Centrifugo vs Django Channels
Discover how Centrifugo compares to Django Channels, and understand which is right for your use case, based on dimensions such as core features, pricing, reliability, and scalability.
What is Centrifugo?
Centrifugo is an open source, language-agnostic, self-hosted pub/sub server capable of scalable realtime messaging. It uses transports like WebSockets to deliver messages to active users.
What is Django Channels?
Django Channels is an extension of the Django web framework that adds support for handling WebSockets, long-polling HTTP connections, and other protocols that require long-running connections.
Compare Centrifugo and Django Channels
Let’s compare Centrifugo and Django Channels, 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 Centrifugo and Django Channels. The content was last updated on 10 Oct 2024 for Centrifugo and on 10 Oct 2024 for Django Channels. 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 If you do find anything incorrect or out of date, then please contact us.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. | Centrifugo Yes | Django Channels Partial You can implement a pub/sub mechanism with the addition of the |
Chat capabilities | Accelerates the time to implement rich chat experiences with features such as read receipts, typing indicators, and more. | Centrifugo Yes | Django Channels Yes Django Channels provides the foundation of realtime communication infrastructure that can be used to implement chat capabilities like 1-on-1 messaging and group messaging. Read more |
Collaboration capabilities | Enables you to quickly integrate realtime collaborative features like live cursors, member location, avatar stacks, and component locking. | Centrifugo No | Django Channels Yes Django Channels provides a real-ime communication layer that can be used to build applications with collaboration features like avatar stacks and component locking. |
State sync capabilities | Enables realtime data synchronization across devices and users, ensuring a cohesive and up-to-date user experience. | Centrifugo Yes | Django Channels No Read more |
Presence | Maintaining a view of which users are connected, and their associated metadata, enables their online status to be updated in realtime. | Centrifugo Yes Read more | Django Channels 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. | Centrifugo Yes | Django Channels No |
Message interactions | Enables interaction with previously-sent messages, facilitating the implementation of features like message reactions and threads. | Centrifugo No | Django Channels No |
Message history | Enables clients to catch up on missed messages when inactive, ensuring a user doesn’t miss any important messages. | Centrifugo | Django Channels No You would have to build message history storage and retrieval yourself, using Django's database (ORM) to store messages, and creating APIs to retrieve them. |
Push notifications | Cross-platform push notifications make it possible to deliver important and timely messages to users even when they’re inactive. | Centrifugo | Django Channels Yes Django Channels supports web push notifications with WebSockets. |
Message delta compression | Minimizes bandwidth and can reduce latency, particularly in scenarios where continuous updates are sent. | Centrifugo Yes Centrifugo supports delta compression only in channels with recovery and positioning on. Read more | Django Channels No |
Programmatic management | Enables the automation of provisioning, management, and testing of service resources, simplifying integration with existing development workflows such as CI. | Centrifugo Yes | Django Channels Yes Django Channels can only be used programmatically. |
| 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. | Centrifugo Yes Centrifugo is open-source and free to use. | Django Channels Yes |
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. | Centrifugo Centrifugo's base product is free and open-source, but there is also a paid version called Centrifugo PRO. More specific pricing information is not available online; for pricing, you need to contact Centrifugo's sales team. Read more | Django Channels Django Channels is a free and open-source package that can be used without any cost. It's part of the Django ecosystem and doesn't have paid plans. |
| Integrations & interoperability | |||
SDKs | Supporting multiple languages and platforms offers greater flexibility when building cross-platform realtime apps. | Centrifugo
| Django Channels Django Channels does not have any SDK. To use it, you must install it via pip as a Python package. |
Supported realtime protocols | Support for multiple protocols provides the flexibility to choose a protocol that best suits your project’s requirements. | Centrifugo
| Django Channels
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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. | Centrifugo None. | Django Channels None. |
Streaming & queueing | Provides a dependable method to reroute messages from the service to third-party streams and queues for further processing. | Centrifugo Yes | Django Channels Yes |
