Every modern application is, at its core, an API and database problem. The way you design, expose, and scale your data layer—and the API that sits on top of it—shapes how fast your team can ship, how cleanly your systems integrate, and how much operational overhead you carry as you grow. The tools you choose to manage both are an architectural decision, not just a developer preference.
This article evaluates the top platforms for API and database management: Xano, Supabase, Hasura, Directus, Strapi, and Airtable. The lineup is intentional. The first five represent serious, purpose-built approaches to backend infrastructure across different philosophies and use cases. Airtable is included deliberately as a baseline—to illustrate what a spreadsheet-first tool with a bolted-on API looks like, and why that distinction matters when you're building for production.
What we're evaluating
For each platform, we're examining:
- Database management: Schema design, querying, data modeling, and operational control
- API generation and flexibility: How APIs are created, customized, and maintained
- Protocol support: REST, GraphQL, real-time, and emerging standards like MCP
- Business logic: Whether the platform lets you express real application behavior at the API layer
- Security and access control: Auth, permissions, and enterprise compliance
- Developer experience: Setup time, tooling quality, and how the platform fits into real engineering workflows
Xano
Xano has undergone a significant evolution. The platform has moved well beyond its visual-builder origins into a complete backend platform where code, visual development, and AI-assisted logic coexist in a single unified environment. Its API and database story are inseparable by design: Xano provides a managed PostgreSQL database and generates instant REST endpoints from your data model, exposing them through a flexible, production-grade API layer that supports custom business logic, authentication, middleware, background tasks, and third-party integrations—all without requiring you to stand up or maintain separate infrastructure.
What distinguishes Xano's API layer is the depth of logic you can attach to it. The Function Stack lets you define exactly what happens when an endpoint is hit—transformations, conditional flows, external calls, auth checks—using a combination of visual tooling, XanoScript (a code-based scripting language), and AI assistance. This isn't CRUD generation with optional hooks; it's a first-class API development environment that supports complex, real-world application behavior. Canvas View gives non-engineering stakeholders a node-based visualization of the same backend logic engineers are writing—a genuine bridge between technical and product teams.
On the database side, Xano's managed PostgreSQL layer supports triggers, indexing, caching, and real-time capabilities, with the full data modeling flexibility Postgres is known for. Xano also has MCP (Model Context Protocol) support, positioning its APIs as ready-made integration points for AI agents and LLM-powered applications. On the security side, the platform ships with built-in RBAC, SOC 2, GDPR, and HIPAA compliance, containerized workspace isolation, and encrypted data in transit and at rest.
For teams that want to manage their API, their database, and the logic connecting them without stitching together a patchwork of separate services, Xano is the most complete single-platform answer in this comparison.
Where Xano excels: Teams building production SaaS, AI-powered applications, or complex internal tools who need a full-featured API and database layer with business logic, auth, and infrastructure managed in one place.
Supabase
Supabase is the open-source Firebase alternative that the developer community has broadly adopted as a serious backend-as-a-service. Built on PostgreSQL, it gives engineering teams a production-ready managed database alongside auto-generated REST and GraphQL APIs, real-time subscriptions, built-in authentication, and file storage—all in one package.
The database experience is where Supabase shines brightest. Direct SQL access, full Postgres extension support, and row-level security policies that enforce access control at the database level give developers the kind of low-level control that higher-abstraction platforms can't match. The auto-generated API layer via PostgREST is fast and reliable, and its real-time API—built on WebSocket subscriptions to table changes—is one of the best implementations of live data in this category.
The constraint is that Supabase's API is essentially a direct projection of your database schema. Custom business logic—transforming data, orchestrating multi-step operations, calling external services—lives in Edge Functions, which are serverless functions that you write and deploy separately. That's a workable architecture for strong engineering teams, but it means your API logic and your database layer are deliberately decoupled, which adds complexity as applications mature.
Where Supabase excels: Developer teams with strong SQL fluency building applications where direct database control, open-source infrastructure, and real-time API capabilities are priorities.
Hasura
Hasura takes a focused architectural position: rather than being a full backend platform, it specializes in instantly generating a powerful GraphQL API (and more recently, REST endpoints) over your existing database. Point Hasura at a PostgreSQL database, and it introspects the schema and exposes a rich, filterable, real-time API within minutes—without writing resolver code.
The depth of Hasura's generated API is a genuine differentiator. Filtering, sorting, pagination, aggregate queries, and real-time subscriptions are all available out of the box at a level of sophistication that would take significant development time to replicate manually. For teams building dashboards, collaborative tools, SaaS products with live activity feeds, or any application where real-time data is a product requirement, Hasura's subscription model is exceptionally capable.
On the database side, Hasura doesn't manage its own—it connects to yours. That bring-your-own-database model is a strength for teams with existing infrastructure, but it means Hasura is always one layer of a larger stack rather than a self-contained solution. Custom business logic requires Actions (remote schema stitching with external REST endpoints) or Event Triggers that fire serverless functions—both patterns push logic outside Hasura and add architectural surface area to manage.
