Pylon vs. Firebase
Firebase combines Firestore, Realtime Database, Auth, Cloud Functions, and Storage for mobile apps. Pylon covers much of that surface and adds declarative schema, faceted search, and native SSR.
You're building a mobile-first app, you want Google's ecosystem (FCM push, Crashlytics, GA4) tightly integrated, and you accept a closed-source backend.
You want self-host, a permissive license, declarative schema instead of schemaless documents, faceted search without Algolia, or no cold starts on functions.
Architecture at a glance
| Pylon | Firebase | |
|---|---|---|
| License | MIT OR Apache-2.0 | Closed source |
| Self-hostable | Yes, on any Linux box | No, Google-only |
| Schema | Declarative (TypeScript) | Schemaless (Firestore documents) |
| Functions runtime | In-process | Cloud Functions (separate) |
| Function cold start | None | 1–10 seconds for cold containers |
| Full-text search | Built-in (full-text + facets) | Mirror to Algolia / Typesense |
| Open source | Yes | No |
What both ship
- Real-time sync over WebSocket
- Built-in auth (email, OAuth, anonymous)
- Functions for server-side logic
- File storage with signed URLs
- Web + mobile + native SDKs
- Managed cloud (Firebase / Smallware)
Where Firebase wins
FCM push, Crashlytics, GA4, Remote Config, A/B testing, in-app messaging. Mobile-app-shaped concerns are first-class. With Pylon you'd integrate FCM + a crash reporter + your analytics provider on top.
Firebase's iOS, Android, and Unity SDKs are deeply integrated with platform features (push tokens, app-startup hooks, offline persistence) and have years of polish.
Firestore is built to shard transparently. Pylon's SQLite default is single-process, and Postgres mode eventually reaches its own limits. Globe-scale apps need a distributed database such as Spanner or DynamoDB.
Where Pylon wins
Firestore lets every document have its own shape. That helps with prototyping, but mistyped fields become orphan data and refactors require manual sweeps. Pylon's entity() definition is the single source of truth.
Pylon functions run in a warm, in-process runtime. Firebase Cloud Functions can add a 1–10 second delay when a container starts cold.
ctx.db inside a mutation is a transaction. Firebase Cloud Functions reach Firestore through the Admin SDK from a separate process, so the function and database write do not share one transaction.
Pylon includes full-text search and facets in the binary. Firebase recommends integrating a separate search service such as Algolia.
Pylon runs as one binary on a Linux box you control. Firebase runs only on Google's infrastructure.
Firebase prices reads, writes, deletes, egress, invocations, and GB-seconds separately. Smallware lists one price per dimension; self-hosted users pay their infrastructure bill.
Moving from Firebase
| Firebase | Pylon |
|---|---|
| Firestore collections | entity() definitions in TypeScript |
| Security rules (custom DSL) | policy() with boolean expressions |
| firestore.collection().onSnapshot() | db.useQuery("Entity") |
| Cloud Functions (HTTP-triggered) | mutation / action in functions/*.ts |
| Firebase Auth | Magic-link / OAuth (export users, import as User rows) |
| Cloud Storage | presigned uploads (S3 / R2 / local) |
| Firebase Cloud Messaging | Keep FCM; register tokens via an action and send from your function |
Firebase's mobile-first integrations include FCM, Crashlytics, A/B testing through Remote Config, and in-app messaging. Pylon does not provide equivalents. Firebase has more polish for apps centered on push notifications and mobile experimentation. With Pylon, bring your own analytics, crash reporting, and push provider; register FCM through an action.
Try Pylon for yourself.
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