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Centrifugo vs Firebase

Discover how Centrifugo compares to Firebase, 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.

Suitable for:

  • Collaboration tools
  • Chat applications
  • Multiplayer games

Not suitable for:

  • Small-scale projects
  • Non-realtime use cases

Pros:

  • High performance
  • Has message history and message recovery
  • Scalable architecture
  • Has user presence status
  • Customizable

Cons:

  • Requires server management
  • Steep learning curve
  • Complex setup

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.

Suitable for:

  • Realtime chat applications
  • Online collaborative apps
  • Multiplayer gaming
  • Realtime analytics
  • Monitoring services

Not suitable for:

  • Complex queries
  • Large data sets

Pros:

  • Generous free tier
  • Multiple SDKs
  • Robust documentation

Cons:

  • Unexpected cost surge
  • Google product lifespan concerns
  • Geo-blocking
  • Data privacy concerns

Compare Centrifugo and Firebase

Let’s compare Centrifugo 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 Centrifugo and Firebase. The content was last updated on 23 Jul 2024 for Centrifugo and on 22 Jul 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 If you do find anything incorrect or out of date, then please contact us.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.

Centrifugo

Yes

Firebase

Partial

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

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

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.

Centrifugo

No

Firebase

Yes

State sync capabilities

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

Centrifugo

Yes

Firebase

Yes

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

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

Yes

Firebase Realtime Database 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

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.

Centrifugo

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.

Centrifugo

Yes

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

Read more
Firebase

No

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

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.

Centrifugo

Yes

Centrifugo supports delta compression only in channels with recovery and positioning on.

Read more
Firebase

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

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.

Centrifugo

Yes

Centrifugo is open-source and free to use.

Firebase

Yes

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.

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

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.

Centrifugo
  • Javascript
  • Go
  • Swift
  • Java
  • Python
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.

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

Centrifugo

None.

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.

Centrifugo

Yes

Firebase

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
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.

Centrifugo

No

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

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.

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

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.

Centrifugo

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.

Centrifugo

Partial

Centrifugo supports ordering in channels but not across channels.

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.

Centrifugo

No

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.

Centrifugo

N/A

Firebase

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

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

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.

Centrifugo

No

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

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.

Centrifugo

N/A (self-hosted)

Firebase

Unknown.

Security & compliance
API key authentication

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

Centrifugo

Yes

Firebase

No

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

Yes

Supported with JSON Web Tokens (JWTs).

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

Yes

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

Read more
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.

Centrifugo

Yes

Centrifugo supports permission rules for operations through its configuration.

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.

Centrifugo

No

Firebase

Yes

Data in transit is encrypted using HTTPS in all Firebase services.

Read more
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

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.

Centrifugo

None

Firebase
  • SOC1
  • SOC2
  • SOC3
  • ISO 27001

Alternatives to Centrifugo and Firebase

Whilst both Centrifugo 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 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.

See more alternatives to Centrifugo

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.

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

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

Discover how Centrifugo and Firebase stack up against Ably

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