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Django Channels vs Google Cloud Pub/Sub

Discover how Django Channels compares to Google Cloud Pub/Sub, and understand which is right for your use case, based on dimensions such as core features, pricing, reliability, and scalability.

Django Channels

What is Django Channels?

Django Channels is an extension of the Django web framework that adds support for handling WebSockets, long-polling HTTP connections, and other protocols that require long-running connections.

Google Cloud Pub/Sub logo

What is Google Cloud Pub/Sub?

Google Cloud Pub/Sub is a real-time messaging service. Pub/Sub is used for asynchronous messaging between different systems, and services, within your applications. It enables developers to build robust and scalable real-time applications.

Compare Django Channels and Google Cloud Pub/Sub

Let’s compare Django Channels and Google Cloud Pub/Sub, 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 Django Channels and Google Cloud Pub/Sub. The content was last updated on 10 Oct 2024 for Django Channels and on 1 Aug 2024 for Google Cloud Pub/Sub. 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 If you do find anything incorrect or out of date, then please contact us.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.

Django Channels

Partial

You can implement a pub/sub mechanism with the addition of the channels_redis extension.

Read more
Google Cloud Pub/Sub

Yes

Chat capabilities

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

Django Channels

Yes

Django Channels provides the foundation of realtime communication infrastructure that can be used to implement chat capabilities like 1-on-1 messaging and group messaging.

Read more
Google Cloud Pub/Sub

No

Chat features such as group chat, emojis, and file sharing are not supported by Google Pub/Sub out of the box, which is intended to be used for service-to-service communication.

Collaboration capabilities

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

Django Channels

Yes

Django Channels provides a real-ime communication layer that can be used to build applications with collaboration features like avatar stacks and component locking.

Google Cloud Pub/Sub

No

Google Pub/Sub recommends using other Google services like Firebase Realtime database to build applications that require functionalities like collaboration.

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State sync capabilities

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

Django Channels
Google Cloud Pub/Sub

No

Google Pub/Sub does not support a state sync feature out of the box, but this can be achieved in combination with a realtime database.

Presence

Maintaining a view of which users are connected, and their associated metadata, enables their online status to be updated in realtime.

Django Channels

No

Google Cloud Pub/Sub

No

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.

Django Channels

No

Google Cloud Pub/Sub

Yes

Google Pub/Sub provides monitoring dashboards that can be used to monitor subscriptions. Subscriptions can also be monitored through the Cloud Monitoring API.

Read more
Message interactions

Enables interaction with previously-sent messages, facilitating the implementation of features like message reactions and threads.

Django Channels

No

Google Cloud Pub/Sub

No

Message history

Enables clients to catch up on missed messages when inactive, ensuring a user doesn’t miss any important messages.

Django Channels

No

You would have to build message history storage and retrieval yourself, using Django's database (ORM) to store messages, and creating APIs to retrieve them.

Google Cloud Pub/Sub

No

Pub/Sub can't retrieve acknowledged messages. You can use the Seek feature to mark them as unacknowledged and redeliver them or delete unacknowledged messages.

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Push notifications

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

Django Channels

Yes

Django Channels supports web push notifications with WebSockets.

Google Cloud Pub/Sub

Yes

You can create a push subscription workflow for push notifications using Google Pub/Sub.

Read more
Message delta compression

Minimizes bandwidth and can reduce latency, particularly in scenarios where continuous updates are sent.

Django Channels

No

Google Cloud Pub/Sub

No

Programmatic management

Enables the automation of provisioning, management, and testing of service resources, simplifying integration with existing development workflows such as CI.

Django Channels

Yes

Django Channels can only be used programmatically.

Google Cloud Pub/Sub

Yes

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.

Django Channels

Yes

Google Cloud Pub/Sub

No

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.

Django Channels

Django Channels is a free and open-source package that can be used without any cost. It's part of the Django ecosystem and doesn't have paid plans.

Google Cloud Pub/Sub

Google Pub/Sub has usage-based pricing, based the number of published, delivered, and stored bytes.

Read more
Integrations & interoperability
SDKs

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

Django Channels

Django Channels does not have any SDK. To use it, you must install it via pip as a Python package.

