StackShareStackShare
Follow on
StackShare

Discover and share technology stacks from companies around the world.

Follow on

© 2025 StackShare. All rights reserved.

Product

  • Stacks
  • Tools
  • Feed

Company

  • About
  • Contact

Legal

  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of Service
  1. Stackups
  2. Application & Data
  3. Platform as a Service
  4. Realtime Backend API
  5. PubNub vs Pusher vs Pushpin

PubNub vs Pusher vs Pushpin

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Pusher
Pusher
Stacks618
Followers1.4K
Votes234
PubNub
PubNub
Stacks249
Followers458
Votes238
Pushpin
Pushpin
Stacks10
Followers49
Votes3

Share your Stack

Help developers discover the tools you use. Get visibility for your team's tech choices and contribute to the community's knowledge.

View Docs
CLI (Node.js)
or
Manual

Advice on Pusher, PubNub, Pushpin

Kenzie
Kenzie

Sep 30, 2021

Needs adviceon.NET.NETAngularJSAngularJSMSSQLMSSQL

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
Amit
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
tauschjl
tauschjl

Apr 22, 2021

Needs advice

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?

38.1k views38.1k
Comments

Detailed Comparison

Pusher
Pusher
PubNub
PubNub
Pushpin
Pushpin

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

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.

Pushpin is a reverse proxy server that makes it easy to build realtime web services. The project is unique among realtime push solutions in that it is designed to address the needs of API creators.

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.
PubNub SDKs support over 50 of the most popular environments, including: iOS, Android, JavaScript, .NET, Java, Ruby, Python, PHP and many more.;Data Push - Establish and maintain persistent socket connections to any device (mobile, browser, desktop and server) and push data to global audiences in less than ¼ of a second;Presence - Automatically detect when users enter or leave your app and whether machines are online;Storage and Playback- Store your real-time data streams for future access, “playback” or re-publish;Mobile - Easily manage the complexity of real-time apps on mobile devices;Analytics - Simulate an audience of millions. See a live view of audience size, engagement and geography;Security - Protect your real-time data with easy to use enterprise-grade security
Supports HTTP streaming, HTTP long-polling, and WebSockets.;Clients communicate using your API contract. Pushpin is a server-side implementation detail.;Since Pushpin is a proxy server, the backend can be written in any language.;Compatible with API management systems, such as Kong and 3scale.;Horizontally scalable. Instances don't talk to each other.;Open source. Commercial support available from Fanout.
Statistics
Stacks
618
Stacks
249
Stacks
10
Followers
1.4K
Followers
458
Followers
49
Votes
234
Votes
238
Votes
3
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
  • 36
    Massively scalable & easy to use
  • 25
    Easy setup
  • 20
    Reliable
  • 19
    Great support
  • 14
    Flexible to integrate to custom applications
Cons
  • 1
    Costly
Pros
  • 3
    Open source
Cons
  • 1
    Worst community support
Integrations
Slack
Slack
Datadog
Datadog
Librato
Librato
No integrations availableNo integrations available

What are some alternatives to Pusher, PubNub, Pushpin?

Firebase

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.

Socket.IO

Socket.IO

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

SignalR

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bootstrap
Materialize

Bootstrap vs Materialize

Laravel
Django

Django vs Laravel vs Node.js

Bootstrap
Foundation

Bootstrap vs Foundation vs Material UI

Node.js
Spring Boot

Node.js vs Spring-Boot

Liquibase
Flyway

Flyway vs Liquibase