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Agora vs CometChat

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

Agora

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.

CometChat

What is CometChat?

CometChat is a messaging platform designed for integration into various applications, offering text, voice, and video chat capabilities. It supports extensive customization through SDKs and UI kits.

Compare Agora and CometChat

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

Scalability
Concurrent connections

Number of users that can be supported in a single chat.

Agora

10,000 users supported per chat room.

CometChat

Up 100k concurrent connections can be supported.

The use of certain features, such as delivery receipts, read receipts, and typing indicators, may impact these limits. For example, groups with all features enabled can accommodate up to 300 members.

Connections

Number of connections that can be handled across the platform.

Agora

Unknown.

CometChat

Up to 500k.

Channels / rooms

Number of channels or rooms that can be handled across the platform.

Agora

Unlimited.

CometChat

Unlimited.

Messages

Number of messages that can be handled across the platform.

Agora

Unknown.

CometChat

Unlimited.

Message throughput

Number of messsages that can be published per second.

Agora

Unknown.

CometChat

Up to 333 messages per second.

API calls for standard operations are rate limited to 20000 requests per min.

Data integrity
Guaranteed message delivery

Ensures messages are never lost during transmission, even in the presence of network disruptions.

Agora

No

CometChat

No

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.

Agora

No

CometChat

No

Exactly-once message delivery

Guarantees that each message is processed exactly once, preventing data inconsistencies that can arise from duplicate processing or missing messages.

Agora

No

CometChat

No

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.

Agora

Agora guarantees an SLA uptime of 99.95%.

CometChat

99.99% uptime guarantee.

Read more
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.

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
CometChat
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.

Agora

Yes

CometChat

No

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.

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
CometChat

No

Latency

Low latency is crucial for realtime apps as it ensures swift and efficient data transmissions, providing a smoother and more responsive user experience.

Agora

The average end-to-end global latency for Agora is 300 milliseconds.

Read more
CometChat

Under optimal test conditions, CometChat has a one-way latency of less than 50 ms response time. It is not mentioned what its roundtrip latency is.

Read more
Server-side batching

Reduces the overall message count, lowers costs, and mitigates the risk of hitting rate limits during high-throughput scenarios.

Agora

No

CometChat

No

Connection state recovery

Automatically re-establish failed connections and replay missed messages.

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.

CometChat

Yes

CometChat supports connection state recovery, monitoring realtime connection status to its WebSocket servers. If disconnected, the SDK auto-reconnects, indicating "connecting" and "connected" states​.

Read more
Ecosystem support
Supported realtime protocols

Support for multiple protocols provides the flexibility to choose a protocol that best suits your project’s requirements.

Agora
  • WebSockets
CometChat

WebSocket.

Supported languages

Supporting multiple languages and platforms offers greater flexibility when building cross-platform realtime apps.

Agora
  • Flutter
  • React Native
  • Java
  • C#
  • JavaScript
Read more
CometChat

CometChat supports several programming languages for effective integration with CometChat's SDKs and APIs:

  • React
  • Vue
  • Swift (for iOS)
  • Kotlin (for Android)
  • PHP
  • Angular
  • React Native
  • Flutter
CometChat SDK page
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.

Agora
  • Group chat
  • Private chat
  • Direct message (one-to-one) chat
Read more
CometChat
  • Group chat channels
  • Supergroup channels
  • Private and public chat groups
  • Direct message messaging
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.

Agora

Yes

CometChat

Yes

CometChat supports user presence out-of-the-box through CometChat SDKs and its UI kits. The SDKs include options for subscribing to presence updates to all users, specific roles, or friends.

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.

Agora

No

CometChat

No

Typing indicators

Show when others are typing in a chat room, enhancing realtime communication flow.

Agora

Yes

Agora’s Chat SDK allows you to build fully-featured messaging experiences for your users, including typing indicators.

Read more
CometChat

Yes

Room reactions

Customize the chat environment with reactions and other shared room states.

Agora

Yes

CometChat

No

Chat message attributes
Message edits and deletes

Allow users to modify or remove messages.

Agora

Yes

CometChat

Yes

Message reactions & emoticons

Boost engagement by enabling users to quickly express emotions or feedback on messages.

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
CometChat

Yes

Rich text support

Enhance messages with rich text formatting in chat.

