CometChat vs PubNub
Discover how CometChat compares to PubNub, and understand which is right for your use case, based on dimensions such as scalability, pricing, security, and their chat features.

What is CometChat?
CometChat is a messaging platform designed for integration into various applications, offering text, voice, and video chat capabilities. It supports extensive customization through SDKs and UI kits.
What is PubNub?
PubNub is a developer API platform that powers the realtime infrastructure in apps to build engaging Virtual Spaces where online communities can connect. It can serve as the foundation for online chat, live events, geolocation, remote IoT control, and realtime updates.
Compare CometChat and PubNub
Let’s compare CometChat and PubNub, looking at key elements of their offering such as their scalability, pricing, security and chat feature set.
Scalability | |||
Concurrent connections | Number of users that can be supported in a single chat. | CometChat Up 100k concurrent connections can be supported. The use of certain features, such as delivery receipts, read receipts, and typing indicators, may impact these limits. For example, groups with all features enabled can accommodate up to 300 members. | PubNub 10,000 users can be supported in a single chat. They recommend you limit the number of online users in a single chat room or space to 10,000 users for optimal performance. |
Connections | Number of connections that can be handled across the platform. | CometChat Up to 500k. | PubNub Unlimited. Overages apply if you exceed plan quota - $0.15 per additional user. |
Channels / rooms | Number of channels or rooms that can be handled across the platform. | CometChat Unlimited. | PubNub Unlimited. |
Messages | Number of messages that can be handled across the platform. | CometChat Unlimited. | PubNub Unlimited. Overages apply if you exceed 3000 per user - $43 per additional 1M transactions. |
Message throughput | Number of messsages that can be published per second. | CometChat Up to 333 messages per second. API calls for standard operations are rate limited to 20000 requests per min. | PubNub 10-15 messages per second can be published. Read more |
Data integrity | |||
Guaranteed message delivery | Ensures messages are never lost during transmission, even in the presence of network disruptions. | CometChat No | PubNub 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. | CometChat No | PubNub 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. | CometChat No | PubNub 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. | CometChat 99.99% uptime guarantee. Read more | PubNub PubNub offers a 99.999% uptime SLA for its users. |
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. | CometChat Yes Read more | PubNub Yes |
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. | CometChat No | PubNub Yes PubNub supports multi-region data replication across different points of presence except for file sharing. Read more |
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. | CometChat No | PubNub 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. | CometChat Under optimal test conditions, CometChat has a one-way latency of less than 50 ms response time. It is not mentioned what its roundtrip latency is. Read more | PubNub <100 milliseconds delivery. |
Server-side batching | Reduces the overall message count, lowers costs, and mitigates the risk of hitting rate limits during high-throughput scenarios. | CometChat No | PubNub No |
Connection state recovery | Automatically re-establish failed connections and replay missed messages. | CometChat Yes CometChat supports connection state recovery, monitoring realtime connection status to its WebSocket servers. If disconnected, the SDK auto-reconnects, indicating "connecting" and "connected" states. Read more | PubNub Yes PubNub supports connection state recovery and has an automatic reconnection process to handle brief network interruptions. PubNub message delivery page |
Ecosystem support | |||
Supported realtime protocols | Support for multiple protocols provides the flexibility to choose a protocol that best suits your project’s requirements. | CometChat WebSocket. | PubNub
PubNub uses HTTP as the transport for their client libraries. A WebSocket compliant interface is provided in some libraries, however this is just a wrapper around an underlying HTTP transport. |
Supported languages | Supporting multiple languages and platforms offers greater flexibility when building cross-platform realtime apps. | CometChat CometChat supports several programming languages for effective integration with CometChat's SDKs and APIs:
| PubNub
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Chat room types | |||
Multi-type chat support (group, DM, supergroups) | Enables chat experiences to be tailored to various user needs, from one-on-one to large, scalable group discussions. | CometChat
| PubNub Yes PubNub supports:
