What is Azure SignalR Service?
Azure SignalR is an Azure-hosted, fully managed realtime framework built on top of an open-source software library for Microsoft ASP.NET. It allows server code to send asynchronous notifications to client-side web applications. The library includes server-side and client-side JavaScript components.
6 alternatives to Azure SignalR Service to consider
We’ll now look at alternatives to Azure SignalR Service - competing technologies that allow you to build realtime experiences for end-users.
Ably
Ably is realtime infrastructure for AI, chat and live apps. It’s trusted by 7k+ companies and powers more WebSocket connections than any other pub/sub platform. We run the delivery layer, so ordering, reconnects and failover are handled for you. Simple APIs and use case specific SDKs mean there’s no infrastructure to build or maintain.
Key Ably features and capabilities
- Performance: 6.5ms message delivery latency within a region, and a 37ms global median round trip.
- Integrity: Each publisher’s messages arrive in order at every subscriber. Clients that reconnect within two minutes resume automatically, and History covers longer gaps.
- Reliability: Designed for 99.999999% message survivability, with each acknowledged message stored in multiple physical locations.
- Availability: 7+ years without a global outage. Regional incidents are routed around automatically across 12 regions and 750+ edge locations. 99.999% uptime SLA on Business and Enterprise.
- One platform, six products: Pub/Sub, AI Transport, Chat, Spaces, LiveObjects and LiveSync share the same guarantees.
- Integrations and SDKs: Pre-built integrations for Kafka, AWS Lambda, Cloudflare Workers and Datadog, and SDKs for 20+ languages.
- Pricing: Priced by monthly active users, with every product in every package. Free for up to 500 MAUs; Pro from $29 a month, billed annually.
SignalR
SignalR is an open-source library that simplifies adding real-time web functionality to apps. It is integrated into the ASP.NET Core web development stack and provides a mechanism for two-way remote procedure calls between client and server.
Socket.IO
Socket.IO is an open-source library for realtime, bidirectional communication between clients and servers. Built on top of WebSocket, it adds fallback transport and reconnection handling that raw WebSocket doesn't provide. But it runs inside your own server process, not as a separate service. Scaling beyond one instance, persisting messages, and recovering state after a longer disconnection all require adapters or custom code you build yourself.
Microsoft Azure Web PubSub
Microsoft Azure Web PubSub is a fully managed service for real-time messaging using WebSockets and the publish-subscribe pattern. It handles up to 100,000 concurrent connections, managing scaling, encryption, and authentication. It's ideal for live broadcasts, IoT dashboards, and integrates with Azure functions. It provides APIs for managing clients and messaging.
Firebase
Firebase is a cloud-native backend by Google that allows developers to build mobile and web applications. Firebase services include Firebase Realtime data, Firestore database, authentication, and Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM), among others.
Pusher
Pusher is a managed pub/sub messaging service that provides hosted APIs and SDKs for adding realtime features to web and mobile applications. Pusher’s offers two products:
- Channels: WebSocket pub/sub messaging
- Beams: Programmatic push notifications for mobile and web
Disclaimer: The information on the alternatives presented here was based on documentation and resources freely available online and was last updated on 2 Nov 2026. Be sure to double-check everything before you make any decisions. If you do find anything incorrect or out of date, then please let us know.
Try Ably for free to discover the benefits for yourself
Ably has built reliable realtime infrastructure so you don’t have to. On our free plan you benefit from:
- Up to 500 monthly active users (MAUs)
- Every Ably product and protocol
- No credit card required
