Dartvel vs PocketBase

PocketBase packages its backend in one executable: download one file, run it, and you have a database, an admin panel, auth, file storage and realtime. Dartvel arrives at the same place from the other direction: dartvel build web-server produces one executable that creates its SQLite database beside itself on first run. PocketBase can serve a built frontend from its pb_public folder, and that frontend is still a separate project talking to its API. In Dartvel the app and its backend are one project, compiled into one file.

dartvel build web-server
scp build/server user@host:/srv/app
ssh user@host /srv/app/server
# the site, the API and Studio, on one port

Dartvel: Studio, built in: data models designed in it, records, and your pages

Dartvel: Sessions, passwords, magic links and one-time codes, passkeys, OAuth, SAML, LDAP, second factors

Dartvel: Model change streams in one process. Delivery to devices is not built yet

Dartvel: @DVModel(offline: ...): save() writes the device copy at once, and the queue is sent when the server can be reached

PocketBase: Official JavaScript and Dart SDKs, in a project you build separately

PocketBase: v0.40, before 1.0. Its docs do not yet recommend it for production critical apps

Dartvel: v0.11.5. Built capabilities and planned work are listed per spec section

With PocketBase you still choose a frontend framework, wire up its JavaScript or Dart SDK, write the screens, and ship that separately. That is a real choice and sometimes the right one. In Dartvel the page and the function it calls are compiled together, so a renamed field is a build failure instead of a support ticket, and the same page renders on the web and on a phone.

Studio covers more than records: it has a data model designer, a page builder, a frontend function builder, a backend function builder and a Deploy menu that lists every target with its status.

The page builder writes to the same running binary, so a page edited there is served immediately.

It is smaller and more focused. Download, run, done, with no build step at all.

Its admin has been used in anger by far more people than Studio has.

Its realtime subscriptions reach browsers and phones today, through the SDKs. Dartvel's model changes do not reach a device yet.

If you want a backend for a React, Svelte or Flutter app you already have, PocketBase and its Dart SDK are the answer and Dartvel is not.

PocketBase is excellent and the overlap is real: one file, SQLite, an admin, realtime. The honest split is that PocketBase serves an app you build elsewhere, and Dartvel builds the app.

One binary, SQLite beside it, an admin built in, and your app inside it.

What is in the box.

PocketBase is a backend. Dartvel is the application.

Where PocketBase is ahead today.

Dartvel next to the tools people ask about.