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Amazon EventBridge vs Amazon SNS

Discover how Amazon EventBridge compares to Amazon SNS, and understand which is right for your use case, based on dimensions such as core features, pricing, reliability, and scalability.

What is Amazon EventBridge?

Amazon EventBridge is a serverless event bus service that enables real-time response to state changes in your applications. Using an event bus, it collects data from multiple sources, processes and routes them between other AWS services or external SaaS providers. This simplifies the building of scalable and loosely coupled systems in event-driven architectures.

Suitable for:

  • Multiple systems syncing
  • Event-driven automation
  • Data processing
  • Tasks scheduling
  • Monitoring and auditing

Not suitable for:

  • Two-way communication
  • On-premises applications
  • Legacy systems
  • Complex event processing

Pros:

  • Event archive & replay
  • Serverless architecture
  • Event replay & filtering
  • Custom event buses

Cons:

  • Vendor lock-in
  • Complex access control
  • Low throughput

What is Amazon SNS?

AWS Simple Notification Service (SNS) is a fully managed notification service thats uses the Pub/Sub model to provide message delivery from publishers to subscribers.

Suitable for:

  • Push notifications
  • Apps with high message throughput
  • Event-heavy apps

Not suitable for:

  • Timed message delivery
  • Ordered messages
  • Precise retry control

Pros:

  • Easy to use
  • Instant message delivery
  • Multi-protocol support
  • Message filtering

Cons:

  • No message persistence
  • Limited scalling options

Compare Amazon EventBridge and Amazon SNS

Let’s compare Amazon EventBridge and Amazon SNS, looking at key dimensions such as their core features, pricing, integrations, QoS, performance, and security and compliance.

Disclaimer:This comparison was created based on documentation and resources freely available online about Amazon EventBridge and Amazon SNS. The content was last updated on 23 Jul 2024 for Amazon EventBridge and on 23 Jul 2024 for Amazon SNS. Be sure to double-check everything before you make any decisions. If you do find anything incorrect or out of date, then please contact us.

Core features
Pub/Sub messaging

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

Amazon EventBridge

Yes

Amazon SNS

Yes

AWS SNS supports Pub/Sub messaging through topics and subscriptions.

Read more
Chat capabilities

Accelerates the time to implement rich chat experiences with features such as read receipts, typing indicators, and more.

Amazon EventBridge

No

Amazon SNS

Partial

AWS SNS does not have in-built chat capabilities. It's primarily used for message delivery across HTTP/S, email, SMS, and Amazon SQS. You can use AWS Chatbot to enable chat in conjunction with SNS.

Collaboration capabilities

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

Amazon EventBridge

No

Amazon SNS

No

State sync capabilities

Enables realtime data synchronization across devices and users, ensuring a cohesive and up-to-date user experience.

Amazon EventBridge

Yes

Amazon SNS

Partial

AWS SNS notifies on changes, but does not manage state synchronization directly.

Presence

Maintaining a view of which users are connected, and their associated metadata, enables their online status to be updated in realtime.

Amazon EventBridge

No

Amazon SNS

No

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.

Amazon EventBridge

No

Amazon SNS

No

Message interactions

Enables interaction with previously-sent messages, facilitating the implementation of features like message reactions and threads.

Amazon EventBridge

No

Amazon SNS

No

Message history

Enables clients to catch up on missed messages when inactive, ensuring a user doesn’t miss any important messages.

Amazon EventBridge

Yes

Amazon SNS

Yes

AWS SNS allows topic subscribers to retrieve (or replay) the archived messages back to a subscribed endpoint. This can be done by with the AWS API, SDK, AWS CloudFormation, and AWS Management Console. This functionality is only available for application-to-application (A2A) FIFO topics.

Read more
Push notifications

Cross-platform push notifications make it possible to deliver important and timely messages to users even when they’re inactive.

Amazon EventBridge

Partial

Amazon EventBridge does not support native push notifications. Notifications can be sent to communication channels by integrating with AWS Chatbot.

Amazon SNS

Yes

AWS SNS specializes in delivering push notifications to mobile devices and other endpoints.

Message delta compression

Minimizes bandwidth and can reduce latency, particularly in scenarios where continuous updates are sent.

Amazon EventBridge

No

Amazon SNS

No

Programmatic management

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

Amazon EventBridge

Yes

Amazon SNS

Yes

Pricing
Free plan

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

Amazon EventBridge

Yes

Free access to AWS default service events for event buses. Custom events, third-party SaaS, and cross-account events are paid.

Amazon SNS

No

The Spark plan (free plan) realtime database is limited to 100 simultaneous connections and 1 GB of storage.

Read more
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.

Amazon EventBridge

Amazon EventBridge has a limited free tier and a pay-as-you-go pricing model based on the number of events published to EventBridge, the number of invocations, events replayed, and schema discovery. The cost varies based on the event type. You can read more about the pricing plan on Amazon's website.

Amazon SNS

AWS SNS has a pay-as-you-go pricing model based on usage (number of requests and messages published).

