Convex

What Is Convex?

Convex is a full-stack backend platform built around a single core idea: your app's state should stay in sync automatically, without you wiring up subscriptions, managing websockets, or writing cache invalidation logic. It positions itself as what developers wanted Firebase and MongoDB Realm to be, and then some. If you have spent any time building real-time features on top of Postgres or Firestore and felt like you were fighting the tools, Convex is aimed directly at that frustration.

After using it, developers describe Convex as a full backend as a service, built from the ground up for a modern TypeScript app rather than a thin layer bolted onto an existing database.

How It Works

The mental model is different from most backends. Instead of writing REST endpoints or GraphQL resolvers that clients poll, you write queries, mutations, and actions as server-side TypeScript functions. Its architecture is reactive by default. The useQuery hook behaves like a reactive variable. The platform tracks which data your component needs and pushes the new state whenever, and only when, that specific data changes. The result is that a whole class of bugs around stale state simply does not exist.

Convex triggers backend jobs and keeps the frontend in sync through live queries, with no polling and no webhook infrastructure to manage. For something like a GPU task or a long-running job, that is a meaningful reduction in plumbing.

Core Use Cases

Convex is a strong fit for apps where real-time data is central: collaborative tools, multiplayer features, live dashboards, chat, or anything where multiple clients need to see the same state. It shines when building real-time, interactive applications such as multiplayer apps, collaborative tools, or dashboards where instant updates matter most.

It is less well-suited for heavy analytics workloads or use cases that lean on complex SQL joins. The data model is document-based, not relational, and Convex uses a flexible, document-based database, which allows for dynamic schema changes and easy data manipulation but that flexibility comes at the cost of the relational query power you get from Postgres.

Who It Is For

Convex gives front-end developers the power to build incredibly fast and reactive backends without worry. That said, it works equally well for full-stack teams that want to stop thinking about infrastructure. The TypeScript-first experience means the IDE catches errors across the client-server boundary, which solo developers and small teams in particular seem to appreciate. Convex was created in 2021 by three founders who ran the infrastructure organization at Dropbox and raised $26 million from a16z in their Series A round in April 2022.

Pricing

Convex offers two main plans: a free Starter plan ideal for solo developers and prototypes, and a $25/member/month Professional plan designed for growing teams with higher resource limits and advanced features like priority support, preview deployments, and enterprise-grade security.

Startups can apply for up to 1 year free of Convex Professional, including no seat fees and 30% off usage-based fees up to $30k. The usage-based pricing on the Professional tier means costs can creep up if your functions are compute-heavy.

Strengths and Limitations

The developer experience consistently gets high marks. Developers describe the experience as a true joy to learn, comparing the convention-over-configuration paradigm to early Rails days. Performance holds up too: Convex can sustain sub-50ms read/write latency at 5,000 concurrent connections.

The tradeoffs are real though. The custom query model means you are not writing SQL, which is a learning curve if your team lives in Postgres. Unlike Firebase and Supabase, Convex takes a "bring your own auth" approach , so you need to wire in a third-party provider like Clerk or Auth0 rather than getting a built-in auth UI. The backend is open-source on GitHub, but Convex is battle tested most thoroughly on Linux and Mac, with less experience on Windows. And like any managed platform, you are tied to their infrastructure unless you self-host, which is an option but not the primary path.

For greenfield TypeScript apps where real-time sync is a first-class requirement, Convex removes a lot of backend complexity. If you need raw SQL power, existing Postgres tooling, or full data portability from day one, look at Supabase first.