Pusher vs Socket.IO

Overview

Pusher

Stacks618

Followers1.4K

Votes234

Socket.IO

Stacks13.6K

Followers11.0K

Votes776

Pusher vs Socket.IO: What are the differences?

Both Pusher and Socket.IO are popular real-time web application development frameworks that facilitate real-time communication between clients and servers. Let's discuss the key differences between them.

Scalability: Pusher is a cloud-based service that simplifies real-time communication by handling server infrastructure. It provides a highly scalable solution and takes care of scaling as the number of users and connected devices grow. On the other hand, Socket.IO is a library that enables real-time bidirectional event-based communication between clients and servers. It is not by default scalable and requires additional setup and configuration for managing scaling in a distributed environment.
Technology Stack: Pusher primarily uses WebSockets for real-time communication, providing a persistent connection between the client and server. It supports fallback mechanisms like HTTP long polling to ensure compatibility with older browsers. Socket.IO, on the other hand, supports various real-time communication techniques, including WebSockets, HTTP long polling, and server-sent events. This makes Socket.IO more flexible and compatible with a wider range of browsers and devices.
Ease of Use: Pusher offers a simple and straightforward API that abstracts much of the complexity involved in real-time communication. It provides client libraries for multiple programming languages, making it easier to integrate real-time capabilities into applications. Socket.IO also provides an easy-to-use API, but it requires more configuration and customization compared to Pusher, especially when it comes to handling specific use cases.
Community and Ecosystem: Pusher has a large and active developer community and a mature ecosystem. It offers extensive documentation, tutorials, and community support, making it easy for developers to find resources and solutions to common problems. Socket.IO also has a thriving community and a broad ecosystem, but it may not have the same level of maturity and resources as Pusher.
Hosting and Infrastructure: Pusher is a cloud-hosted service, which means that the infrastructure and server-side components are managed by Pusher themselves. This reduces the burden of managing servers and infrastructure for real-time communication. Socket.IO, being a library, requires developers to set up and manage their own servers and infrastructure, which can be advantageous for developers who prefer more control over their system.
Cost: Pusher offers a range of pricing plans, including a free plan for limited usage. Their paid plans scale based on the number of concurrent connections and features required. Socket.IO, being an open-source library, is free to use and can be hosted on any server infrastructure. However, hosting and managing the infrastructure for Socket.IO may incur additional costs.

In summary, Pusher provides a scalable and user-friendly real-time communication service with a cloud-based infrastructure, while Socket.IO is a flexible library that requires more configuration and customization. Pusher has a larger community and ecosystem, but Socket.IO is free to use and offers more control over hosting and infrastructure.

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Advice on Pusher, Socket.IO

Kenzie

Sep 30, 2021

Needs adviceon

.NET

AngularJS

MSSQL

I'm working on a project where I need to both send real-time updates for specific data sets, along with providing notifications to the users after long-running processes have been completed (SSE).

The project is using .NET Framework, AngularJS, & MSSQL. I understand that SignalR is nice as a polyfill for .NET and you can scale with a backplane, but I was wondering if there was a more efficient/effective technology for this?

36.1k views36.1k

Comments

Noam

Jul 16, 2020

Needs adviceon

Node.js

ExpressJS

React

We are starting to work on a web-based platform aiming to connect artists (clients) and professional freelancers (service providers). In-app, timeline-based, real-time communication between users (& storing it), file transfers, and push notifications are essential core features. We are considering using Node.js, ExpressJS, React, MongoDB stack with Socket.IO & Apollo, or maybe using Real-Time Database and functionalities of Firebase.

1.15M views1.15M

Comments

Amit

Software Developer at Superpro.ai

Aug 20, 2021

Needs advice

We need to do lots of real-time communication like sending messages when someone request t to join an ongoing call then in real-time show the request to admin and if the admin accepted, then let the user join the call, change the user role from the audience to speaker so that they can also speak. We are planning to use WebSocket for it, but I think using some tools that already work on WebSocket is better so that we can focus on other things rather than implementing and managing WebSocket.

3.4k views3.4k

Comments

Detailed Comparison

Pusher	Socket.IO
Pusher is the category leader in delightful APIs for app developers building communication and collaboration features.	It enables real-time bidirectional event-based communication. It works on every platform, browser or device, focusing equally on reliability and speed.
Easily build scalable in-app notifications, chat, realtime graphs, geotracking and more in your web & mobile apps with our hosted pub/sub messaging API.;Send programmable push notifications to iOS and Android devices with delivery and open rate tracking built in.;Easily add 1-1 and group Chat to your web & mobile apps. Presence, message storage, rich media, notifications, typing indicators and more.;Embed a realtime collaborative editor in your app in seconds to empower your users to do more, together.	Real-time analytics - Push data to clients that gets represented as real-time counters, charts or logs.;Binary streaming - Starting in 1.0, it's possible to send any blob back and forth: image, audio, video.;Instant messaging and chat - Socket.IO's "Hello world" is a chat app in just a few lines of code.;Document collaboration - Allow users to concurrently edit a document and see each other's changes.
Statistics
Stacks 618	Stacks 13.6K
Followers 1.4K	Followers 11.0K
Votes 234	Votes 776
Pros & Cons
Pros 55 An easy way to give customers realtime features 40 Websockets 34 Simple 27 Easy to get started with 25 Free plan Cons 11 Costly	Pros 219 Real-time 143 Node.js 141 Event-based communication 102 Open source 102 WebSockets Cons 12 Bad documentation 4 Githubs that complement it are mostly deprecated 3 Doesn't work on React Native 2 Websocket Errors 2 Small community
Integrations
Slack Datadog Librato	Auth0 Gatsby Flutter React Backbone.js Cloud Firestore Outbrain