Agora

No

CometChat

Yes

Media attachments

Support for sharing images, videos, and files in chat.

Agora

Yes

Agora allows you to send media attachments to a user, a chat group, or a chat room.

Read more
CometChat

Yes

CometChat in-app messaging allows users to send and receive various documents and multimedia files through its SDKs and UI kits.

Read more
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.

Agora

No

CometChat

Yes

CometChat supports in-app notifications through CometChat's push notification service.

Role-based permissions

Control user roles and permissions to ensure proper access and moderation.

Agora

Yes

Agora offers role-based access control through the Agora console.

Read more
CometChat

Yes

UI kit

Customizable UI elements for a seamless chat integration.

Agora

Yes

Agora provides open-source chat UI kits on GitHub for iOS, Android, and Web, which you can clone and run.

Read more
CometChat

Yes

CometChat supports UI kits for:

  • Android
  • iOS
  • React
  • Flutter
  • Vue
  • Angular
Storage and history
Synchronous - automated moderation

Detect and manage harmful content automatically, before the message is broadcast to participants.

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.

CometChat

Yes

Asynchronous - automated moderation

Detect and manage harmful content automatically, after the message is broadcast to participants.

Agora

Yes

CometChat

Yes

Manual moderation via dashboards

Tools for moderators to detect harmful messages and manage them effectively.

Agora

Yes

Agora's console allows moderators to manually view the report items and address the messages and message senders according to their content policy.

Read more
CometChat

Yes

CometChat lets human experts handle complex moderation cases. It allows users to set rules that flag borderline content for human review.

Ban users

Remove problematic users from the chat to maintain a healthy environment.

Agora

Yes

CometChat

Yes

Dev tools
Programmatic management

Enables the automation of provisioning, management, and testing of service resources, simplifying integration with existing development workflows such as CI.

Agora

Yes

CometChat

Yes

Pricing
Pricing model

The pricing model should align with your project's expected load, usage patterns, and budget in order to be cost-effective and efficient.

Agora

Agora provides pay-as-you-go pricing based on the number of participant minutes, messages per month, and MAUs for chat.

Read more
CometChat

CometChat pricing is based on the number of MAUs. Overages apply for additional MAU's and peak concurrent connection - over set quota.

CometChat pricing page
Pricing illustration

An example price based on 5 live streaming chat events and 50K attendees.

Agora

$2349,

  • Base Plan (Pro) = $699/month
  • Additional MAUs (15,000) = $750/month
  • Signaling Messages = $900
CometChat

$24,419

Base price - $669 Overages per additional concurrent user over 1250 - $23,750

Note: Assumes same users attend each event, to keep MAU at minimum

Free plan

With a free plan, you can test the service’s functionality and compatibility with your project before committing to a paid plan.

Agora

Yes

Agora's free plan offers 10k minutes/month.

CometChat

Yes

Free for up to 100 users.

Pricing plans

The pricing plans offered by cost.

Agora
  • Free Plan: $0/month for up to 500 MAUs.
  • Starter Plan: $349/month for up to 5,000 MAUs; $0.05 per additional MAU.
  • Pro Plan: $699/month for up to 10,000 MAUs; $0.05 per additional MAU.
  • Enterprise Plan: Custom pricing for over 100,000 MAUs, with tailored features and support.
CometChat
  • Basic: Starting from $298.75/month for 1K MAUs - scale up to 1M
  • Advanced: Starting from $423.75/month for 1K MAUs - scale to to 10M
  • Enterprise: Custom pricing available from 10K MAU

Overages:

  • Per additional MAU - $0.10
  • Per additional peak concurrent connection at $1 each
Support for additional realtime features
Pub/Sub messaging

Reduces communication code complexity, simplifying the process of building highly functional and architecturally complex realtime apps.

Agora

Yes

Agora's message channels use the pub/sub model, allowing you to publish messages to a channel or subscribe to receive them without pre-creating the channel.

Read more
CometChat

No

Collaboration capabilities

Enables you to quickly integrate realtime collaborative features like live cursors, member location, avatar stacks, and component locking.

Agora

No

CometChat

Yes

CometChat offers collaboration capabilities with tools like polls, whiteboards, and collaborative documents.

Database sync capabilities

Database sync capabilities enable realtime updates between your database and UI, ensuring the UI reflects changes in the database instantly, with data consistency, and without the need for polling.