Where Hasura excels: GraphQL-first engineering teams with existing database infrastructure who need an immediately powerful, real-time API layer without writing resolver code.
Directus
Directus describes itself as a data engine, and that framing is precise. It wraps any SQL database—Postgres, MySQL, SQLite, OracleDB, CockroachDB, MariaDB, and MS-SQL—and instantly generates a REST and GraphQL API on top of it, alongside a customizable data management application. Crucially, Directus works directly on top of your existing schema without requiring migration or structural changes. That makes it a standout choice for teams modernizing legacy systems or building API layers over databases they don't fully control.
The database management experience Directus provides through its admin UI is one of the most accessible in this category—engineers and non-technical stakeholders alike can browse, manage, and visualize data without touching SQL. On the API side, the generated endpoints support deep filtering, field-level access control, hooks for extending behavior, and automation flows triggered by data events.
Custom API endpoints—behavior that goes beyond reading and writing records—require Node.js extension development, which is where Directus begins to feel more like a framework than a platform. For teams comfortable with that model it offers substantial flexibility. For teams looking for a faster path to custom logic, the extension architecture introduces meaningful friction.
Where Directus excels: Teams building API layers over existing SQL databases, digital agencies managing multichannel applications, and product teams where both engineers and non-technical stakeholders need to interact with the data layer.
Strapi
Strapi is the leading open-source headless CMS, and positioning matters here: it's a content-first API builder, not a general-purpose backend platform. Where the other tools in this comparison are designed for application backends, Strapi is optimized for structured content—editorial data, product catalogs, documentation, marketing assets—that needs to be managed through a rich admin interface and delivered via API to one or more frontends.
Within that use case, Strapi's API and content management experience are genuinely strong. Both REST and GraphQL are supported, and developers have full control over routes, controllers, and services via its Node.js/Express architecture. The Content Types Builder lets you define your API schema through an admin UI, the database layer supports Postgres, MySQL, MariaDB, and SQLite, and role-based permissions give editors granular control over what they can create, read, and modify.
But Strapi is absolutely not a complete application backend. It handles content schema management and API delivery well, but it doesn't provide end-user authentication for your application—you'll need an external auth provider for customer-facing identity. Attempting to use Strapi as the primary API and database layer for a complex SaaS product will surface meaningful limitations around multi-tenant data modeling and scalable business logic.
Where Strapi excels: Content-driven applications where editorial teams need to manage structured data and developers need clean, customizable API output with full control over the underlying Node.js layer.
Airtable
Airtable belongs in this comparison not as a peer to the platforms above, but as a reference point—a clear illustration of what happens when API and database capabilities are secondary features rather than foundational design principles.
Airtable is a spreadsheet-database hybrid. Its familiar interface lowers the barrier to data organization for non-technical teams, and its auto-generated REST API means any base is immediately accessible programmatically. For lightweight internal tools, quick prototypes, and non-technical teams that need a shareable data layer without any engineering overhead, that combination has real utility.
But the constraints surface quickly when you try to build anything substantial on top of it. The database model is proprietary and non-relational in the traditional sense, making complex data modeling and querying difficult. API rate limits are conservative. Filtering capabilities are shallow. Airtable formulas and computed fields are inaccessible through the API. There is no business logic layer, no custom endpoint support, and no application-level auth system. As usage scales, teams consistently find themselves working around the platform's limitations rather than building on them.
Airtable earns its place in this comparison because many teams start there. The zero-friction entry point is genuinely appealing, and the ceiling is often invisible until you've already built something on top of it. Recognizing that ceiling early—and understanding what purpose-built API and database infrastructure offers instead—is a decision worth making before the migration cost grows.
Where Airtable works: Lightweight prototypes, internal tools, and non-technical teams that need a fast, shareable data layer with basic API access and no engineering overhead.
The bottom line
The right platform depends on what you're building and how your team works.
If your priority is a complete, production-grade environment where API development, database management, and business logic are handled together — without maintaining your own servers or assembling a stack from parts — Xano is the strongest single-platform answer in this comparison. Its 2.0 release closes the gap that used to exist between visual development speed and engineering depth, and its AI-readiness gives it a meaningful edge as intelligent application backends become the standard.
If you have a strong SQL engineering culture and want open-source infrastructure with direct database control, Supabase is the natural choice. If GraphQL is your standard and real-time data is a core product requirement, Hasura is exceptionally capable at that specific job. If you're building an API layer over an existing database, Directus handles that better than anything else here. If content delivery is your primary use case, Strapi is purpose-built for it.
And if you're currently using Airtable as your API and database layer — this comparison was written partly with you in mind. The ceiling is real, and there's a better foundation available.
Ready to see what a production-grade platform looks like in practice? Sign up for Xano and have your first backend running in minutes.
