Comparison

Busabase vs Convex for AI Agents

Convex is a reactive backend you write in TypeScript, built so that you and your coding agents can ship an app without breaking it. Busabase is the workspace where your agents and your team do the work itself: visual tables, a team knowledge base, Skills, and apps, with every change an agent makes recorded as a Change Request you can read, review, and undo.

The two meet when a team asks where agent work should live. If it is your app's own data, that is Convex's job. If it is the records, documents, and decisions agents produce for the business, Busabase does it without a line of backend code. This page goes through the jobs one by one.

Last verified 13 November 2026 against Convex's home page, pricing, documentation (limits, backups, dashboard, MCP server, AI, self-hosting), its news site, and Busabase's current product.

The short verdict

Choose Busabase when

your agents update customer records, write research and content, or maintain operating docs and Skills, and people need to see what changed, by whom, and why, without anyone writing schema, functions, or a front end first.

Choose Convex when

you are building an application in TypeScript and want its database, server functions, and live updates in one place, with types checked from the database to the client.

Use both when

your product runs on Convex and agents do the work around it. The app's data stays in Convex; the work agents do for the team lives in Busabase, and a Convex action can read it over the API.

The core difference: every change is a Change Request

Think of it as version control for business data. In Busabase every edit, whether to a record, a Doc, a Skill file, or a Base's fields, is a Change Request: a branch of immutable commits that carries a message and a diff. When it merges the record moves forward, and the previous version stays in its history.

Convex takes care of a different problem. Its mutations are transactions, so concurrent writes cannot leave your data half-written. But once a mutation commits, the document holds the new value. Convex's audit log records team actions such as creating deployments and inviting members, not the before and after of a document, and restoring a backup “wipes your existing data and replaces it” with the snapshot.

  • A reason and a diff on every write. Each change says what it is for and shows the field-level before and after.
  • The agent is on the record. The author, and the key or tool the change came through, are stored on the commit.
  • Undo one change, not the whole database. Records, Docs, and Skills keep their full history; roll back the single edit that was wrong.
  • Review only where you want it. Writes with write access land straight away. Give an agent a proposal-only key and its changes wait in the Inbox until a person approves or sends them back.
A Busabase Change Request under review: the change message, a before-and-after diff of a record's body, and Approve and Request changes buttons
A Change Request in the Inbox: the message, who proposed it and through which tool, and each field before and after. Approve it or ask for changes.

Convex makes sure an agent's code writes data correctly. Busabase makes sure your team can see, question, and reverse what an agent wrote.

What else Busabase gives your agents and your team

On a code-first backend, each of these is a feature someone has to design, build, and keep running. In Busabase they ship with the workspace.

Tables anyone can read

Open any Base as a table, gallery, kanban board, calendar, or Gantt chart, and save views with AND/OR filter groups. Nobody needs the developer dashboard to check an agent's output.

A team knowledge base

Docs with your policies, files agents produce, and the Bases they update live in one tree that people and agents share, under one set of permissions.

Grep across the workspace

A single regex search runs over files, Doc bodies, Base records, and agent prompts and returns each match with its line and context, so an agent cites exact evidence.

Your Skills, uploaded once

Put the team's own Skills into the workspace. Every connected agent reads the same version, and changing a Skill goes through a Change Request.

AirApps on four engines

Ask an agent to build a small app on your data, then run it in the browser, on your own machine, in a cloud sandbox, or as a website.

Websites with your domain

The Website engine runs on Cloudflare Workers, supports backend endpoints, and takes a custom domain. An agent can preview and publish it through the CLI, API, or MCP.

Made for a team

Invite people with read, write, or manage roles. Agents join with their own keys, each capped at read, propose-only, write, or manage, and nodes can be private, workspace-wide, or shared by grant.

Agents connect quickly

MCP, a CLI, an OpenAPI REST API, webhooks, a Python SDK, and plugins for Claude Code and Codex, with a bundled skill that explains how your workspace is laid out.

Your data, where it must be

MIT-licensed: run it on a laptop, on your own servers, fully offline, or on Busabase Cloud. A space exports to plain Markdown, Base definitions, and JSON records.
A Busabase Base showing agent-written blog posts as a table with title, cover image, and body columns, plus saved views for Ready to publish and Drafts
Posts an agent wrote, in a Busabase Base. The whole team can read and edit them, and saved views such as “Ready to publish” narrow the same records.