Agora

No

CometChat

No

Notifications

Send notifications directly to users screens, from chat responses to news alerts, or game updates, whether or not an application is open and running.

Agora

Yes

CometChat

Yes

Asset tracking

State-of-the-art asset tracking across last mile logistics, food delivery applications, and urban mobility services.

Agora

Yes

Agora provides rich media messages that support GPS locations, allowing you to track assets.

CometChat

No

Integrations & interoperability
AI models

Allows you to integrate AI models, like GPT, into your app.

Agora

Yes

Agora provides integration with OpenAI models AI for its conversational AI SDK developed in partnership with OpenAI.

Read more
CometChat

Yes

CometChat uses the M87 LLM for its generative conversations.

Read more
Serverless functions

Enables integration with third-party cloud providers by facilitating the execution of custom code against messages to perform business logic like on-the-fly translation.

Agora

No

CometChat

No

Streaming & queueing

Provides a dependable method to reroute messages from the service to third-party streams and queues for further processing.

Agora

No

CometChat

No

Observability services

Enables realtime monitoring and troubleshooting by offering insights into service behavior directly in your observability platform of choice.

Agora

Yes

Agora analytics integrates with Datadog to provide monitoring of servers, databases, tools, and services.

Read more
CometChat

No

Security & compliance
API key authentication

Simplifies the authentication code on trusted servers compared to requesting, managing, and refreshing tokens.

Agora

No

Agora uses token-based authentication for user authentication, rather than API keys. Users authenticate through Access Tokens, which are generated using the app's credentials.

Read more
CometChat

Yes

Single Sign-On (SSO) authentication

SSO streamlines login processes, boosts security by minimizing password use, and meets compliance needs for secure data access management.

Agora

Yes

CometChat

Yes

Rules for permissions and operations

Provides control over which users can subscribe and publish to certain channels.

Agora

Yes

CometChat

Yes

CometChat implements rules for permissions and user control. It features role-based permissions that allow you to manage user actions.

End-to-end encryption

Ensures that the data transmitted between the client and the API server remains confidential and secure while in transit.

Agora

Yes

Agora implements E2EE for its messages through its signaling SDK, which has a built-in AES 256 GCM encryption algorithm.

Read more
CometChat

Yes

CometChat implements end-to-end encryption using Virgil E3Kit.

Compliance

Compliance with regulations can impact your ability to meet legal obligations in your industry.

Agora
  • HIPAA
  • GDPR
  • COPPA
  • SOC 2
  • ISO/IEC 27001
CometChat

CometChat is compliant with four security standards:

  • HIPAA
  • GDPR
  • ISO 27001
  • SOC 2 Type 2
CometChat compliance page

Disclaimer: This comparison was created based on documentation and resources freely available online about Agora and CometChat. The content was last updated on 16 May 2025 for Agora and on 1 May 2025 for CometChat. 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.

Alternatives to Agora and CometChat

While both Agora and CometChat are worth considering as options for realtime experiences, they aren’t without their limitations. We suggest evaluating them against the following alternatives to make sure you find the right solution for your needs.

Alternatives to Agora

tech provider image

Sendbird offers APIs and SDKs for live chat, realtime messaging, push notifications, and calls with WebSocket connections, UI kits, and backend integrations.

Pubnub logo

PubNub is a developer API platform that powers the realtime infrastructure in apps to build engaging Virtual Spaces where online communities can connect.

Twilio logo

Twilio is a platform that provides developers with a suite of communication tools for building messaging infrastructure in their applications.

See more alternatives to Agora

Alternatives to CometChat

Twilio logo

Twilio is a platform that provides developers with a suite of communication tools for building messaging infrastructure in their applications.

Ably logo

Ably is the definitive realtime experience platform of the internet. Serving more WebSocket connections than any other pub/sub platform on earth. Businesses trust us to power their critical applications - reliably, securely and at serious scale.

Pubnub logo

PubNub is a developer API platform that powers the realtime infrastructure in apps to build engaging Virtual Spaces where online communities can connect.

Discover how Agora and CometChat stack up against Ably

Ably is the definitive realtime experience platform of the internet. See how we compare to Agora and CometChat on key dimensions such as core features, pricing, integrations, QoS, performance, and security and compliance.

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:

  • 6M monthly messages
  • 200 concurrent channels
  • 200 concurrent connections