Convex Cloud vs. Self-Hosted: Choosing Your Backend (Pros, Cons & Use Cases)

The landscape of Backend-as-a-Service (BaaS) tools has shifted. Historically, you often had to choose between the ease of a managed service (like Firebase) and the control of open-source software (like PostgreSQL).

With Convex, the lines are interestingly blurred. While Convex is famous for its "magic" developer experience (DX) provided by its managed Cloud offering, the core backend engine is open source. This inevitably leads developers, CTOs, and hobbyists to ask a crucial question:

"Should I use the managed Convex Cloud, or should I self-host the open-source backend myself?"

This isn't just a question of price; it's a question of architectural philosophy, maintenance overhead, and feature availability. In this guide, we will dissect the differences, the trade-offs, and help you decide which deployment model fits your specific needs.

The Two Contenders

Before diving into the pros and cons, let's clarify exactly what we are comparing.

1. Convex Cloud (Managed)

This is the standard way to use Convex. It is a fully managed, serverless platform. When you run npx convex dev, you are spinning up a development environment in the cloud. It handles database provisioning, scaling, caching, real-time subscriptions, and function execution automatically.

2. Self-Hosted (Open Source)

The core transaction engine of Convex is open source. You can run the Convex backend binary on your own infrastructure—be it a Docker container on a DigitalOcean droplet, an EC2 instance, or even your local machine for offline development.

1. Developer Experience & Setup

The biggest selling point of Convex has always been its radical simplicity. How does self-hosting impact that?

Convex Cloud: Zero Configuration

In the Cloud model, infrastructure is invisible. You define your schema and functions in TypeScript, and the platform adapts.

• Setup: npm install convex && npx convex dev. That's it.
• Deploy: Automatic git integrations (e.g., Vercel, Netlify) or a simple CLI command.
• Environment: Development, Preview, and Production environments are managed automatically.

Self-Hosted: You Are the Ops Team

Self-hosting brings back the "Server" in "Serverless." You are responsible for the environment where the engine runs.

• Setup: Requires configuring Docker, setting up persistent storage volumes, and managing networking.
• Deploy: You need a CI/CD pipeline to build your container and deploy it to your server fleet.
• Database: While Convex handles its own storage engine, you are responsible for the disk reliability and backups of the server it runs on.

# Example: Running the Open Source backend locally requires Docker setup
docker run -d \
  -p 3210:3210 \
  -v $(pwd)/convex_data:/convex_data \
  ghcr.io/get-convex/convex-backend:latest

Winner: Convex Cloud. The "magic" of Convex relies heavily on the abstraction of infrastructure. Self-hosting removes that abstraction.

2. Feature Parity: The Dashboard Gap

One of the most jarring differences between the two models is the tooling surrounding the database.

The Missing Dashboard

The Convex Cloud dashboard is a powerhouse. It provides:

• Data Explorer: View, edit, and query your tables visually.
• Log Streaming: Real-time logs for your functions.
• Scheduling: Visual management of cron jobs and scheduled functions.
• Metrics: Charts on function execution time and database throughput.

In a self-hosted environment, you generally lose the hosted Dashboard. You are interacting with the database primarily through the CLI or by building your own admin interfaces. While the engine executes the logic, the visual "cockpit" that makes debugging fast is part of the managed service value add.

Vector Search and Advanced Services

Some advanced features of Convex Cloud rely on specific cloud infrastructure components (like specialized vector storage or third-party integrations) that may be complex to replicate or entirely absent in a basic self-hosted setup without significant custom engineering.

Winner: Convex Cloud. The dashboard and integrated tooling are significant productivity boosters that you lose when self-hosting.

3. Scaling and Reliability

This is where the "Serverless" promise is tested.

Convex Cloud: Elasticity

Convex Cloud is designed to be elastic.

• Traffic Spikes: If your app goes viral, Convex Cloud automatically scales query throughput.
• Storage: Infinite storage scaling without manual partitioning.
• Caching: Automatic, global caching of query results.

Self-Hosted: Fixed Constraints

When you self-host, your scalability is limited by the hardware you provision.

• Vertical Scaling: If you max out your CPU or RAM, the server crashes or slows down until you manually upgrade the instance.
• Availability: Achieving "High Availability" (HA) with zero downtime requires running multiple nodes, load balancers, and ensuring replication is correctly configured—a complex distributed systems problem that Convex Cloud solves for you.

Winner: Convex Cloud (for production). Self-hosting is fine for predictable, low-traffic internal tools, but scaling it requires a dedicated DevOps engineer.

4. Cost vs. "Hidden" Costs

The primary reason developers consider self-hosting is often to avoid usage-based pricing.

The Math of Self-Hosting

• Hardware Cost: A robust VPS might cost $20-$50/month.
• Human Cost: This is often underestimated. How much is your time worth? If you spend 5 hours a month patching Linux servers, configuring firewalls, and fixing Docker volumes, that "free" self-hosting option just became very expensive.

The Value of Managed

Convex Cloud has a generous free tier and pay-as-you-go pricing. For many startups and mid-sized apps, the bill is often lower than the combined cost of server hosting + DevOps salary. You are paying for the absence of headaches.

Winner: Tie (Context dependent). If you have massive, predictable throughput and a sunk-cost DevOps team, self-hosting might be cheaper. For 99% of projects, Cloud is more cost-efficient when factoring in labor.

5. Data Privacy and Compliance

This is the one area where self-hosting shines brightly.

If you are building an application for:

• Healthcare (HIPAA) with specific on-prem requirements.
• Government/Defense with air-gapped networks.
• Regions with strict data residency laws where Convex Cloud does not yet have a region.

In these scenarios, Self-Hosting is the only option. The ability to run the open-source engine inside your own private VPC, completely cut off from the public internet, is a capability managed clouds cannot match.

Summary: Which One Should You Choose?

Choose Convex Cloud If:

1. You want to move fast: You want to focus on product features, not docker-compose.yml files.
2. You need reliability: You want guaranteed uptime, backups, and scaling without waking up at 3 AM.
3. You love the DX: You want the dashboard, the logs, and the seamless integration with modern frameworks like Next.js.
4. You are a Startup or Scale-up: The opportunity cost of managing servers is too high.

Choose Self-Hosted If:

1. Total Control is Mandatory: You are legally required to host data on your own physical hardware.
2. Offline/Local Development: You are building in an environment with no internet access (e.g., an intranet tool or field operations).
3. Hobbyist Tinkering: You have a homelab and enjoy the process of managing infrastructure for personal projects.
4. Cost at Hyperscale: You are processing billions of operations that are extremely predictable, and you have the engineering resources to optimize the infrastructure manually.

Conclusion

The fact that Convex is open source is a massive win for the community—it prevents absolute vendor lock-in and allows for transparency. However, for the vast majority of developers, Convex Cloud is the product that delivers on the promise of the "Convex experience."

The value of Convex lies not just in the database engine, but in the orchestration—the seamless syncing, the reactive queries, and the serverless execution. When you self-host, you get the engine, but you have to build the car yourself.

If you are building the next big thing, save your engineering tokens for your user-facing features. Let Convex Cloud handle the backend.