Appwrite Alternative

Appwrite is great — until you need background jobs and search

Name: Centrali
Rating: 4.8 (25 reviews)

Appwrite handles auth and storage well. Centrali gives you the rest — background jobs, search, and automation — in one system. As your app grows, you start needing more than the basics.

What's missing when you need more

Appwrite covers the basics — database, auth, storage. But as your app grows, you hit gaps.

What you need	What Appwrite gives you
Background jobs	Not built in — requires adding a job queue
Full-text search	Basic queries — no full-text search built in
Workflow automation	Functions exist, but no event-driven triggers or scheduling
Multi-tenancy	Projects act as tenants, but no built-in workspace isolation
AI tools	Not available — build your own or add a third-party service
Realtime with filtering	Realtime exists, but limited filtering and event types

You end up adding services on top of Appwrite to fill the gaps. The backend grows — but so does the complexity.

Appwrite gives you a solid foundation — but you still assemble the rest yourself.

A more complete approach

Centrali gives you everything Appwrite does — plus the pieces you'd normally have to build yourself. You don't configure services — you just build.

What you need	With Centrali
Background jobs	Run code on events, schedules, or HTTP — built in
Full-text search	Every record is searchable — no extra service
Workflow automation	Event-driven triggers, scheduled jobs, and multi-step orchestration
Multi-tenancy	Workspaces, teams, and data isolation — ready from day one
AI tools	Generate schemas from prompts, natural language search, data validation
Realtime	Live updates with filtering — your app stays in sync automatically

Everything works together automatically — no integration, no glue code.

One API. One system. No gaps to fill.

Same backend task — very different setup

Store a record and trigger a background job

With Appwrite, you add infrastructure. With Centrali, it's already there.

AAppwrite

// Store a document
import { Client, Databases, ID } from 'appwrite'

const client = new Client()
  .setEndpoint('https://cloud.appwrite.io/v1')
  .setProject('my-project')

const db = new Databases(client)
await db.createDocument('main', 'users', ID.unique(), {
  name: 'Jane',
  email: 'jane@example.com'
})

// Background job? You need a separate service
// (Bull, BullMQ, custom worker, etc.)

CCentrali

// Store a record — everything else is already wired up
await centrali.createRecord('users', {
  name: 'Jane',
  email: 'jane@example.com'
})

// Background job runs automatically
// (triggered by event, configured once)

No separate job queue. No extra infrastructure. Just one system that works.

At a glance

Here's how Appwrite and Centrali compare for common backend needs:

	Appwrite	Centrali
Database	Document-based with basic queries	Structured or schemaless — your choice
Background jobs	Not available	Built-in jobs triggered by events, schedules, or HTTP
Search	Basic queries only	Full-text search built in
Multi-tenancy	Project-level isolation only	Workspaces, teams, and isolation built in
Auth	Built-in Appwrite Auth	Works with any auth provider (BYOT)
AI tools	Not available	Schema generation, natural language search, validation

Want more details? See the full feature comparison →

Centrali replaces the stack — not just one part of it.

Start your backend in minutes

No credit card. No setup. Just run the CLI and start building.

npx @centrali-io/create-centrali-app --template saas

Takes less than 5 minutes to get started.