Observability services | Enables realtime monitoring and troubleshooting by offering insights into service behavior directly in your observability platform of choice. | Centrifugo Partial Centrifugo has no native observability tools, but offers integrations with monitoring tools such as Prometheus and Grafana. Read more | Django Channels No |
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. | Centrifugo No Self-hosted, so you will have to implement your own. | Django Channels Yes Most CI/CD tools are supported on a Django project level rather than specifically by Django Channels:
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| Quality of Service | |||
Scalability | Scalability is vital as it ensures the service can handle increased data load or users without compromising performance. | Centrifugo Centrifugo is designed for high scalability; its Redis engine allows for scaling Centrifugo nodes to different machines. For specific stats on scale, you can read more in Centrifugo's scale test tutorial. | Django Channels The scalability of a Django project using Channels depends your own design, implementation, and infrastructure choices. |
Guaranteed message delivery | Ensures messages are never lost during transmission, even in the presence of network disruptions. | Centrifugo No | Django Channels 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. | Centrifugo Partial Centrifugo supports ordering in channels but not across channels. | Django Channels Django Channels guarantees message ordering in all cases. Read more |
Exactly-once message delivery | Guarantees that each message is processed exactly once, preventing data inconsistencies that can arise from duplicate processing or missing messages. | Centrifugo No | Django Channels 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. | Centrifugo N/A | Django Channels None. |
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. | Centrifugo No | Django Channels 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. | Centrifugo No | Django Channels No Django Channels does not support multi-region data replication. It's a library for handling WebSockets, HTTP long-polling, and other protocols that require long-running connections in Django applications. |
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. | Centrifugo No Centrifugo relies on external systems like Redis or NATS for data storage, which may have their own failure points. | Django Channels 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. | Centrifugo N/A (self-hosted) | Django Channels Unknown. |
| Security & compliance | |||
API key authentication | Simplifies the authentication code on trusted servers compared to requesting, managing, and refreshing tokens. | Centrifugo Yes | Django Channels No |
Token-based authentication | Provides a means to securely authenticate user devices against your user management system. | Centrifugo | Django Channels Yes Read more |
Single Sign-On (SSO) authentication | SSO streamlines login processes, boosts security by minimizing password use, and meets compliance needs for secure data access management. | Centrifugo | Django Channels No Django Channels itself does not natively support Single Sign-On (SSO). SSO is typically handled at the Django application level. |
Rules for permissions and operations | Provides control over which users can subscribe and publish to certain channels. | Centrifugo Yes Centrifugo supports permission rules for operations through its configuration. | Django Channels No |
End-to-end encryption | Ensures that the data transmitted between the client and the API server remains confidential and secure while in transit. | Centrifugo No | Django Channels No |
Encryption at rest | Ensures data stored by the service is secure and compliant, while also mitigating the risks of a data breach. | Centrifugo No | Django Channels No |
Compliance | Compliance with regulations can impact your ability to meet legal obligations in your industry. | Centrifugo None | Django Channels There is no information on Django Channels compliance. |
Alternatives to Centrifugo and Django Channels
While both Centrifugo and Django Channels 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 Centrifugo
PubNub is a developer API platform that powers the realtime infrastructure in apps to build engaging Virtual Spaces where online communities can connect.
Pusher is a first-generation pub/sub messaging service that provides bi-directional hosted APIs for adding realtime features to applications.
Google Cloud Pub/Sub is a scalable messaging service that can be used to send and receive messages from applications or services.
Alternatives to Django Channels
Socket.IO is a library that provides realtime, bi-directional communication between clients and servers. It allows the management of connections, sending and receiving messages, and more.
Pusher is a first-generation pub/sub messaging service that provides bi-directional hosted APIs for adding realtime features to applications.
PubNub is a developer API platform that powers the realtime infrastructure in apps to build engaging Virtual Spaces where online communities can connect.
Discover how Centrifugo and Django Channels stack up against Ably
Ably is the definitive realtime experience platform of the internet. See how we compare to Centrifugo and Django Channels 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
