Ably vs Agora

Discover how Agora compares to Ably, and understand which is right for your use case, based on dimensions such as scalability, pricing, security, and their chat features.

What is Ably?

Ably is a realtime experience platform that provides APIs and SDKs to power realtime functionality - with no realtime infrastructure to build and maintain. Our application building blocks and integrations enable developers to quickly create live experiences from live chat and data broadcast, to collaborative UXs and notifications.

What is Agora?

Agora offers realtime communication services through APIs, enabling developers to integrate voice, video, and live-streaming features into mobile, desktop, and web applications.

Compare Ably and Agora

Let’s compare Ably and Agora, looking at key elements of their offering such as their scalability, pricing, security and chat feature set.

Disclaimer: This comparison was created based on documentation and resources freely available online about Ably and Agora. The content was last updated on 30 Apr 2025 for Ably and on 16 May 2025 for Agora. 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 If you do find anything incorrect or out of date, then please let us know.

Hear from companies gaining their realtime advantage with Ably

“

The core infrastructure for delivering live sports data to our customers is Ably. We sleep easier at night knowing it can be relied on for consistent low latency and message integrity at scale.”

Gary Williams

IT Infrastructure Team Lead

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“

Ably immediately solved our issues around the user experience and scale. It supports our customers’ stringent expectations as well as future product development.”

Max Freiert

Product Group Lead

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“

Ably copes easily with big loads. We don’t have to worry about stability, even when we get huge traffic spikes.”

