Amazon EventBridge vs AWS AppSync
Discover how Amazon EventBridge compares to AWS AppSync, 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 AWS AppSync?
AWS AppSync is a fully managed service designed to streamline the process of building and deploying serverless GraphQL and pub/sub over WebSocket APIs. It enables developers to seamlessly handle and synchronize mobile app data in realtime across devices and users. Even when a mobile device is offline, AppSync permits data access and modification.
Suitable for:
- Chat rooms
- Collaborative apps
- Data broadcasting
- IoT apps
- Apps requiring low latency
Not suitable for:
- Where you need to use custom directives
- Service quotas
- Large-scale/complex projects
Pros:
- Managed GraphQL service & pub/sub over WebSocket APIs
- Backend management
- Connection recovery
- AWS service integration
Cons:
- Complex, especially the templating engine (VTL)
- High cost - may be more expensive than alternatives
- Limited plug-ins
- Single region solution
Compare Amazon EventBridge and AWS AppSync
Let’s compare Amazon EventBridge and AWS AppSync, 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 AWS AppSync. The content was last updated on 1 Aug 2024 for Amazon EventBridge and on 1 Aug 2024 for AWS AppSync. 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 If you do find anything incorrect or out of date, then please contact us.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 | AWS AppSync Yes 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 | AWS AppSync |
Collaboration capabilities | Enables you to quickly integrate realtime collaborative features like live cursors, member location, avatar stacks, and component locking. | Amazon EventBridge No | AWS AppSync |
State sync capabilities | Enables realtime data synchronization across devices and users, ensuring a cohesive and up-to-date user experience. | Amazon EventBridge Yes | AWS AppSync Partial Can be built on top of AppSync, but not available out of the box. |
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 | AWS AppSync Partial "AWS AppSync does not provide events related to client connections or disconnections" (see source) - but it can be built on top of it by composing multiple AWS products. |
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 | AWS AppSync No |
Message interactions | Enables interaction with previously-sent messages, facilitating the implementation of features like message reactions and threads. | Amazon EventBridge No | AWS AppSync 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 | AWS AppSync Partial Looks like you can get message history, but only in combination with other AWS services see source |
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. | AWS AppSync Yes Find out how |
Message delta compression | Minimizes bandwidth and can reduce latency, particularly in scenarios where continuous updates are sent. | Amazon EventBridge No | AWS AppSync Yes See tutorial |
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 | AWS AppSync Yes You can perform programmatic management using the AWS SDKs (Software Development Kits), AWS Command Line Interface (CLI), or infrastructure-as-code tools like AWS CloudFormation or AWS CDK (Cloud Development Kit). |
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. | AWS AppSync Yes 250,000 API requests free per month for 12 months with the AWS Free Tier. |
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. | AWS AppSync You pay only for what you use with no minimum fees or mandatory service usage. You are billed separately for query and data modification operations, and for performing realtime updates on your data. Read more |
Integrations & interoperability | |||
SDKs | Supporting multiple languages and platforms offers greater flexibility when building cross-platform realtime apps. | Amazon EventBridge
| AWS AppSync
|
Supported realtime protocols | Support for multiple protocols provides the flexibility to choose a protocol that best suits your project’s requirements. | Amazon EventBridge
| AWS AppSync
|
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 AppSync
|
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. | AWS AppSync AWS AppSync doesn't directly integrate with streaming and queuing services for data ingress and egress, but you can use the following AWS services alongside AppSync to build scalable and event-driven architectures for your applications: Ingress:
Egress:
|
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. | AWS AppSync |
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 AppSync No |
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. | AWS AppSync No published metrics are available. However, this works on top of serverless technology which means theoretically it should scale to millions of concurrent connection with little to no tuning from the customer. |
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. | AWS AppSync 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 | AWS AppSync 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. | AWS AppSync 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. | Amazon EventBridge 99.99%. Read more | AWS AppSync 99.95 uptime SLA |
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 | AWS AppSync 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. | Amazon EventBridge No | AWS AppSync Partial Single region by default - multi region deployment of AWS AppSync would require integration of Amazon DynamoDB Global Tables. |
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 | AWS AppSync Partial Not available by default - but could be built with the integration of Amazon DynamoDB Global Tables. |
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 | AWS AppSync Unknown, although reports in forums suggest it is 200-500 ms. |
Security & compliance | |||
API key authentication | Simplifies the authentication code on trusted servers compared to requesting, managing, and refreshing tokens. | Amazon EventBridge Yes | AWS AppSync Yes Learn more |
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. | AWS AppSync |
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. | AWS AppSync Yes Can set up auth with AWS IAM, and AWS IAM can be configured with any identity source (e.g. Okta). Learn more |
Rules for permissions and operations | Provides control over which users can subscribe and publish to certain channels. | Amazon EventBridge Yes | AWS AppSync Yes Learn more |
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 | AWS AppSync |
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 | AWS AppSync Yes Done using AWS Key Management Service keys. This ensures that data in services like AppSync is securely encrypted. Read more |
Compliance | Compliance with regulations can impact your ability to meet legal obligations in your industry. | Amazon EventBridge
| AWS AppSync
|
Alternatives to Amazon EventBridge and AWS AppSync
While both Amazon EventBridge and AWS AppSync 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
TriggerMesh is a free and open-source AWS EventBridge alternative.
Azure Event Grid is a Pub/Sub message routing service for creating event-driven architectures using MQTT and HTTP protocols.
Confluent Kafka is a scalable and distributed streaming platform that enables real-time data communications.
Alternatives to AWS AppSync
Amazon API Gateway is a service for building, deploying, and managing APIs.
Firebase Realtime Database is a cloud-hosted database by Google, allowing developers to build realtime applications for web and mobile.
Apollo GraphQL is a scalable platform that unifies all your data sources to one GraphQL API.
Discover how Amazon EventBridge and AWS AppSync stack up against Ably
Ably is the definitive realtime experience platform of the internet. See how we compare to Amazon EventBridge and AWS AppSync on key dimensions such as core features, pricing, integrations, QoS, performance, and security and compliance.
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