Realtime and websockets
Each provider is profiled from its own pricing page, with the source recorded against every figure. No two of these count the same thing — a message, a connection-minute, a monthly active user, a credit — so the column that matters is what the price counts, and beside it the ceiling each plan actually buys.
Realtime and websockets
| Provider | Entry paid plan | Concurrent connections | What is metered |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ably | $29 a month for Standard, and the "+ usage" matters: the package fee buys capacity ceilings and every message, channel-minute and connection-minute is billed on top of it. | 200 concurrent connections on Free, 10,000 on Standard at $29 and 50,000 on Pro at $399, alongside matching concurrent-channel ceilings of 10,000 and 50,000. | Three meters at once on top of a package fee: $2.50 per million messages, $1.00 per million channel-minutes and $1.00 per million connection-minutes, each falling to $0.50 or $0.20 with volume. A per-MAU model is offered as an alternative. A connection that sits idle still accrues connection-minutes, so time connected is billable whether or not anything is sent. |
| Liveblocks | $25 a month billed annually for Pro, which carries $30 of monthly credits — so the plan returns more credit than it costs. Team is $500 a month with $600 of credits, the same shape at twenty times the size. | Not documented | Credits, not units. A plan buys a monthly credit balance — $30 on Pro, $600 on Team — spent against whatever the product consumes, and the credit figure exceeds the plan price in both cases. Higher tiers also raise simultaneous connections and webhook event frequency rather than only the balance. |
| PubNub | $98 a month for the Starter plan, which includes 1,000 monthly active users. The highest entry price of the four, and the only one where the entry unit is people rather than messages or connections. | Not documented | Per monthly active user, and PubNub presents that as the point rather than as a detail: one metric, unlimited channels on every plan, and core features included rather than tiered. A product with many short-lived users costs more here than one with few users sending constantly — the reverse of every message-metered competitor. |
| Pusher Channels | $49 a month for Startup, which buys 1 million messages a day and 500 concurrent connections. Nothing is metered on top — the plan is the ceiling and the whole bill. | 100 concurrent connections free, 500 at $49, 2,000 at $99, 5,000 at $299 and 10,000 at $499. The ceiling moves only when the plan does. | Fixed plan tiers with pre-built ceilings and no usage metering at all — $49, $99, $299, $499, $699, $899 and $1,199 a month, each raising the daily message count and the concurrent connection count together. The page sells this as spending control, and the trade is explicit: you are rate-limited rather than invoiced when you exceed a plan. |
Which to consider
Workloads where the ceiling has to move without a plan change: 50,000 concurrent connections at $399, three meters that scale with what you actually send, and volume rates falling to $0.50 per million messages.
Building collaboration rather than transport — presence, comments, version history and pre-built components, with $30 of monthly credits on a $25 plan so the balance exceeds the fee.
Products with heavy users rather than many of them. Billing is per monthly active user with unlimited channels on every plan, so a small audience sending constantly costs the same as a small audience sending rarely.
A bill that cannot surprise you. Fixed tiers with pre-built ceilings and no usage metering at all, so $49 buys a million messages a day and 500 connections and that is the whole invoice.