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 SendBird

PubNub vs SendBird

OverviewComparisonAlternatives

Overview

PubNub
PubNub
Stacks249
Followers458
Votes238
SendBird
SendBird
Stacks142
Followers405
Votes78

PubNub vs SendBird: What are the differences?

What is PubNub? Build real-time apps quickly and scale them globally. 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.

What is SendBird? A Complete Chat Platform, Messaging and Chat SDK and API. SendBird is a Messaging SDK, Chat API, and fully managed chat infrastructure for your mobile apps and websites. Embeddable chat for iOS, Android, JavaScript, Unity, .NET.

PubNub and SendBird are primarily classified as "Realtime Backend / API" and "Communications SDK" tools respectively.

"Massively scalable & easy to use" is the top reason why over 31 developers like PubNub, while over 10 developers mention "Active support is impressive. (Support for private deve" as the leading cause for choosing SendBird.

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

Detailed Comparison

PubNub
PubNub
SendBird
SendBird

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.

SendBird is a Messaging SDK, Chat API, and fully managed chat infrastructure for your mobile apps and websites. Embeddable chat for iOS, Android, JavaScript, Unity, .NET.

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
In-app chat experiences users will love; Immersive voice and video experiences; Easy in-app chat support for your customers; Enterprise-ready compliance
Statistics
Stacks
249
Stacks
142
Followers
458
Followers
405
Votes
238
Votes
78
Pros & Cons
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
  • 13
    Active support is impressive. (Support for private deve
  • 10
    Easy to use
  • 10
    Pre-built UI for major platforms
  • 8
    Migration API for customers using other chat services
  • 7
    Scalability is awesome
Cons
  • 2
    Prices ramp up exponentially
  • 2
    Policy on concurrent users leads to overages and overch

What are some alternatives to PubNub, SendBird?

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.

Pusher

Pusher

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

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.

Chat by Stream

Chat by Stream

Chat API and SDK. With a beautiful UI Kit, easy to use React Components and powerful API. Add Chat to any application in a matter of hours. The tech uses Go, RocksDB and Raft. By the creators of Stream, the API that powers activity feeds for more than 300 million users.

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.

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