Johan Bengtsson

CTO

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200 concurrent connections

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	Ably	Agora	Why this matters
Scalability
Concurrent connections	Number of users that can be supported in a single chat.	Ably Yes Unlimited - no additional charge for concurrency. See pricing for details	Agora 10,000 users supported per chat room.	Number of users that can be supported in a single chat.
Connections	Number of connections that can be handled across the platform.	Ably Yes Unlimited. See pricing for details	Agora Unknown.	Number of connections that can be handled across the platform.
Channels / rooms	Number of channels or rooms that can be handled across the platform.	Ably Yes Unlimited. See pricing for details	Agora Unlimited.	Number of channels or rooms that can be handled across the platform.
Messages	Number of messages that can be handled across the platform.	Ably Unlimited. See pricing for details	Agora Unknown.	Number of messages that can be handled across the platform.
Message throughput	Number of messsages that can be published per second.	Ably From: 2.5k messages/second in our Standard plan 10k messages/second in Pro Unlimited for Enterprise plans See pricing for details	Agora Unknown.	Number of messsages that can be published per second.
Data integrity
Guaranteed message delivery	Ensures messages are never lost during transmission, even in the presence of network disruptions.	Ably Yes	Agora No	Ensures messages are never lost during transmission, even in the presence of network disruptions.
Guaranteed message ordering	Maintains the sequence of messages as they were sent. This is particularly important in apps where the chronological order of messages is essential for meaningful communication.	Ably Yes	Agora No	Maintains the sequence of messages as they were sent. This is particularly important in apps where the chronological order of messages is essential for meaningful communication.
Exactly-once message delivery	Guarantees that each message is processed exactly once, preventing data inconsistencies that can arise from duplicate processing or missing messages.	Ably Yes	Agora No	Guarantees that each message is processed exactly once, preventing data inconsistencies that can arise from duplicate processing or missing messages.
Performance & availability
Uptime Guarantee	An uptime guarantee instills confidence in the reliability of the service and protects your business from the negative impacts of downtime.	Ably 99.999%.	Agora Agora guarantees an SLA uptime of 99.95%.	An uptime guarantee instills confidence in the reliability of the service and protects your business from the negative impacts of downtime.
Global edge network	By bringing servers (Points of Presence, or PoP) geographically closer to the devices of end users, and routing requests to the nearest PoP, global latency is reduced to a minimum.	Ably Yes All Ably customer data runs across all our 7 geographically-distributed core routing datacenters by default. Ably's network of 385 edge acceleration points-of-presence is growing day by day.	Agora Yes Agora operates a global network (SD-RTN) of over 200 data centers spread across multiple regions, including the United States, Europe, China, Japan, India, and the Asia Pacific. Read more	By bringing servers (Points of Presence, or PoP) geographically closer to the devices of end users, and routing requests to the nearest PoP, global latency is reduced to a minimum.
Multi-region data replication (message durability)	By replicating data across multiple regions, the risk of data loss or downtime is greatly mitigated since if data is lost or a server fails in one region, the information can be retrieved from another.	Ably Yes	Agora Yes	By replicating data across multiple regions, the risk of data loss or downtime is greatly mitigated since if data is lost or a server fails in one region, the information can be retrieved from another.
No single point of failure or congestion	Having no single point of failure means a system is resilient and can continue to operate even if one part fails. Avoiding a single point of congestion ensures messages flow efficiently across the system and avoids bottlenecks that could lead to performance issues under load.	Ably Yes	Agora Yes Agora global data centers have superior routing capabilities to ensure that the network services are not interrupted due to a single point of failure. Read more	Having no single point of failure means a system is resilient and can continue to operate even if one part fails. Avoiding a single point of congestion ensures messages flow efficiently across the system and avoids bottlenecks that could lead to performance issues under load.
Latency	Low latency is crucial for realtime apps as it ensures swift and efficient data transmissions, providing a smoother and more responsive user experience.	Ably <50ms round trip latency for the 99th percentile <35ms latency once traffic arrives within AWS	Agora The average end-to-end global latency for Agora is 300 milliseconds. Read more	Low latency is crucial for realtime apps as it ensures swift and efficient data transmissions, providing a smoother and more responsive user experience.
Server-side batching	Reduces the overall message count, lowers costs, and mitigates the risk of hitting rate limits during high-throughput scenarios.	Ably Yes	Agora No	Reduces the overall message count, lowers costs, and mitigates the risk of hitting rate limits during high-throughput scenarios.
Connection state recovery	Automatically re-establish failed connections and replay missed messages.	Ably Yes	Agora Yes Agora supports reconnection and state recovery mechanisms through the Agora SDK, which automatically tries to re-establish connections if a user drops offline.	Automatically re-establish failed connections and replay missed messages.
Ecosystem support
Supported realtime protocols	Support for multiple protocols provides the flexibility to choose a protocol that best suits your project’s requirements.	Ably WebSockets MQTT Server-Sent Events (SSE) Fallback to Comet (XHR) and Long Polling for older browsers	Agora WebSockets	Support for multiple protocols provides the flexibility to choose a protocol that best suits your project’s requirements.
Supported languages	Supporting multiple languages and platforms offers greater flexibility when building cross-platform realtime apps.	Ably JavaScript React Kotlin Swift	Agora Flutter React Native Java C# JavaScript Read more	Supporting multiple languages and platforms offers greater flexibility when building cross-platform realtime apps.
Chat room types
Multi-type chat support (group, DM, supergroups)	Enables chat experiences to be tailored to various user needs, from one-on-one to large, scalable group discussions.	Ably 1:1 1:many many:many	Agora Group chat Private chat Direct message (one-to-one) chat Read more	Enables chat experiences to be tailored to various user needs, from one-on-one to large, scalable group discussions.
Chat room management
Presence	Maintaining a view of which users are connected, and their associated metadata, enables their online status to be updated in realtime.	Ably Yes	Agora Yes	Maintaining a view of which users are connected, and their associated metadata, enables their online status to be updated in realtime.
Occupancy	High-level metrics about the clients currently connected to a channel make it simple to show things such as connected user count, or display which channels are the most popular.	Ably Yes	Agora No	High-level metrics about the clients currently connected to a channel make it simple to show things such as connected user count, or display which channels are the most popular.
Typing indicators	Show when others are typing in a chat room, enhancing realtime communication flow.	Ably Yes Ably Chat provides typing indicators to show when users are composing messages.	Agora Yes Agora’s Chat SDK allows you to build fully-featured messaging experiences for your users, including typing indicators. Read more	Show when others are typing in a chat room, enhancing realtime communication flow.
Room reactions	Customize the chat environment with reactions and other shared room states.	Ably Yes Ably Chat supports room-level reactions with a variety of emojis. Ephemeral reactions are not counted or aggregated.	Agora Yes	Customize the chat environment with reactions and other shared room states.
Chat message attributes
Message edits and deletes	Allow users to modify or remove messages.	Ably Yes Ably Chat supports soft deletion of messages and message edits.	Agora Yes	Allow users to modify or remove messages.
Message reactions & emoticons	Boost engagement by enabling users to quickly express emotions or feedback on messages.	Ably Yes Ably Chat supports reactions at the room level and message level.	Agora Yes Agora allows you to react with up to 20 emoji reactions in a single message during one-to-one chats and group chats. Read more	Boost engagement by enabling users to quickly express emotions or feedback on messages.
Rich text support	Enhance messages with rich text formatting in chat.	Ably Yes	Agora No	Enhance messages with rich text formatting in chat.
Media attachments	Support for sharing images, videos, and files in chat.	Ably Partial Links are supported.	Agora Yes Agora allows you to send media attachments to a user, a chat group, or a chat room. Read more	Support for sharing images, videos, and files in chat.
Chat application and user state
In-app notifications	Notify users of important events from other chat rooms without them leaving the current chat, keeping them engaged and informed.	Ably Yes In-app notifications supported via Ably Pub/Sub.	Agora No	Notify users of important events from other chat rooms without them leaving the current chat, keeping them engaged and informed.
Role-based permissions	Control user roles and permissions to ensure proper access and moderation.	Ably No Ably Chat doesn't current support role-based permissions, but will soon.	Agora Yes Agora offers role-based access control through the Agora console. Read more	Control user roles and permissions to ensure proper access and moderation.
UI kit	Customizable UI elements for a seamless chat integration.	Ably No Ably Chat doesn't currently offer a UI kit.	Agora Yes Agora provides open-source chat UI kits on GitHub for iOS, Android, and Web, which you can clone and run. Read more	Customizable UI elements for a seamless chat integration.
Storage and history
Synchronous - automated moderation	Detect and manage harmful content automatically, before the message is broadcast to participants.	Ably Yes Ably Chat supports synchronous moderation using Hive AI. You can also integrate with a third-party moderation provider.	Agora Yes Moderation is done through Microsoft Azure, and is not enabled by default. To get access, you need either a Pro or Enterprise plan.	Detect and manage harmful content automatically, before the message is broadcast to participants.