Agora vs Firebase
Discover how Agora compares to Firebase, and understand which is right for your use case, based on dimensions such as scalability, pricing, security, and their chat features.
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.
What is 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.
Compare Agora and Firebase
Let’s compare Agora and Firebase, 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. | Firebase Up to 200,000 concurrent WebSocket connections per database instance. This limit applies per database. To support more concurrent users, you can shard your data across multiple database instances. Read more |
Connections | Number of connections that can be handled across the platform. | Agora Unknown. | Firebase By sharding, you can scale beyond 200,000 concurrent connections. Each additional database instance adds another 200,000 connections. Read more |
Channels / rooms | Number of channels or rooms that can be handled across the platform. | Agora Unlimited. | Firebase Unlimited. Each path with listeners or queries should not exceed 75 million total nodes. Read more |
Messages | Number of messages that can be handled across the platform. | Agora Unknown. | Firebase Unlimited. Write operations are subject to rate limits. |
Message throughput | Number of messsages that can be published per second. | Agora Unknown. | Firebase ~1,000 writes/sec per database. Read more |
| Data integrity | |||
Guaranteed message delivery | Ensures messages are never lost during transmission, even in the presence of network disruptions. | Agora No | Firebase 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 | Firebase 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 | Firebase 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%. | Firebase 99.95%. 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 | Firebase Yes Firebase's global CDN (content delivery network) supports a global edge network by integrating with Google Cloud Platform (GCP), with edge PoPs spanning over 180 internet exchanges and over 160 interconnection facilities worldwide. Read more |
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 | Firebase Partial Firebase supports multi-region data replication, primarily through Cloud Firestore locations, but this is not supported in Firebase Realtime Database. Read more |
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 | Firebase Yes Firebase's design uses Google Cloud Platform's infrastructure, which implements redundancy and automatic failover features. |
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 | Firebase Unknown. |
Server-side batching | Reduces the overall message count, lowers costs, and mitigates the risk of hitting rate limits during high-throughput scenarios. | Agora No | Firebase Partial Firebase supports server-side batching through transactions and batched writes in Firestore. Read more |
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. | Firebase Partial Firebase does not directly support automatic state recovery. The connection state recovery capabilities can be integrated with Firebase Realtime Database and Cloud Firestore, which automatically handle connection issues. |
| Ecosystem support | |||
Supported realtime protocols | Support for multiple protocols provides the flexibility to choose a protocol that best suits your project’s requirements. | Agora
| Firebase
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Supported languages | Supporting multiple languages and platforms offers greater flexibility when building cross-platform realtime apps. | Agora
| Firebase
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| 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
| Firebase Firebase does not have built-in support for specific chat room types. Instead, Firebase provides backend tools such as Realtime Database, Firestore, and Firebase Authentication that allow you to implement chat rooms. |
| 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 | Firebase |
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 | Firebase Partial Firebase does not have built-in support for occupancy tracking. However, occupancy tracking functionality can be built on top of the Firebase Realtime Database. |
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 | Firebase Partial Firebase does not have built-in support for typing indicators. However, you can implement this feature using Firestore or Realtime Database. |
Room reactions | Customize the chat environment with reactions and other shared room states. | Agora Yes | Firebase Partial Firebase does not have built-in support for room reactions or arbitrary room state management specifically for chat applications, but you can integrate Firestore or Realtime Database for building out room reactions. |
| Chat message attributes | |||
Message edits and deletes | Allow users to modify or remove messages. | Agora Yes | Firebase Partial Firebase does not have built-in message delete or edit functionality for chat applications. However, it provides flexible database services, such as Firestore, Realtime Database, and cloud functions to implement these features. |
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 | Firebase Partial Firebase does not have built-in support for message reactions or emoticons in chat applications. However, it offers tools like Firebase Firestore or Realtime Database to do that with some custom development. |
Rich text support | Enhance messages with rich text formatting in chat. | Agora No | Firebase No Firebase itself does not provide dedicated tools specifically for rich text formatting. You can leverage various third-party libraries and Firebase's existing tools to implement rich text support in your application. Otherwise, you can store rich text data (like markdown), and implement formatting on the client side. Read more |
Media attachments | Support for sharing images, videos, and files in chat. | Agora | Firebase Partial Firebase supports media attachments, but it doesn't have built-in features specifically for handling media uploads in chat applications. You can leverage its Firebase Cloud Storage with Firestore or Realtime Database. |
| 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 | Firebase Yes Firebase supports in-app notifications, primarily through its Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM) service. |
Role-based permissions | Control user roles and permissions to ensure proper access and moderation. | Agora | Firebase Yes Firebase supports role-based access control through the Firebase Admin SDK, Firebase IAM, and Cloud Firestore. Read more |