What are some alternatives to Pusher, Socket.IO?

Firebase

Firebase is a cloud service designed to power real-time, collaborative applications. Simply add the Firebase library to your application to gain access to a shared data structure; any changes you make to that data are automatically synchronized with the Firebase cloud and with other clients within milliseconds.

PubNub

PubNub makes it easy for you to add real-time capabilities to your apps, without worrying about the infrastructure. Build apps that allow your users to engage in real-time across mobile, browser, desktop and server.

SignalR

SignalR allows bi-directional communication between server and client. Servers can now push content to connected clients instantly as it becomes available. SignalR supports Web Sockets, and falls back to other compatible techniques for older browsers. SignalR includes APIs for connection management (for instance, connect and disconnect events), grouping connections, and authorization.

Ably

Ably offers WebSockets, stream resume, history, presence, and managed third-party integrations to make it simple to build, extend, and deliver digital realtime experiences at scale.

Syncano

Syncano is a backend platform to build powerful real-time apps more efficiently. Integrate with any API, minimize boilerplate code and control your data - all from one place.

NATS

Unlike traditional enterprise messaging systems, NATS has an always-on dial tone that does whatever it takes to remain available. This forms a great base for building modern, reliable, and scalable cloud and distributed systems.

SocketCluster

SocketCluster is a fast, highly scalable HTTP + realtime server engine which lets you build multi-process realtime servers that make use of all CPU cores on a machine/instance. It removes the limitations of having to run your Node.js server as a single thread and makes your backend resilient by automatically recovering from worker crashes and aggregating errors into a central log.

deepstream.io

Scalable Server for Realtime Web Apps with JSON structures that can be read, manipulated and listened to, messages that can be sent to one or more subscribers, and request response workflows, between two clients or servers.

8base

A cloud service designed to power enterprise-grade web and mobile applications that require support for large numbers of users, complex data and transactional requirements, comprehensive role-based security and a modern look-and-feel.

Supabase

Supabase is currently in early-Alpha .It is an open-source Firebase alternative. It adds realtime and RESTful APIs to your PostgreSQL database without a single line of code.

Related Comparisons

Pusher vs Socket.IO: What are the differences?

Scalability: Pusher is a cloud-based service that simplifies real-time communication by handling server infrastructure. It provides a highly scalable solution and takes care of scaling as the number of users and connected devices grow. On the other hand, Socket.IO is a library that enables real-time bidirectional event-based communication between clients and servers. It is not by default scalable and requires additional setup and configuration for managing scaling in a distributed environment.
Technology Stack: Pusher primarily uses WebSockets for real-time communication, providing a persistent connection between the client and server. It supports fallback mechanisms like HTTP long polling to ensure compatibility with older browsers. Socket.IO, on the other hand, supports various real-time communication techniques, including WebSockets, HTTP long polling, and server-sent events. This makes Socket.IO more flexible and compatible with a wider range of browsers and devices.
Ease of Use: Pusher offers a simple and straightforward API that abstracts much of the complexity involved in real-time communication. It provides client libraries for multiple programming languages, making it easier to integrate real-time capabilities into applications. Socket.IO also provides an easy-to-use API, but it requires more configuration and customization compared to Pusher, especially when it comes to handling specific use cases.
Community and Ecosystem: Pusher has a large and active developer community and a mature ecosystem. It offers extensive documentation, tutorials, and community support, making it easy for developers to find resources and solutions to common problems. Socket.IO also has a thriving community and a broad ecosystem, but it may not have the same level of maturity and resources as Pusher.
Hosting and Infrastructure: Pusher is a cloud-hosted service, which means that the infrastructure and server-side components are managed by Pusher themselves. This reduces the burden of managing servers and infrastructure for real-time communication. Socket.IO, being a library, requires developers to set up and manage their own servers and infrastructure, which can be advantageous for developers who prefer more control over their system.
Cost: Pusher offers a range of pricing plans, including a free plan for limited usage. Their paid plans scale based on the number of concurrent connections and features required. Socket.IO, being an open-source library, is free to use and can be hosted on any server infrastructure. However, hosting and managing the infrastructure for Socket.IO may incur additional costs.

Pusher vs Socket.IO

Overview