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Chat room management | |||
Presence | Maintaining a view of which users are connected, and their associated metadata, enables their online status to be updated in realtime. | CometChat Yes CometChat supports user presence out-of-the-box through CometChat SDKs and its UI kits. The SDKs include options for subscribing to presence updates to all users, specific roles, or friends. | PubNub 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. | CometChat No | PubNub Yes PubNub's Presence API allows developers to access and integrate occupancy information into their applications. Read more |
Typing indicators | Show when others are typing in a chat room, enhancing realtime communication flow. | CometChat Yes | PubNub Yes Read more |
Room reactions | Customize the chat environment with reactions and other shared room states. | CometChat No | PubNub No |
Chat message attributes | |||
Message edits and deletes | Allow users to modify or remove messages. | CometChat Yes | PubNub Yes PubNub stores all messages in a time-series database and doesn’t expose an API to directly update a message. Users can delete or edit messages using the Message Reactions feature. |
Message reactions & emoticons | Boost engagement by enabling users to quickly express emotions or feedback on messages. | CometChat Yes | PubNub Yes |
Rich text support | Enhance messages with rich text formatting in chat. | CometChat Yes | PubNub No |
Media attachments | Support for sharing images, videos, and files in chat. | CometChat Yes CometChat in-app messaging allows users to send and receive various documents and multimedia files through its SDKs and UI kits. Read more | PubNub Yes |
Chat application and user state | |||
In-app notifications | Notify users of important events from other chat rooms without them leaving the current chat, keeping them engaged and informed. | CometChat Yes CometChat supports in-app notifications through CometChat's push notification service. | PubNub Yes PubNub supports in-app notifications through its mobile push gateway. |
Role-based permissions | Control user roles and permissions to ensure proper access and moderation. | CometChat Yes | PubNub Yes |
UI kit | Customizable UI elements for a seamless chat integration. | CometChat Yes CometChat supports UI kits for:
| PubNub No |
Storage and history | |||
Synchronous - automated moderation | Detect and manage harmful content automatically, before the message is broadcast to participants. | CometChat Yes | PubNub Yes Integration with 3rd party moderation tools via Functions. |
Asynchronous - automated moderation | Detect and manage harmful content automatically, after the message is broadcast to participants. | CometChat Yes | PubNub Yes Integration with 3rd party moderation tools via Functions. |
Manual moderation via dashboards | Tools for moderators to detect harmful messages and manage them effectively. | CometChat Yes CometChat lets human experts handle complex moderation cases. It allows users to set rules that flag borderline content for human review. | PubNub Yes PubNub offers a Moderation Dashboard that allows admins to manually moderate chat app users through the Users view. |
Ban users | Remove problematic users from the chat to maintain a healthy environment. | CometChat Yes | PubNub Yes PubNub users can automatically disable default access to channels, channel groups, and other users' metadata through the access manager and admin portal. |
Dev tools | |||
Programmatic management | Enables the automation of provisioning, management, and testing of service resources, simplifying integration with existing development workflows such as CI. | CometChat Yes | PubNub Yes |
Pricing | |||
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. | CometChat CometChat pricing is based on the number of MAUs. Overages apply for additional MAU's and peak concurrent connection - over set quota. CometChat pricing page | PubNub PubNub offers Free, Starter, and Pro packages. Their support packages, separate from their standard plans, also include an Enterprise option. Their pricing model is based on monthly active users (MAUs). See the pricing page |
Pricing illustration | An example price based on 5 live streaming chat events and 50K attendees. | CometChat $24,419 Base price - $669 Overages per additional concurrent user over 1250 - $23,750 Note: Assumes same users attend each event, to keep MAU at minimum | PubNub $23,048.00
Note: Assumes same users attend each event to keep MAU at minimum. PubNub pricing page |
Free plan | With a free plan, you can test the service’s functionality and compatibility with your project before committing to a paid plan. | CometChat Yes Free for up to 100 users. | PubNub Yes |
Pricing plans | The pricing plans offered by cost. | CometChat
Overages:
| PubNub Starter: $98/month/MAU: Up to 1000 MAUs, and up to 3000 transactions per MAU. Pro packages: Custom pricing Their support packages, separate from their standard plans, also include an Enterprise option. Overages apply:
|
Support for additional realtime features | |||
Pub/Sub messaging | Reduces communication code complexity, simplifying the process of building highly functional and architecturally complex realtime apps. | CometChat No | PubNub Yes |
Collaboration capabilities | Enables you to quickly integrate realtime collaborative features like live cursors, member location, avatar stacks, and component locking. | CometChat Yes CometChat offers collaboration capabilities with tools like polls, whiteboards, and collaborative documents. | PubNub Partial PubNub's collaboration capabilities are largely powered by its Presence feature. There is no dedicated collaboration SDK. |
Database sync capabilities | Database sync capabilities enable realtime updates between your database and UI, ensuring the UI reflects changes in the database instantly, with data consistency, and without the need for polling. | CometChat No | PubNub No |
Notifications | Send notifications directly to users screens, from chat responses to news alerts, or game updates, whether or not an application is open and running. | CometChat Yes | PubNub Yes |
Asset tracking | State-of-the-art asset tracking across last mile logistics, food delivery applications, and urban mobility services. | CometChat No | PubNub Yes PubNub can be used to track and trace assets, their locations, and status through its realtime visibility feature. Read more |
Integrations & interoperability | |||
AI models | Allows you to integrate AI models, like GPT, into your app. | CometChat | PubNub Yes PubNub integrates with OpenAI's ChatGPT model. |
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. | CometChat No | PubNub PubNub operates its own serverless architecture through its feature called PubNub Functions. |
Streaming & queueing | Provides a dependable method to reroute messages from the service to third-party streams and queues for further processing. | CometChat No | PubNub Egress:
Ingress:
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Observability services | Enables realtime monitoring and troubleshooting by offering insights into service behavior directly in your observability platform of choice. | CometChat No | PubNub Yes PubNub provides integrations with Datadog and NewRelic. |
Security & compliance | |||
API key authentication | Simplifies the authentication code on trusted servers compared to requesting, managing, and refreshing tokens. | CometChat Yes | PubNub 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. | CometChat Yes | PubNub Yes PubNub implements SAML SSO authentication. |
Rules for permissions and operations | Provides control over which users can subscribe and publish to certain channels. | CometChat Yes CometChat implements rules for permissions and user control. It features role-based permissions that allow you to manage user actions. | PubNub Yes PubNub supports rules for permissions and operations through its Access Manager. See Access Manager docs |
End-to-end encryption | Ensures that the data transmitted between the client and the API server remains confidential and secure while in transit. | CometChat Yes CometChat implements end-to-end encryption using Virgil E3Kit. | PubNub |
Compliance | Compliance with regulations can impact your ability to meet legal obligations in your industry. | CometChat CometChat is compliant with four security standards:
| PubNub PubNub is compliant with five policies for the security and privacy of its services:
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Disclaimer: This comparison was created based on documentation and resources freely available online about CometChat and PubNub. The content was last updated on 1 May 2025 for CometChat and on 30 Apr 2025 for PubNub. Be sure to double-check everything before you make any decisions. If you do find anything incorrect or out of date, then please let us know.
Alternatives to CometChat and PubNub
While both CometChat and PubNub 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 CometChat
Twilio is a platform that provides developers with a suite of communication tools for building messaging infrastructure in their applications.
Ably is the definitive realtime experience platform of the internet. Serving more WebSocket connections than any other pub/sub platform on earth. Businesses trust us to power their critical applications - reliably, securely and at serious scale.
PubNub is a developer API platform that powers the realtime infrastructure in apps to build engaging Virtual Spaces where online communities can connect.
Alternatives to PubNub
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.
SignalR is an open-source library that simplifies adding real-time web functionality to ASP.NET Core web apps.
Discover how CometChat and PubNub stack up against Ably
Ably is the definitive realtime experience platform of the internet. See how we compare to CometChat and PubNub 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