Pusher Alternatives for Realtime Apps (2026 Pricing)

The best Pusher alternatives in 2026 are Ably and PubNub if you want a dedicated hosted messaging service, Socket.IO if you'd rather run your own WebSocket server, and a backend with built-in realtime (StitchDB, Supabase or Firebase) if your messages are mostly "this row changed". That last case is more common than it looks: a lot of Pusher traffic is a server sending a database update to clients right after it saves it.

This guide compares the options on the two numbers that drive Pusher's bill, concurrent connections and messages, and shows what moving the code looks like.

#Pusher Channels pricing

As of November 2026, Pusher Channels pricing is a ladder of fixed plans:

Fixed tiers are easy to understand. The downside is the step: 101 concurrent users on the free plan means $49/month, even if you send few messages.

#Two kinds of realtime traffic

Before picking a service, split your events into two groups:

1. Ephemeral messages that never touch the database: typing indicators, cursors, "user is online", game ticks. These need a fast pub/sub channel.
2. Data change notifications: a new chat message saved, an order status updated, a comment added. Here the database is the source of truth, and the realtime event is a copy of a write.

Hosted pub/sub services handle both, but for group 2 you write the same thing twice: save to the database, then publish to Pusher. If something fails between the two steps, clients miss the update. A backend that streams database changes directly removes that gap.

#Alternatives at a glance

#StitchDB Realtime

StitchDB is a hosted backend: a dedicated Postgres database per project with Auth, REST and GraphQL APIs, Storage, Edge Functions and Realtime. Realtime runs over WebSockets at wss://<project-ref>.p.stitchdb.com/realtime/v1/ and has four parts:

• Postgres changes: inserts, updates and deletes from published tables, filtered by Row Level Security so each user only receives rows they're allowed to read.
• Broadcast: ephemeral messages between clients, like Pusher events.
• Presence: who is connected to a channel.
• Broadcast from the database: realtime.send() from SQL or a trigger.

There is also message history: clients that reconnect receive missed broadcasts in order without duplicates, kept for 2 minutes on Free, 10 on Pro, 30 on Scale and 60 on Enterprise.

Limits as of November 2026: Free 200 peak connections and 2M messages a month; Pro 500 and 5M; Scale 1,000 and 10M; Enterprise 10,000 and 100M. With the spend cap off, extra capacity costs $5 per 1,000 peak connections and $1 per 1M messages.

Listening to new chat messages without any publish step:

alter publication stitchdb_realtime add table public.messages;

stitchdb
  .channel('room-42')
  .on('postgres_changes',
    { event: 'INSERT', schema: 'public', table: 'messages', filter: 'room_id=eq.42' },
    (payload) => addMessage(payload.new))
  .subscribe()

The client inserts with a normal API call, and every subscriber allowed by your policy gets the row.

Trade-offs: servers are in the EU only, so clients in Asia or the Americas have higher latency than with a global edge network. Pusher, Ably and PubNub have longer track records for very large fan-out. Connection limits are account-wide across projects; the pricing page lists them per plan.

#Ably

Ably's free plan includes 6M messages a month with 200 peak connections and 200 channels. Standard is $29/month plus usage, with up to 10,000 connections; Pro is $399/month plus usage. Pick Ably when you need very high scale, message ordering guarantees and global edge delivery.

#PubNub

PubNub prices by monthly active users or transactions. The free tier is 200 MAU or 1M transactions; Starter is $98/month for 1,000 MAU. It suits chat, IoT and apps where per-user pricing is predictable.

#Firebase Realtime Database and Firestore

If you are on Firebase, the database itself is realtime: clients listen to a path or a query. The Realtime Database Spark plan allows 100 simultaneous connections. It is a good fit when your data model fits Firebase; see Firebase vs Appwrite for how it compares with other BaaS options.

#Socket.IO and your own server

Socket.IO is an open-source library for WebSocket servers in Node.js. You pay only for servers, but you own scaling across instances (usually with a Redis adapter), reconnection, auth and monitoring. Good for teams with ops capacity and unusual protocols.

#Migrating from Pusher

Pusher code looks like this:

const channel = pusher.subscribe('private-room-42')
channel.bind('new-message', (data) => addMessage(data))

The StitchDB broadcast equivalent:

const room = stitchdb.channel('room-42', { config: { private: true } })
room.on('broadcast', { event: 'new-message' }, ({ payload }) => addMessage(payload))
await room.subscribe()

// send from a client
room.send({ type: 'broadcast', event: 'new-message', payload: { text: 'hi' } })

Pusher's private channels need an auth endpoint on your server. On StitchDB private channels are authorized by policies on realtime.messages, so there is no auth endpoint to host:

create policy "room members read" on realtime.messages for select to authenticated
  using (exists (
    select 1 from public.room_members m
    where m.user_id = auth.uid() and 'room-' || m.room_id = realtime.topic()
  ));

Server-side triggers in Pusher (pusher.trigger(...)) become either a database insert that clients see through Postgres changes, or realtime.send() in a trigger:

create function public.notify_order() returns trigger language plpgsql as $$
begin
  perform realtime.send(to_jsonb(new), 'order-update', 'orders', false);
  return new;
end $$;

create trigger order_updated after update on public.orders
  for each row execute function public.notify_order();

For a longer walk-through, see Listen to Postgres changes in realtime.

#When to stay on Pusher

Stay if your traffic is mostly ephemeral, you fit comfortably in one tier, and your backend is not Postgres. Pusher is simple, and its SDKs are mature. Switching only pays off when the database-plus-publish pattern causes bugs or the next tier step is expensive.

#FAQ

#Is there a free Pusher alternative?

Yes. As of November 2026, Ably's free plan has 6M messages a month, StitchDB's Free plan has 200 peak connections and 2M messages, and Socket.IO is free to self-host.

#What's the difference between Pusher and Supabase or StitchDB Realtime?

Pusher is a standalone pub/sub service. Supabase and StitchDB also stream changes from your Postgres tables, filtered by Row Level Security.

#Can I use StitchDB Realtime without the rest of StitchDB?

You can use only broadcast and presence, but you still create a project. Most of the value comes from combining it with the database.

#How does StitchDB count realtime usage?

Peak connections and messages are counted per month across your account. At the limit with the spend cap on, new connections get 402 and the message rate drops to 1 per second.

Build a live feature without a separate messaging bill: try StitchDB Realtime free.