Read more
Integrations & interoperability
SDKs

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

Amazon EventBridge
  • Go
  • PHP
  • Java
  • Javascript
  • .NET
  • Kotlin
  • Python
  • C++
  • Ruby
Amazon SNS
  • Go
  • PHP
  • Java
  • Javascript
  • .NET
  • Kotlin
  • Python
  • C++
  • Ruby
Supported realtime protocols

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

Amazon EventBridge
  • HTTPS
  • Webhooks
Amazon SNS
  • HTTP/HTTPS
  • Email (SMTP)
  • SMS (TCP)
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.

Amazon EventBridge
  • AWS Lambda
Amazon SNS

None natively; serverless functions are available through integration with AWS Lambda.

Streaming & queueing

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

Amazon EventBridge

Partial

Available through Amazon SQS.

Amazon SNS

Partial

Available through Amazon SQS.

Observability services

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

Amazon EventBridge

Partial

Amazon EventBridge provides an integration with Amazon CloudWatch for monitoring usage and metrics.

Amazon SNS

Partial

AWS SNS provides an integration with Amazon CloudWatch for monitoring usage and metrics.

CI/CD tools

Makes it possible to provision and configure service infrastructure as part of a CI or CD pipeline, enabling repeatable and reliable deployments.

Amazon EventBridge

Yes

Supports:

  • AWS CodePipeline
  • AWS CodeBuild
  • AWS CodeDeploy
Amazon SNS

Yes

Supports:

  • AWS CodePipeline
Quality of Service
Scalability

Scalability is vital as it ensures the service can handle increased data load or users without compromising performance.

Amazon EventBridge

No published metrics are available.

Amazon SNS

No published metrics are available.

Guaranteed message delivery

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

Amazon EventBridge

Yes

Amazon EventBridge promises at-least-once event delivery. It will try to deliver an event to a target for up to 24 hours.

Amazon SNS

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.

Amazon EventBridge

No

Amazon SNS

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.

Amazon EventBridge

No

Amazon EventBridge does not support exactly-once delivery semantics out of the box. It ensures at least-once delivery, but does not guarantee exactly-once delivery.

Amazon SNS

No

AWS SNS not support exactly-once delivery semantics out of the box. It ensures at least-once delivery, but does not guarantee exactly-once delivery.

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.

Amazon EventBridge

99.99%.

Read more
Amazon SNS

99.9%.

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.

Amazon EventBridge

Yes

Amazon SNS

Yes

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.

Amazon EventBridge

No

Amazon SNS

Partial

AWS SNS supports message durability through integration with other AWS services for multi-region replication.

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.

Amazon EventBridge

Yes

Amazon SNS

Yes

Latency

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

Amazon EventBridge

500ms global average latency

Read more
Amazon SNS

Unknown.

Security & compliance
API key authentication

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

Amazon EventBridge

Yes

Amazon SNS

Yes

AWS SNS uses AWS IAM for managing API key authentication.

Token-based authentication

Provides a means to securely authenticate user devices against your user management system.

Amazon EventBridge

Yes

Amazon EventBridge uses the AWS STS (Security Token Service) for token-based authentication.

Amazon SNS

Yes

AWS SNS uses the AWS STS (Security Token Service) for token-based authentication.

Single Sign-On (SSO) authentication

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

Amazon EventBridge

Yes

Amazon EventBridge supports Single Sign-On (SSO) through AWS SSO.

Amazon SNS

Yes

AWS SNS supports Single Sign-On (SSO) through AWS IAM and AWS SSO.

Rules for permissions and operations

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

Amazon EventBridge

Yes

Amazon SNS

Yes

AWS SNS permissions and operations can be managed through AWS IAM policies.

End-to-end encryption

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

Amazon EventBridge

Yes

Amazon SNS

Yes

Encryption at rest

Ensures data stored by the service is secure and compliant, while also mitigating the risks of a data breach.

Amazon EventBridge

Yes

Amazon SNS

Yes

AWS SNS supports encryption at rest using AWS KMS (Key Management Service).

Compliance

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

Amazon EventBridge
  • HIPAA
  • EU GDPR
  • SOC 2 TYPE I
  • SOC 2 Type II
Amazon SNS
  • SOC
  • GDPR
  • ISO 27001

Alternatives to Amazon EventBridge and Amazon SNS

Whilst both Amazon EventBridge and Amazon SNS 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 Amazon EventBridge

Azure Event Grid is a Pub/Sub message routing service for creating event-driven architectures using MQTT and HTTP protocols.

tech provider image

TriggerMesh is a free and open-source AWS EventBridge alternative.

Google EventArc is a managed event service that simplifies event-driven architecture by integrating with Google Cloud services.

Alternatives to Amazon SNS

Google Cloud Pub/Sub is a scalable messaging service that can be used to send and receive messages from applications or services.

OneSignal is a push notification delivery platform.

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.

Discover how Amazon EventBridge and Amazon SNS stack up against Ably

Ably is the definitive realtime experience platform of the internet. See how we compare to Amazon EventBridge and Amazon SNS 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