Centrifugo vs SignalR
Discover how Centrifugo compares to SignalR, 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.
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 SignalR?
SignalR is an open-source library that simplifies adding real-time web functionality to apps. It is integrated into the ASP.NET Core web development stack and provides a mechanism for two-way remote procedure calls between client and server.
Suitable for:
- Apps that require high frequency updates from the server, like gaming, social networks, voting, auction, maps, and GPS apps.
- Dashboards and monitoring apps
- Collaborative apps
- Apps that require notifications
Not suitable for:
-Stateless applications -Apps with high scalability requirements -Apps with high throughput requirements
Pros:
- Open source
- Free to use
Cons:
- Self-hosted
- Complex to manage
Compare Centrifugo and SignalR
Let’s compare Centrifugo and SignalR, 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 SignalR. The content was last updated on 23 Jul 2024 for Centrifugo and on 29 Jul 2024 for SignalR. 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 If you do find anything incorrect or out of date, then please contact us.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 | SignalR Partial The SignalR SDKs do not provide a topic abstraction out of the box, but they provide a "groups" abstraction which lets you implement something similar. Read more |
Chat capabilities | Accelerates the time to implement rich chat experiences with features such as read receipts, typing indicators, and more. | Centrifugo Yes | SignalR |
Collaboration capabilities | Enables you to quickly integrate realtime collaborative features like live cursors, member location, avatar stacks, and component locking. | Centrifugo No | SignalR No |
State sync capabilities | Enables realtime data synchronization across devices and users, ensuring a cohesive and up-to-date user experience. | Centrifugo Yes | SignalR No |
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 | SignalR Yes 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 | SignalR No |
Message interactions | Enables interaction with previously-sent messages, facilitating the implementation of features like message reactions and threads. | Centrifugo No | SignalR No |
Message history | Enables clients to catch up on missed messages when inactive, ensuring a user doesn’t miss any important messages. | Centrifugo | SignalR No |
Push notifications | Cross-platform push notifications make it possible to deliver important and timely messages to users even when they’re inactive. | Centrifugo | SignalR No Microsoft Azure Web PubSub has no native push notification functionality. Microsoft has a separate service for this - Azure Notification Hubs. 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 | SignalR 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 | SignalR No |
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. | SignalR Yes Self-hosted and free. |
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 | SignalR N/A (self-hosted) |
Integrations & interoperability | |||
SDKs | Supporting multiple languages and platforms offers greater flexibility when building cross-platform realtime apps. | Centrifugo
| SignalR Client SDKs:
Server SDKs:
|
Supported realtime protocols | Support for multiple protocols provides the flexibility to choose a protocol that best suits your project’s requirements. | Centrifugo
| SignalR
|
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. | SignalR None. |
Streaming & queueing | Provides a dependable method to reroute messages from the service to third-party streams and queues for further processing. | Centrifugo Yes | SignalR 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 | SignalR Partial SignalR is integrated with ASP.net Core metrics, and these can be reported to a monitoring system at regular intervals. Read more |
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. | SignalR No Self-hosted, so you will have to implement your own. |
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. | SignalR N/A (self-hosted) |
Guaranteed message delivery | Ensures messages are never lost during transmission, even in the presence of network disruptions. | Centrifugo No | SignalR 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. | SignalR 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 | SignalR 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 | SignalR N/A |
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 | SignalR 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 | SignalR 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. | SignalR 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) | SignalR N/A (self-hosted) |
Security & compliance | |||
API key authentication | Simplifies the authentication code on trusted servers compared to requesting, managing, and refreshing tokens. | Centrifugo Yes | SignalR No |
Token-based authentication | Provides a means to securely authenticate user devices against your user management system. | Centrifugo | SignalR |
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 | SignalR |
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. | SignalR Yes You can restrict access to hubs and hub methods to users matching specific authorization policies. 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 | SignalR No You would need to implement this yourself. |
Encryption at rest | Ensures data stored by the service is secure and compliant, while also mitigating the risks of a data breach. | Centrifugo No | SignalR No |
Compliance | Compliance with regulations can impact your ability to meet legal obligations in your industry. | Centrifugo None | SignalR N/A |
Alternatives to Centrifugo and SignalR
Whilst both Centrifugo and SignalR 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 SignalR
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.
Microsoft Azure Web PubSub is a fully managed PubSub offering. It is available as part of Microsoft's Azure Cloud Computing platform.
Pusher is a first-generation pub/sub messaging service that provides bi-directional hosted APIs for adding realtime features to applications.
Discover how Centrifugo and SignalR stack up against Ably
Ably is the definitive realtime experience platform of the internet. See how we compare to Centrifugo and SignalR on key dimensions such as core features, pricing, integrations, QoS, performance, and security and compliance.
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