Comparison by the job you are trying to do

Each row is a job a team brings to these products. Where Convex is the right tool, the table says so.

What you are trying to doBusabaseConvex
Know what an agent changed, who did it, and whyBuilt in — a Change Request with a message, field-level diff, author, and the key it came throughNot for data: a committed mutation leaves the new value. The audit log (Pro and up) covers team actions such as deployments and members
Undo one bad changeYes — roll back that single edit; the rest of the history staysRestore a backup of table data, which replaces the current data; daily backups need Pro
Let an agent propose changes without applying themYes — a proposal-only key sends its changes to the InboxA review queue for agent writes is not documented. The MCP server is read-only on production by default; a flag turns on full read and write
Let teammates read and edit what agents wroteYes — table, gallery, kanban, calendar, and Gantt viewsA data page in the developer dashboard; anything for non-engineers is an app you build
Bring teammates and agents into one workspaceYes — read, write, and manage roles; agents join with scoped keysTeam members as Admin or Developer for the dashboard; custom roles on Business
Keep a team knowledge baseYes — Docs, files, and Bases in one tree with shared permissionsFile storage for your app; no documents
Search everything for an exact phraseYes — one regex grep over files, Doc bodies, records, and agent promptsFull-text and vector search over the documents in your app's tables
Give every agent the same team SkillsYes — upload once; every agent reads the same versionConvex's Agent Skills teach coding agents to use Convex; there is no place for your team's own Skills
Turn the data into an appYes — AirApps in the browser, on your machine, in a cloud sandbox, or as a websiteYou write the app; Chef, an open-source builder, generates full-stack apps on Convex
Publish a website on your own domainYes — Website engine on Cloudflare Workers, custom domains on Plus and aboveCustom domains (Pro) serve your functions and HTTP actions; host the front end on Vercel, Netlify, or similar
Connect Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, and other agentsYes — MCP, CLI, OpenAPI, webhooks, and pluginsYes — an MCP server plus official plugins and skills for Claude Code, Codex, and Cursor
Know the bill before it arrivesFlat per seat — no metered overage$25 per developer on Pro, plus usage beyond the included amounts; 1.3x in other regions
Self-host, including offlineYes — MIT, from a laptop to an air-gapped networkYes — FSL license that becomes Apache-2.0 after two years; Docker; community support
Build a reactive TypeScript app with live queries and end-to-end typesNot its job — use ConvexYes — Convex's home ground: queries rerun and clients update when data changes

Coming next

These three are being built now and are not available yet. We list them so you can plan; this page will be updated when they ship.

App users In development

People who use an app you publish, such as a shop's customers, sign in with an email code and see only their own records. The platform enforces it; they are not workspace members and take no seat.

Ontology In development

Describe the business objects your team works with, such as Company, Contact, and Deal, and how they link, on top of the Bases you already have. People and agents share one vocabulary, and edits to it are Change Requests.

Fine-grained permissions In development

Row- and field-level access inside a Base, agent grants with a scope and an expiry, and access requests a person approves, so each agent holds only what its job needs.

Convex helps agents write correct code. Busabase keeps track of what agents change.

Few backends have leaned into coding agents as hard as Convex. Its home page promises “end-to-end type safety so agent hallucinations are caught before they ship.” It publishes official plugins and Agent Skills for Claude Code, Codex, and Cursor, and an MCP server that “cannot access production deployments” by default. Chef, its app builder, is open source, and Convex says more than a quarter of a million people have used it.

For the agents inside your app, the Agent component keeps threads and message history with “built-in hybrid vector/text search for messages,” and the AI Gateway lets your functions call models without your own provider keys. The company is well funded: a $57 million Series B in August 2026, and nearly 10,000 paying teams by its own count.

All of that serves one goal: an app that works. The guarantees are about code, such as types that check, transactions that hold, and functions that scale. They do not cover the business record an agent keeps after the app is running, such as which customer row it edited, what the Doc said before, or whether a person should check the change first. A thread in the Agent component is one app's conversation history; it is not your team's records, policies, and Skills.

