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Firebase

40.5K
34.3K
+ 1
2K
Pusher

623
1.4K
+ 1
234
Socket.IO

13.2K
10.6K
+ 1
784

Firebase vs Pusher vs Socket.IO: What are the differences?

Key Differences between Firebase, Pusher, and Socket.IO

Firebase, Pusher, and Socket.IO are all popular real-time communication platforms that offer various features for developers. However, there are several key differences between these platforms that make them suitable for different use cases.

  1. Data Synchronization and Real-time Updates: Firebase provides a real-time database that automatically synchronizes data across clients in real-time. It offers seamless integration with the frontend and provides automatic updates whenever the data changes. On the other hand, Pusher and Socket.IO rely on event-based communication and require developers to handle data synchronization and real-time updates manually.

  2. Scalability and Infrastructure Management: Firebase is a fully managed platform provided by Google, which means it handles the infrastructure management, scaling, and performance optimizations for developers. Pusher and Socket.IO, on the other hand, require developers to manage their own infrastructure and scaling, which can be complex and time-consuming.

  3. Authentication and Authorization: Firebase offers built-in authentication and authorization features, allowing developers to easily manage user authentication, access control, and security rules. Pusher and Socket.IO do not provide these features out of the box and require developers to implement their own authentication and authorization mechanisms.

  4. Developer Experience and Ease of Use: Firebase offers a comprehensive set of tools, SDKs, and libraries that make it easy for developers to build real-time applications. It provides a user-friendly console for managing projects, monitoring usage, and analyzing analytics. Pusher and Socket.IO also offer SDKs and libraries but may require more manual configuration and setup.

  5. Messaging and Push Notifications: Firebase provides a full suite of messaging services, including Cloud Messaging (FCM) for sending push notifications to various platforms. Pusher and Socket.IO do not offer built-in support for push notifications and require developers to integrate with third-party services.

  6. Community and Ecosystem: Firebase has a large and active community of developers, with extensive documentation, tutorials, and resources available online. It also integrates well with other Google Cloud services and products. Pusher and Socket.IO have their own communities and resources but may not be as extensive as Firebase's ecosystem.

In Summary, Firebase offers seamless data synchronization and real-time updates, manages the infrastructure and scalability, provides built-in authentication and authorization, and offers extensive developer tools, messaging services, and a large community. Pusher and Socket.IO require more manual configuration, infrastructure management, and lack some of the built-in features and scalability options provided by Firebase.

Advice on Firebase, Pusher, and Socket.IO
Needs advice
on
AblyAblyPubNubPubNub
and
PusherPusher

I am building an IoT application that will utilize connected air quality sensors to provide real-time indoor air quality in offices. I want to be able to share this data with a few different databases, etc.

Wondering if anyone has any advice on which real-time streaming API would be best for this sort of application, or even how I should think about it?

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Replies (2)
Ben Gamble
Recommends
on
AblyAbly

For IoT, we support MQTT along with websockets and SSE. The pattern you're suggesting that involves harvesting data from devices and soaking into a database is easy to achieve with one of the Ably integrations (Serverless functions/webhook) . Here are some tutorials to do things like this: https://ably.com/tutorials/reactor-event-zapier#step2-mqtt-ably

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Philip Rossen
Recommends
on
PusherPusher
at

We use Pusher at www.justlearn.com. It works fine. When you reach more users, Pusher gets expensive. We use Pusher for live chat between users. Their software is easy to use. We have had issues with auth on Pusher.

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Needs advice
on
ApolloApolloFirebaseFirebase
and
Socket.IOSocket.IO

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.

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Replies (3)
Timothy Malstead
Junior Full Stack Developer at Freelance · | 7 upvotes · 463.1K views
Recommends
on
FirebaseFirebase

I would recommend looking hard into Firebase for this project, especially if you do not have dedicated full-stack or backend members on your team.

The real time database, as you mentioned, is a great option, but I would also look into Firestore. Similar to RTDB, it adds more functions and some cool methods as well. Also, another great thing about Firebase is you have easy access to storage and dead simple auth as well.

Node.js Express MongoDB Socket.IO and Apollo are great technologies as well, and may be the better option if you do not wish to cede as much control to third parties in your application.

Overall, I say if you wish to focus more time developing your React application instead of other parts of your stack, Firebase is a great way to do that.

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Recommends
on
AblyAbly

Hello Noam 👋,

I suggest taking a look at Ably, it has all the realtime features you need and the platform is designed to guarantee critical functionality at scale.

Here is an in depth comparison between Ably and Firebase

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Recommends
on
8base8base

Hey Noam,

I would recommend you to take a look into 8base. It has features you've requested, also relation database and GraphQL API which will help you to develop rapidly.