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 | Firebase No Firebase itself does not offer a built-in UI Kit specifically for chat applications. |
| 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. | Firebase Partial Yes but not natively supported. Requires custom implementation using approval flags and client-side filtering. Read more |
Asynchronous - automated moderation | Detect and manage harmful content automatically, after the message is broadcast to participants. | Agora Yes | Firebase Partial Yes but not natively supported. Cloud Functions with ML models to analyze and moderate content post-delivery. Read more |
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 | Firebase Partial Firebase does not offer a dedicated moderation dashboard. However, you can create a custom moderation dashboard using Firebase Console, Firestore, Realtime Database, and Firebase Authentication. |
Ban users | Remove problematic users from the chat to maintain a healthy environment. | Agora Yes | Firebase Partial Firebase can support banning users, although it doesn’t provide a built-in banning feature. You can implement user bans using Firebase Authentication and Firestore or Realtime Database. Read more |
| 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 | Firebase Yes Firebase projects can be managed programmatically using the Firebase Management API. |
| 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 | Firebase Firebase offers a pay-as-you-go pricing plan, called Blaze, based on the services you use and the amount of unit costs incurred. Firebase pricing is usage-based, with most services charging per read, write, storage, and bandwidth. There are two main realtime database options, and other tools that can impact cost depending on your app architecture. Read more |
Pricing illustration | An example price based on 5 live streaming chat events and 50K attendees. | Agora $2349,
| Firebase $1,872. Estimated usage as per their pricing: Writes 600M / 100,000 (6,000 units) = $1,080 Reads 1.2B / 100,000 (12,000 units) = $720 Egress 600 GB = $72 Storage 600 GB/month = prorated~$0.40–$0.60 (negligible). |
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. | Firebase Yes The Spark plan (free plan) realtime database is limited to 100 simultaneous connections and 1 GB of storage. Read more |
Pricing plans | The pricing plans offered by cost. | Agora
| Firebase
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| 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 | Firebase Partial Firebase does not natively support Pub/Sub messaging. However, this can be implemented with Google's Pub/Sub service. Read more |
Collaboration capabilities | Enables you to quickly integrate realtime collaborative features like live cursors, member location, avatar stacks, and component locking. | Agora No | Firebase Yes |
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 | Firebase Yes Firebase offers database sync capabilities through both Firebase Realtime Database and Firestore. These databases are designed to keep data synchronized across client devices in realtime. Read more |
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 | Firebase Yes Firebase supports notifications primarily through Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM), allowing developers to send notifications to client applications on various platforms, including Android, iOS, and the web. Read more |
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. | Firebase 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 | Firebase Yes Firebase uses the Gemini family of AI models by through its Vertex AI for Firebase SDKs. 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 | Firebase Firebase supports serverless functions through Cloud Functions for Firebase. Read more |
Streaming & queueing | Provides a dependable method to reroute messages from the service to third-party streams and queues for further processing. | Agora No | Firebase Yes |
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 | Firebase Yes Using Firebase Performance Monitoring you can monitor your application performance based on location, device, or version. |
| 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 | Firebase 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 | Firebase Yes SSO in a Firebase application can be implemented using SAML (Security Assertion Markup Language). Read more |
Rules for permissions and operations | Provides control over which users can subscribe and publish to certain channels. | Agora Yes | Firebase Yes Using Firebase Realtime Database Security Rules you can set who has access to your database. Read more |
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 | Firebase No Data in transit is encrypted using HTTPS in all Firebase services, but this does not include end-to-end encryption. Read more |
Compliance | Compliance with regulations can impact your ability to meet legal obligations in your industry. | Agora
| Firebase Firebase ensures compliance with international and industry standards for security and privacy standards including:
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Disclaimer: This comparison was created based on documentation and resources freely available online about Agora and Firebase. The content was last updated on 16 May 2025 for Agora and on 16 May 2025 for Firebase. 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 Firebase
While both Agora and Firebase 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
Sendbird offers APIs and SDKs for live chat, realtime messaging, push notifications, and calls with WebSocket connections, UI kits, and backend integrations.
PubNub is a developer API platform that powers the realtime infrastructure in apps to build engaging Virtual Spaces where online communities can connect.
Twilio is a platform that provides developers with a suite of communication tools for building messaging infrastructure in their applications.
Alternatives to Firebase
Supabase Realtime is a globally distributed real-time server network built on PostgreSQL, enabling developers to build applications with real-time data sync.
Pusher is a first-generation pub/sub messaging service that provides bi-directional hosted APIs for adding realtime features to applications.
OneSignal is a customer engagement platform that offers push notifications, messages, and email sends for businesses to manage communication with their users.
Discover how Agora and Firebase stack up against Ably
Ably is the definitive realtime experience platform of the internet. See how we compare to Agora and Firebase 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
