Centrifugo vs Rails ActionCable
Discover how Centrifugo compares to Rails ActionCable, 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 Rails ActionCable?
Rails Action Cable is a framework built into Ruby on Rails that integrates WebSockets for real-time communication, allowing developers to create interactive applications.
Compare Centrifugo and Rails ActionCable
Let’s compare Centrifugo and Rails ActionCable, 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 Rails ActionCable. The content was last updated on 10 Oct 2024 for Centrifugo and on 25 Oct 2024 for Rails ActionCable. 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 If you do find anything incorrect or out of date, then please contact us.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 | Rails ActionCable Partial Supports basic pub/sub via channels. |
Chat capabilities | Accelerates the time to implement rich chat experiences with features such as read receipts, typing indicators, and more. | Centrifugo Yes | Rails ActionCable Partial Rails ActionCable does not have an out-of-the box chat solution, but provides the building blocks for a basic chat implementation, and several resources for self-building specific chat use cases. Read more |
Collaboration capabilities | Enables you to quickly integrate realtime collaborative features like live cursors, member location, avatar stacks, and component locking. | Centrifugo No | Rails ActionCable Partial Rails ActionCable provides basic support, but lacks advanced features like live cursors or component locking. |
State sync capabilities | Enables realtime data synchronization across devices and users, ensuring a cohesive and up-to-date user experience. | Centrifugo Yes | Rails ActionCable Partial Rails ActionCable offers basic state sync capabilities, but it does not offer advanced tools to ensure continued synchronization between clients and devices. |
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 | Rails ActionCable Partial Rails ActionCable doesn't offer presence out of the box, but can support presence when custom built on a user appearance channel. 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 | Rails ActionCable No |
Message interactions | Enables interaction with previously-sent messages, facilitating the implementation of features like message reactions and threads. | Centrifugo No | Rails ActionCable Partial Rails ActionCable supports basic message interactions like broadcasting but advanced features like reactions require custom code. |
Message history | Enables clients to catch up on missed messages when inactive, ensuring a user doesn’t miss any important messages. | Centrifugo | Rails ActionCable No |
Push notifications | Cross-platform push notifications make it possible to deliver important and timely messages to users even when they’re inactive. | Centrifugo | Rails ActionCable No |
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 | Rails ActionCable 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 | Rails ActionCable Yes Rails ActionCable can be managed through Rails. |
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. | Rails ActionCable Yes The Rails framework, including Rails ActionCable, is completely free and open-source. |
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 | Rails ActionCable Completely free, no paid plans. |
Integrations & interoperability | |||
SDKs | Supporting multiple languages and platforms offers greater flexibility when building cross-platform realtime apps. | Centrifugo
| Rails ActionCable
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Supported realtime protocols | Support for multiple protocols provides the flexibility to choose a protocol that best suits your project’s requirements. | Centrifugo
| Rails ActionCable
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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. | Rails ActionCable None. |
Streaming & queueing | Provides a dependable method to reroute messages from the service to third-party streams and queues for further processing. | Centrifugo Yes | Rails ActionCable 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 | Rails ActionCable 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. | Rails ActionCable 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. | Rails ActionCable No metrics available. |
Guaranteed message delivery | Ensures messages are never lost during transmission, even in the presence of network disruptions. | Centrifugo No | Rails ActionCable 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. | Rails ActionCable 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 | Rails ActionCable 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 | Rails ActionCable No 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. | Centrifugo No | Rails ActionCable 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 | Rails ActionCable 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. | Rails ActionCable 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) | Rails ActionCable Unknown. |
Security & compliance | |||
API key authentication | Simplifies the authentication code on trusted servers compared to requesting, managing, and refreshing tokens. | Centrifugo Yes | Rails ActionCable No |
Token-based authentication | Provides a means to securely authenticate user devices against your user management system. | Centrifugo | Rails ActionCable No |
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 | Rails ActionCable 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. | Rails ActionCable Yes |
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 | Rails ActionCable 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 | Rails ActionCable No |
Compliance | Compliance with regulations can impact your ability to meet legal obligations in your industry. | Centrifugo None | Rails ActionCable None. |
Alternatives to Centrifugo and Rails ActionCable
While both Centrifugo and Rails ActionCable 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 Rails ActionCable
Pusher is a first-generation pub/sub messaging service that provides bi-directional hosted APIs for adding realtime features to applications.
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.
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 Rails ActionCable stack up against Ably
Ably is the definitive realtime experience platform of the internet. See how we compare to Centrifugo and Rails ActionCable 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