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Centrifugo vs Firebase Cloud Messaging

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

Centrifugo

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.

Firebase Cloud Messaging

What is Firebase Cloud Messaging?

Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM) is a free cross-platform messaging service for sending and receiving messages and notifications across platforms like iOS, Android, and the web via cloud-based infrastructure. It supports both upstream and downstream messaging.

Compare Centrifugo and Firebase Cloud Messaging

Let’s compare Centrifugo and Firebase Cloud Messaging, 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 Firebase Cloud Messaging. The content was last updated on 10 Oct 2024 for Centrifugo and on 30 Oct 2024 for Firebase Cloud Messaging. 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 If you do find anything incorrect or out of date, then please contact us.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

Firebase Cloud Messaging

Partial

Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM) is not a Pub/Sub service. However, you can connect it with Google Cloud Pub/Sub to create more advanced messaging patterns, including asynchronous messaging and scaling.

Read more
Chat capabilities

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

Centrifugo

Yes

Firebase Cloud Messaging

Partial

Firebase doesn’t offer a dedicated messaging solution. However, you can build these features using Firebase services such as Realtime Database, Firestore, and Firebase Storage.

Collaboration capabilities

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

Centrifugo

No

Firebase Cloud Messaging

Yes

FCM does not have built-in collaboration capabilities like live cursors, member location, avatar stacks, and component locking. However, you can build these using Firebase Realtime Database or Firestore.

State sync capabilities

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

Centrifugo

Yes

Firebase Cloud Messaging

Partial

FCM does not offer state sync capabilities on its own. You can achieve this by connecting it with Firebase Realtime Database or Firestore.

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
Firebase Cloud Messaging

Partial

FCM does not provide presence capabilities on its own. To incorporate presence, integrate with Firebase Realtime Database, which natively supports presence.

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.

Centrifugo

Yes

Firebase Cloud Messaging

Partial

FCM 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.

Centrifugo

No

Firebase Cloud Messaging

Partial

Message interactions are not natively supported in FCM. 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.

Centrifugo

Yes

Centrifugo supports message history in channels, though it is not enabled by default.

Read more
Firebase Cloud Messaging

Yes

FCM provides message delivery reports that can be viewed in the Firebase console.

:cta[Read more(https://firebase.google.com/support/guides/cloud-audit-logging/firebase-cloud-messaging#permission-type):

Push notifications

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

Centrifugo

Yes

Centrifugo's paid option, Centrifugo PRO, offers a push notifications API.

Read more
Firebase Cloud Messaging

Yes

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
Firebase Cloud Messaging

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

Firebase Cloud Messaging

Yes

FCM offers programmatic management through its APIs.

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.

Firebase Cloud Messaging

Yes

FCM is free to use.

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
Firebase Cloud Messaging

FCM is free to use.

Integrations & interoperability
SDKs

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

Centrifugo
  • Javascript
  • Go
  • Swift
  • Java
  • Python
Firebase Cloud Messaging
  • iOS
  • Android
  • Web
  • Unity
Supported realtime protocols

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

Centrifugo
  • WebSockets
  • Server-sent events (SSEs)
  • HTTP
  • GRPC
  • WebTransport
Firebase Cloud Messaging
  • WebSockets
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.

Firebase Cloud Messaging
  • 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.

Centrifugo

Yes

Firebase Cloud Messaging

No

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
Firebase Cloud Messaging

Partial

FCM does not directly offer built-in observability services, but you can integrate with Firebase Performance Monitoring to 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.

Centrifugo

No

Self-hosted, so you will have to implement your own.

Firebase Cloud Messaging

No

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.

Firebase Cloud Messaging

According to FCM, FCM can scale to over 115 billion notifications to more than 400 million users globally. At a recorded peak time, FCM has handled 46 million queries per second (QPS) from its average baseline of 18 million QPS.

Read more
Guaranteed message delivery

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

Centrifugo

No

Firebase Cloud Messaging

No

FCM does not guarantee message delivery without loss or duplication. It operates on a "best effort" model.

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.

Firebase Cloud Messaging

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.

Centrifugo

No

Firebase Cloud Messaging

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

Firebase Cloud Messaging

FCM uptime SLA is unclear. However, Firebase's SLA has a monthly uptime SLA of at least 99.95%.

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.

Centrifugo

No

Firebase Cloud Messaging

Yes

FCM 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.

Centrifugo

No

Firebase Cloud Messaging

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.

Centrifugo

No

Centrifugo relies on external systems like Redis or NATS for data storage, which may have their own failure points.

Firebase Cloud Messaging

Yes

FCM's distributed architecture and implementation of load balancing strategies ensure the re-routing of requests and distribution of message traffic evenly across servers, preventing single points of failure and congestion.

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)

Firebase Cloud Messaging

Unknown.

Security & compliance
API key authentication

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

Centrifugo

Yes

Firebase Cloud Messaging

Yes

Token-based authentication

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

Centrifugo

Yes

Supported with JSON Web Tokens (JWTs).

Read more
Firebase Cloud Messaging

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.

Centrifugo

Yes

SSO authentication is available only through Centrifugo PRO, its paid version.

Read more
Firebase Cloud Messaging

No

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.

Firebase Cloud Messaging

Partial

FCM does not implement rules for permissions and operations. Firebase's security features manage permissions and security.

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.

Centrifugo

No

Firebase Cloud Messaging

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

Firebase Cloud Messaging
Compliance

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

Centrifugo

None

Firebase Cloud Messaging
  • SOC1
  • SOC2
  • SOC3
  • ISO 27001
  • GDPR
  • CCPA

Alternatives to Centrifugo and Firebase Cloud Messaging

While both Centrifugo and Firebase Cloud Messaging 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 logo

PubNub is a developer API platform that powers the realtime infrastructure in apps to build engaging Virtual Spaces where online communities can connect.

Pusher logo

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

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.

See more alternatives to Centrifugo

Alternatives to Firebase Cloud Messaging

Amazon-sns logo

Amazon SNS is an AWS service for designed to distribute notifications from applications to subscribers via SMS, email, etc.

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 Cloud Messaging

Discover how Centrifugo and Firebase Cloud Messaging stack up against Ably

Ably is the definitive realtime experience platform of the internet. See how we compare to Centrifugo and Firebase Cloud Messaging 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