same field. If that is a hard requirement rather than a preference, start elsewhere.
• Optimistic writes. Appwrite records No on the Convex alternatives table. Convex records Yes on the same field. If that is a hard requirement rather than a preference, start elsewhere.

We publish this block because a comparison that only lists what a tool is good at is marketing. Every figure above sits on the same page as its source, and the field definitions are on the category tables if you want to check how we measured them.

What we don't know. Nothing, on the fields we track: all 26 of them carry a value for Appwrite. That is unusual and it will decay — vendors add dimensions faster than we add columns — so the verification dates beside each figure matter more than the completeness does.