Apollo vs SocketCluster

Overview

SocketCluster

Stacks47

Followers168

Votes47

GitHub Stars6.2K

Forks322

Apollo

Stacks2.7K

Followers1.8K

Votes25

Apollo vs SocketCluster: What are the differences?

Developers describe Apollo as "GraphQL server for Express, Connect, Hapi, Koa and more". Build a universal GraphQL API on top of your existing REST APIs, so you can ship new application features fast without waiting on backend changes. On the other hand, SocketCluster is detailed as "An open, scalable realtime engine for Node.js". 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.

Apollo can be classified as a tool in the "Platform as a Service" category, while SocketCluster is grouped under "Realtime Backend / API".

"From the creators of Meteor" is the top reason why over 8 developers like Apollo, while over 8 developers mention "Cluster mode is awesome" as the leading cause for choosing SocketCluster.

Apollo and SocketCluster are both open source tools. Apollo with 7.53K GitHub stars and 935 forks on GitHub appears to be more popular than SocketCluster with 5.35K GitHub stars and 283 GitHub forks.

CircleCI, Swat.io, and Flexport are some of the popular companies that use Apollo, whereas SocketCluster is used by notthatbad technologies UG, Livevents, and StaffConnect. Apollo has a broader approval, being mentioned in 131 company stacks & 127 developers stacks; compared to SocketCluster, which is listed in 6 company stacks and 3 developer stacks.

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CLI (Node.js)

Manual

Advice on SocketCluster, Apollo

Márton

CTO at Media4Care

Aug 31, 2020

Decided

We wanted to save as much time as possible when writing our back-end, therefore Apollo was out of the question, we went for an auto-generated API instead. Hasura looked good in the beginning, but we wanted to retain the ability to add a few manual resolvers and modifications to auto-generated ones, which ruled out Hasura. Postgraphile with its Plug-In architecture was the right choice for us, we never regretted it!

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Comments

Raj

CTO & Founder at Novvum

Oct 5, 2020

Review

Hey Brian, it's hard to pick a best tool for any situation, however, there are tools that offer advantages dependent on use case.

Server Side

If you're looking to quickly generate a GraphQL API, you can use a Graphql As A Service like FaunaDB, Slash Graphql, or 8base.

If you want something more advanced on the server side: Prisma with Postgres, Nexus, & Apollo Server (js) is a great stack to try out. Examples here

Check out TypeORM and TypeGraphQL too

If you're have some existing data on Postgres, PostGraphile or Hasura are your best bet!

If you are using a lot of AWS services, check out Amplify and AppSync. Tutorial here

On the client side:

Check out Gatsby! Graphql is already configured and used to query static or remote information at build time. It's a great way to get your feet wet!

Apollo Client is often the choice for more advanced use cases. But URLQL and gqless are some pretty good alternatives too!

Hope this helps! 👍

295 views295

Comments

Detailed Comparison

SocketCluster	Apollo
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.	Build a universal GraphQL API on top of your existing REST APIs, so you can ship new application features fast without waiting on backend changes.
Resilient on both the client and backend - Process crashes, lost connections and other failures are handled seamlessly.;Scales linearly as you add more CPU cores and workers (assuming a decent OS) - Tested with up to 16 cores.;Also designed to scale horizontally across multiple machines. See sc-redis sample.	-
Statistics
GitHub Stars 6.2K	GitHub Stars -
GitHub Forks 322	GitHub Forks -
Stacks 47	Stacks 2.7K
Followers 168	Followers 1.8K
Votes 47	Votes 25
Pros & Cons
Pros 12 Cluster mode is awesome 8 WebSockets 7 Scalability 4 Security 4 Real-time	Pros 12 From the creators of Meteor 8 Great documentation 3 Open source 2 Real time if use subscription Cons 1 Increase in complexity of implementing (subscription) 1 File upload is not supported
Integrations
Node.js	GraphQL

What are some alternatives to SocketCluster, Apollo?

Heroku

Heroku is a cloud application platform – a new way of building and deploying web apps. Heroku lets app developers spend 100% of their time on their application code, not managing servers, deployment, ongoing operations, or scaling.

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.

Clever Cloud

Clever Cloud is a polyglot cloud application platform. The service helps developers to build applications with many languages and services, with auto-scaling features and a true pay-as-you-go pricing model.

Socket.IO

It enables real-time bidirectional event-based communication. It works on every platform, browser or device, focusing equally on reliability and speed.

Google App Engine

Google has a reputation for highly reliable, high performance infrastructure. With App Engine you can take advantage of the 10 years of knowledge Google has in running massively scalable, performance driven systems. App Engine applications are easy to build, easy to maintain, and easy to scale as your traffic and data storage needs grow.

Red Hat OpenShift

OpenShift is Red Hat's Cloud Computing Platform as a Service (PaaS) offering. OpenShift is an application platform in the cloud where application developers and teams can build, test, deploy, and run their applications.

AWS Elastic Beanstalk

Once you upload your application, Elastic Beanstalk automatically handles the deployment details of capacity provisioning, load balancing, auto-scaling, and application health monitoring.

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.

Pusher

Pusher is the category leader in delightful APIs for app developers building communication and collaboration features.

Render

Render is a unified platform to build and run all your apps and websites with free SSL, a global CDN, private networks and auto deploys from Git.

Related Comparisons

"From the creators of Meteor" is the top reason why over 8 developers like Apollo, while over 8 developers mention "Cluster mode is awesome" as the leading cause for choosing SocketCluster.

Apollo vs SocketCluster