Agora vs Quickblox
Discover how Agora compares to Quickblox, 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 Quickblox?
QuickBlox provides APIs and SDKs for building realtime chat, voice, and video communication apps. It includes chat UI kits, AI-powered assistants, push notifications, and custom video conferencing options.
Compare Agora and Quickblox
Let’s compare Agora and Quickblox, 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. | Quickblox Limit on pre-enterprise plans is 25,000. There is no specified limit on Enterprise. Read more |
Connections | Number of connections that can be handled across the platform. | Agora Unknown. | Quickblox Unknown. |
Channels / rooms | Number of channels or rooms that can be handled across the platform. | Agora Unlimited. | Quickblox Unlimited. |
Messages | Number of messages that can be handled across the platform. | Agora Unknown. | Quickblox Unknown. |
Message throughput | Number of messsages that can be published per second. | Agora Unknown. | Quickblox |
Data integrity | |||
Guaranteed message delivery | Ensures messages are never lost during transmission, even in the presence of network disruptions. | Agora No | Quickblox 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 | Quickblox 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 | Quickblox 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%. | Quickblox Unknown. |
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 | Quickblox No |
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 | Quickblox 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 | Quickblox 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 | Quickblox 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 | Quickblox 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. | Quickblox Yes QuickBlox Chat SDKs support automatic reconnection and offline message queuing, which ensures that when the connection is lost, messages are held on the server and delivered once the connection is re-established. 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
| Quickblox
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Supported languages | Supporting multiple languages and platforms offers greater flexibility when building cross-platform realtime apps. | Agora
| Quickblox QuickBlox uses multiple programming languages for its UI kits and SDKs, including:
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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
| Quickblox
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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 | Quickblox Yes QuickBlox SDK sends application-level pings to a user or server, allowing you to track user presence updates and check user status. Read more |
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 | Quickblox 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 | Quickblox Yes |
Room reactions | Customize the chat environment with reactions and other shared room states. | Agora Yes | Quickblox No |
Chat message attributes | |||
Message edits and deletes | Allow users to modify or remove messages. | Agora Yes | Quickblox 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 | Quickblox No |
Rich text support | Enhance messages with rich text formatting in chat. | Agora No | Quickblox Yes QuickBlox UI kits support text formatting for text customization directly within the UI Kit components. Read more |
Media attachments | Support for sharing images, videos, and files in chat. | Agora | Quickblox Yes QuickBlox provides file-sharing functionality through its iOS, Android, and React UI kits. Its Chat API also allows file uploads but doesn't offer a dedicated "media attachment" feature. 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 | Quickblox No |
Role-based permissions | Control user roles and permissions to ensure proper access and moderation. | Agora | Quickblox Partial QuickBlox supports role-based permissions to some extent. However, the permissions are limited in scope as they primarily cover basic chat and user management actions. 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 | Quickblox Yes |
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. | Quickblox Yes |
Asynchronous - automated moderation | Detect and manage harmful content automatically, after the message is broadcast to participants. | Agora Yes | Quickblox No |
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 | Quickblox Partial QuickBlox Trust and Safety (TnS) chat moderation is only available for Enterprise plan users. Read more |
Ban users | Remove problematic users from the chat to maintain a healthy environment. | Agora Yes | Quickblox 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 | Quickblox 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 | Quickblox Monthly subscription. QuickBlox's pricing is based on the total number of users registered in your app, whether they are active or not. Read more |
Pricing illustration | An example price based on 5 live streaming chat events and 50K attendees. | Agora $2349,
| Quickblox Because non-Enterprise Quickblox only supports up to 25k concurrent connections, we are unable to provide a scaled pricing illustration. |
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. | Quickblox |
Pricing plans | The pricing plans offered by cost. | Agora
| Quickblox QuickBlox's pricing is based on the total number of users registered in your app, whether they are active or not: Starter: $107/month for up to 10,000 active/inactive registered users. Growth: $269/month for up to 25,000 active/inactive registered users. HIPAA Cloud: $430/month for up to 20,000 active/inactive registered users. Enterprise: From $647 for a custom number of total registered users. :cta:Learn more: |
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 | Quickblox No |
Collaboration capabilities | Enables you to quickly integrate realtime collaborative features like live cursors, member location, avatar stacks, and component locking. | Agora No | Quickblox No |
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 | Quickblox 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 | Quickblox Yes QuickBlox supports push notifications for iOS and Android apps by integrating with FCM and APNs. 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. | Quickblox 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 | Quickblox No |
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 | Quickblox No |
Streaming & queueing | Provides a dependable method to reroute messages from the service to third-party streams and queues for further processing. | Agora No | Quickblox 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 | Quickblox 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 | Quickblox 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 | Quickblox |
Rules for permissions and operations | Provides control over which users can subscribe and publish to certain channels. | Agora Yes | Quickblox Yes |
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 | Quickblox No QuickBlox does not natively provide E2EE for messaging out of the box. Its realtime chat is secured through TLS to protect data in transit. |
Compliance | Compliance with regulations can impact your ability to meet legal obligations in your industry. | Agora
| Quickblox |
Disclaimer: This comparison was created based on documentation and resources freely available online about Agora and Quickblox. The content was last updated on 16 May 2025 for Agora and on 16 May 2025 for Quickblox. 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 Quickblox
While both Agora and Quickblox 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 Quickblox
PubNub is a developer API platform that powers the realtime infrastructure in apps to build engaging Virtual Spaces where online communities can connect.

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

CometChat provides rich messaging solutions for apps with features like text, voice, video chat, robust SDKs, and UI kits.
Discover how Agora and Quickblox stack up against Ably
Ably is the definitive realtime experience platform of the internet. See how we compare to Agora and Quickblox 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