Thanks, Ilya

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Decisions about Firebase, Pusher, and Socket.IO
Jack Heaton
Full Stack Developer at Life Story Maps · | 4 upvotes · 35.8K views

The start-up guides, tutorials and documentation in general for Firebase are pretty outstanding.

There is 1GB database storage for the free tier as compared to Supabase's 500MB. Not that I think there is anything wrong with Supabase, I intend to try it out someday.

Also if you are doing any sort of personal front-end project, even using a free cluster from MongoDB can be a lot of work and setup, with Firebase (specifically Fire store and Google Authenticator) the implementation of BaaS is quite easy to get up and running.

It's pretty easy to understand the Fires store security rules as well, and if you ever have a hard time trying to figure something out, there is good community support and YouTube tutorials for most topics.

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Pros of Firebase
Pros of Pusher
Pros of Socket.IO
  • 371
    Realtime backend made easy
  • 270
    Fast and responsive
  • 242
    Easy setup
  • 215
    Real-time
  • 191
    JSON
  • 134
    Free
  • 128
    Backed by google
  • 83
    Angular adaptor
  • 68
    Reliable
  • 36
    Great customer support
  • 32
    Great documentation
  • 25
    Real-time synchronization
  • 21
    Mobile friendly
  • 18
    Rapid prototyping
  • 14
    Great security
  • 12
    Automatic scaling
  • 11
    Freakingly awesome
  • 8
    Super fast development
  • 8
    Angularfire is an amazing addition!
  • 8
    Chat
  • 6
    Built in user auth/oauth
  • 6
    Ios adaptor
  • 6
    Awesome next-gen backend
  • 6
    Firebase hosting
  • 4
    Speed of light
  • 4
    Very easy to use
  • 3
    Great
  • 3
    It's made development super fast
  • 3
    Brilliant for startups
  • 2
    The concurrent updates create a great experience
  • 2
    Push notification
  • 2
    .net
  • 2
    Cloud functions
  • 2
    Free hosting
  • 2
    Free authentication solution
  • 2
    JS Offline and Sync suport
  • 2
    Low battery consumption
  • 2
    I can quickly create static web apps with no backend
  • 2
    Great all-round functionality
  • 1
    Large
  • 1
    Easy to use
  • 1
    Free SSL
  • 1
    Faster workflow
  • 1
    Google's support
  • 1
    CDN & cache out of the box
  • 1
    Easy Reactjs integration
  • 1
    Simple and easy
  • 1
    Good Free Limits
  • 1
    Serverless
  • 55
    An easy way to give customers realtime features
  • 40
    Websockets
  • 34
    Simple
  • 27
    Easy to get started with
  • 25
    Free plan
  • 12
    Heroku Add-on
  • 11
    Easy and fast to configure and to understand
  • 9
    JSON
  • 6
    Happy
  • 6
    Azure Add-on
  • 5
    Support
  • 4
    Push notification
  • 219
    Real-time
  • 142
    Node.js
  • 141
    Event-based communication
  • 102
    Open source
  • 102
    WebSockets
  • 26
    Binary streaming
  • 21
    No internet dependency
  • 10
    Large community
  • 9
    Fallback to polling if WebSockets not supported
  • 6
    Push notification
  • 5
    Ease of access and setup
  • 1
    Test

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Cons of Firebase
Cons of Pusher
Cons of Socket.IO
  • 31
    Can become expensive
  • 16
    No open source, you depend on external company
  • 15
    Scalability is not infinite
  • 9
    Not Flexible Enough
  • 7
    Cant filter queries
  • 3
    Very unstable server
  • 3
    No Relational Data
  • 2
    Too many errors
  • 2
    No offline sync
  • 10
    Costly
  • 12
    Bad documentation
  • 4
    Githubs that complement it are mostly deprecated
  • 3
    Doesn't work on React Native
  • 2
    Small community
  • 2
    Websocket Errors

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What is 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.

What is Pusher?

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

What is Socket.IO?

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

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What are some alternatives to Firebase, Pusher, and Socket.IO?
Parse
With Parse, you can add a scalable and powerful backend in minutes and launch a full-featured app in record time without ever worrying about server management. We offer push notifications, social integration, data storage, and the ability to add rich custom logic to your app’s backend with Cloud Code.
MongoDB
MongoDB stores data in JSON-like documents that can vary in structure, offering a dynamic, flexible schema. MongoDB was also designed for high availability and scalability, with built-in replication and auto-sharding.
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.
Auth0
A set of unified APIs and tools that instantly enables Single Sign On and user management to all your applications.
Realm
The Realm Mobile Platform is a next-generation data layer for applications. Realm is reactive, concurrent, and lightweight, allowing you to work with live, native objects.
See all alternatives