Busabase starts where those guarantees stop. Every write an agent makes is a Change Request with a reason, a diff, and an undo, in a workspace your whole team can open without writing code.

Using them together

A common split for a team that builds its product on Convex and runs agents beside it:

  1. The app, with its users, live queries, and transactions, runs on Convex. Coding agents keep building it with Convex's MCP server and plugins.
  2. A research agent profiles accounts into a CRM Base in Busabase, and the sales team works the pipeline on a kanban board.
  3. A writing agent drafts help articles and release notes in a Content Base. Its key is proposal-only, so an editor approves each Change Request before it lands.
  4. A Convex action, which can make network requests, fetches the approved records from the Busabase REST API. Or the agent publishes them as an AirApp website on your domain.

Convex keeps your app fast and consistent for its users. Busabase keeps your agents' work readable, accountable, and reversible for your team.

Pricing at a glance

Busabase

Free: 1 space, 3 seats, 5,000 records, 1 GB of files, and every node type including Skills, workflows, and AirApps.
Plus: $10 per seat per month, billed yearly. Pro: $20.
A flat price per seat, with no metered overage. Self-hosting is free under MIT, with no seat limit.

Convex

Free / Starter: $0, up to 6 developers, 1M function calls and 0.5 GB of database per month included; Starter pays as you go beyond that.
Professional: $25 per developer per month, 25M function calls and 50 GB of database included, daily backups and custom domains.
Business & Enterprise: $2,500 monthly minimum.
Usage past the included amounts is metered; other regions are priced at 1.3x.

Prices as published on 13 November 2026. See Busabase pricing, Convex pricing, and Convex limits for current details.

Where Convex is the better choice

  • You are building a live, collaborative app in TypeScript. Queries rerun and push updates to clients when their data changes, mutations are transactions, and types run from the database to the UI.
  • Coding agents write most of your backend. Type checks, the MCP server, and official plugins and skills give an agent fast feedback on the code it writes.
  • Your app has its own agents. The Agent component handles threads, message history, and vector search, and the AI Gateway calls models without separate provider accounts.

Busabase's limits, plainly: no realtime subscriptions, no vector index, and no migration tooling for your app's schema. Sign-in for the end users of apps you publish is in development (App users) and not available today. If you need these now, build that part on Convex.

Frequently asked questions

Does Busabase replace Convex?
No, not as your application's backend. It replaces what teams would otherwise build on top of one to hold agent work: an admin screen for non-engineers, a docs folder, an edit history, and internal tools.
Convex mutations are transactions. Isn't that enough?
A transaction makes sure a write is complete and consistent. It does not record why the write happened, show the value it replaced, hold it for review, or let you undo that one change later. A Change Request does all four.
How is a Change Request different from Convex's audit log?
Convex's audit log records what team members do, such as creating deployments or inviting people. A Change Request is the data change itself, with its message, diff, author, and a way to roll it back.
Does every agent write need a human review?
No. Anyone with write access, person or agent, lands changes immediately and keeps the history. Review is a choice: give an agent a proposal-only key, or have it submit a change for review.
Can a Convex app read data from Busabase?
Yes. Convex actions can make network requests, so an action can call the Busabase REST API with a read key and use the records in your app.
Can I self-host both?
Yes. Busabase is MIT-licensed and runs from a single laptop to an air-gapped network; see the self-hosting guide. Convex's backend is available under the FSL, which turns into Apache-2.0 after two years, and its docs note that self-hosting “is not for everyone.”

Next step

Connect an agent you already use and ask it to put one real piece of work into a Base: a list of accounts, a content plan, a set of support answers. Your team can open it in minutes, see every change it made, and build on it.

Related reading: All comparisons · Busabase vs Supabase · Busabase vs Firebase · How Change Requests work · Search and grep · Publish an AirApp as a website · How platforms handle agent writes

Sources: Convex home page, Convex overview, Convex pricing, Convex limits, Convex backup and restore, Convex dashboard: data, Convex dashboard: teams and audit log, Convex MCP server, Convex AI code generation, Convex AI Agents, Introducing Convex AI Gateway, Open Kitchen: Chef is now OSS, Convex self-hosting, Convex custom domains, Convex hosting, Convex raises a $57M Series B, Convex for Enterprise, Busabase pricing