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Amazon SNS vs Firebase

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

Amazon SNS logo

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.

Firebase logo

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 Amazon SNS and Firebase

Let’s compare Amazon SNS and Firebase, 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 SNS and Firebase. The content was last updated on 1 Aug 2024 for Amazon SNS and on 18 Nov 2024 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 If you do find anything incorrect or out of date, then please contact us.

Core features
Pub/Sub messaging

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

Amazon SNS

Yes

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

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Firebase

Partial

Firebase does not natively support Pub/Sub messaging. However, this can be implemented with Google's Pub/Sub service.

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Chat capabilities

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

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.

Firebase

Yes

You can build chat capabilities on top of Firebase's Realtime Database.

Collaboration capabilities

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

Amazon SNS

No

Firebase

Yes

State sync capabilities

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

Amazon SNS

Partial

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

Firebase

Yes

The Firebase Realtime Database lets you store and sync data between your users in real time.

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Presence

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

Amazon SNS

No

Firebase

Yes

Firebase Realtime Database natively supports presence.

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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 SNS

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.

Message interactions

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

Amazon SNS

No

Firebase

Partial

Message interactions are not natively supported in Firebase. However, you can programmatically build interactions on top of Firebase's Realtime Database.

Message history

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

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.

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Firebase

No

Push notifications

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

Amazon SNS

Yes

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

Firebase

Yes

You can create, send, and monitor push notifications using Firebase Cloud Messaging.

Read more
Message delta compression

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

Amazon SNS

No

Firebase

No

Programmatic management

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

Amazon SNS

Yes

Firebase

Yes

Firebase projects can be managed programmatically using the Firebase Management API.

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 SNS

No

AWS SNS does not offer a free tier, but has a pay-as-you-go pricing model.

Firebase

Yes

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

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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 SNS

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

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Firebase

Firebase has a free plan and a pay-as-you-go plan:

  • Free (Spark) plan: Limited to 100 simultaneous connections and 1 GB of storage.
  • PAYG (Blaze) plan: 1 GB of storage is priced at $5. Supports multiple databases per project.
Integrations & interoperability
SDKs

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

Amazon SNS
  • Go
  • PHP
  • Java
  • Javascript
  • .NET
  • Kotlin
  • Python
  • C++
  • Ruby
Firebase
  • iOS
  • Android
  • Web
  • C++
  • Unity
Supported realtime protocols

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

Amazon SNS
  • HTTP/HTTPS
  • Email (SMTP)
  • SMS (TCP)
Firebase
  • WebSockets
  • Server-sent events (SSEs)
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 SNS

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

Firebase
  • Cloud Functions for Firebase
Streaming & queueing

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

Amazon SNS

Partial

Available through Amazon SQS.

Firebase

Yes

Observability services

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

Amazon SNS

Partial

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

Firebase

Yes

Using Firebase Performance Monitoring you can monitor your application performance based on location, device, or version.

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 SNS

Yes

Supports:

  • AWS CodePipeline
Firebase

Yes

Supports:

  • Jenkins
  • Buddy CI/CD
  • Google Cloud Build
  • GitHub Workflow
Quality of Service
Scalability

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

Amazon SNS

No published metrics are available.

Firebase

Firebase Realtime Database is limited to 200,000 simultaneous connections, 1000 Cloud Functions per write (500 for v2 per region), 1 MB event size, and 10 MB/sec data transfer to Cloud Functions.

Guaranteed message delivery

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

Amazon SNS

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.

Amazon SNS

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.

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.

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.

Amazon SNS

99.9%.

Read more
Firebase

99.95%.

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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 SNS

Yes

Firebase

Yes

Firebase benefits from Google's global edge network.

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 SNS

Partial

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

Firebase

No

Multi-region data replication is currently not supported in Firebase Realtime Database, but it is supported in Firestore databases.

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 SNS

Yes

Firebase

No

Each Realtime Database instance is tied to a single region chosen at the time of creation.

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 SNS

Unknown.

Firebase

Unknown.

Security & compliance
API key authentication

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

Amazon SNS

Yes

AWS SNS uses AWS IAM for managing API key authentication.

Firebase

No

Token-based authentication

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

Amazon SNS

Yes

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

Firebase

Yes

Supported with JSON Web Tokens (JWTs).

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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 SNS

Yes

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

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.

Amazon SNS

Yes

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

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.

Amazon SNS

Yes

Firebase

No

Data in transit is encrypted using HTTPS in all Firebase services, but this does not include end-to-end encryption.

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Encryption at rest

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

Amazon SNS

Yes

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

Firebase

Partial

Some Firebase services are encrypted at rest while others are not. Firebase Realtime Database and Firebase Cloud Messaging are encrypted at rest.

Read more
Compliance

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

Amazon SNS
  • SOC
  • GDPR
  • ISO 27001
Firebase
  • SOC1
  • SOC2
  • SOC3
  • ISO 27001
  • GDPR
  • CCPA

Alternatives to Amazon SNS and Firebase

While both Amazon SNS 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 Amazon SNS

Google-pub-sub logo

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

Azure-service-bus logo

Azure Service Bus is a fully managed message service with message queues and Pub/Sub topics.

tech provider image

OneSignal is a customer engagement platform that offers push notifications, messages, and email sends for businesses to manage communication with their users.

See more alternatives to Amazon SNS

Alternatives to Firebase

tech provider image

Supabase Realtime is a globally distributed real-time server network built on PostgreSQL, enabling developers to build applications with real-time data sync.

Pusher logo

Pusher is a first-generation pub/sub messaging service that provides bi-directional hosted APIs for adding realtime features to applications.

tech provider image

OneSignal is a customer engagement platform that offers push notifications, messages, and email sends for businesses to manage communication with their users.

See more alternatives to Firebase

Discover how Amazon SNS and Firebase stack up against Ably

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