# PubNub

Canonical: https://inetgeek.com/realtime/pubnub/

Realtime messaging billed on monthly active users rather than messages or connections, with unlimited channels on every plan.

## Who it suits

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.

Consider something else if You have many short-lived users. MAU billing inverts every message-metered competitor here: a product with a large, lightly-engaged audience pays for all of them, and at $98 the entry price is twice the next highest.

## iScore

71 / 100 (80% interval 59–83), rank 3 of 4 in realtime — interval overlaps the next rank, so this is an ordering, not a finding.

inetGeek's own reading, computed from sourced facts against category peers by disclosed rules. Not a provider claim. Intervals are 80%; a provider with few documented facts is pulled toward the category middle rather than scored on what little is known.
Method: https://inetgeek.com/iscore/. Full output with every criterion's basis: https://inetgeek.com/scores.json. Every realtime peer ranked: https://inetgeek.com/realtime/pubnub/alternatives/

- Price: 80 (74–86), weight 45%, 4 of 4 criteria scored
- Capacity and limits: 50 (17–83), weight 36%, 0 of 1 criteria scored; scored for peers, not here — undocumented or stated without a number or a yes/limited/no: concurrency_limit
- Evidence: 90 (90–90), weight 18%, 4 of 4 criteria scored

## What the documentation says

### Pricing

- Free tier: Yes ([source](https://www.pubnub.com/pricing/), read 2026-09-15)
- Kind of free offer: Always free ([source](https://www.pubnub.com/pricing/), read 2026-09-15)
- What the free plan includes: 200 monthly active users or 1 million transactions, whichever comes first, plus 1 GB of data storage retained for 7 days. Described as suitable for testing and prototypes. ([source](https://www.pubnub.com/pricing/), read 2026-09-15)
- Credit card to start: No ([source](https://www.pubnub.com/pricing/), read 2026-09-15)
- Entry paid plan: $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. ([source](https://www.pubnub.com/pricing/), read 2026-09-15)
- Pricing model: 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. ([source](https://www.pubnub.com/pricing/), read 2026-09-15)

## Compared with

- [PubNub vs Ably](https://inetgeek.com/compare/ably-vs-pubnub/)
- [PubNub vs Pusher Channels](https://inetgeek.com/compare/pusher-vs-pubnub/)
- [PubNub vs Liveblocks](https://inetgeek.com/compare/pubnub-vs-liveblocks/)