Google Cloud Pub/Sub
  • C++
  • C#
  • Go
  • Java
  • Node.js
  • PHP
  • Python
  • Ruby
Supported realtime protocols

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

Django Channels
  • WebSockets
  • MQTT
  • Server-Sent Events (SSE)
Google Cloud Pub/Sub

None.

Google Pub/Sub does not natively support any real-time protocols. However, you can implement WebSockets using other Google services like Google's Compute Engine.

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.

Django Channels

None.

Google Cloud Pub/Sub
  • Google Cloud Functions
Streaming & queueing

Provides a dependable method to reroute messages from the service to third-party streams and queues for further processing.

Django Channels

Yes

Google Cloud Pub/Sub

Yes

Observability services

Enables realtime monitoring and troubleshooting by offering insights into service behavior directly in your observability platform of choice.

Django Channels

No

Google Cloud Pub/Sub

Yes

The Google Monitoring, Alerting and Logging integration provides observability services.

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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.

Django Channels

Yes

Most CI/CD tools are supported on a Django project level rather than specifically by Django Channels:

  • GitHub Actions
  • GitLab CI/CD
  • Jenkins
  • AWS CodePipeline
  • Google Cloud Build
Google Cloud Pub/Sub

Yes

Supports:

  • Jenkins
  • Google Cloud Build
Quality of Service
Scalability

Scalability is vital as it ensures the service can handle increased data load or users without compromising performance.

Django Channels

The scalability of a Django project using Channels depends your own design, implementation, and infrastructure choices.

Google Cloud Pub/Sub

Google Pub/Sub is built to be scalable and reliable. Google uses the service for their products to send billions of messages per day. You can read more about their architecture and limitations in their documentation.

Guaranteed message delivery

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

Django Channels

No

Google Cloud Pub/Sub

Yes

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.

Django Channels

Django Channels guarantees message ordering in all cases.

Read more
Google Cloud Pub/Sub

No

Google Pub/Sub supports message ordering, but cannot always guarantee it even when this is enabled - for example, when dead-letter topics are enabled on subscriptions.

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Exactly-once message delivery

Guarantees that each message is processed exactly once, preventing data inconsistencies that can arise from duplicate processing or missing messages.

Django Channels

No

Google Cloud Pub/Sub

Yes

Google Pub/Sub supports exactly-once delivery based on a Pub/Sub-defined unique message ID.

Read more
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.

Django Channels

None.

Google Cloud Pub/Sub

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.

Django Channels

No

Google Cloud Pub/Sub

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.

Django Channels

No

Django Channels does not support multi-region data replication. It's a library for handling WebSockets, HTTP long-polling, and other protocols that require long-running connections in Django applications.

Google Cloud Pub/Sub

Yes

Google Pub/Sub supports synchronous data replication across three zones.

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.

Django Channels

No

Google Cloud Pub/Sub

Yes

Latency

Low latency is crucial for realtime apps as it ensures swift and efficient data transmissions, providing a smoother and more responsive user experience.

Django Channels

Unknown.

Google Cloud Pub/Sub

100ms round trip

Security & compliance
API key authentication

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

Django Channels

No

Google Cloud Pub/Sub

No

Google Pub/Sub only supports gcloud CLI credential and Application Default Credentials (ADC).

Read more
Token-based authentication

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

Django Channels
Google Cloud Pub/Sub

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.

Django Channels

No

Django Channels itself does not natively support Single Sign-On (SSO). SSO is typically handled at the Django application level.

Google Cloud Pub/Sub

Yes

SSO authentication in Pub/Sub is supported through Google Cloud IAM, OAuth 2.0, and Workforce Identity Federation, allowing integration with external identity providers like Azure AD or Okta.

Read more
Rules for permissions and operations

Provides control over which users can subscribe and publish to certain channels.

Django Channels

No

Google Cloud Pub/Sub

Yes

Rules for permissions and operation can be configured using Identity and Access Management (IAM).

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.

Django Channels

No

Google Cloud Pub/Sub

Yes

Encryption at rest

Ensures data stored by the service is secure and compliant, while also mitigating the risks of a data breach.

Django Channels

No

Google Cloud Pub/Sub

Yes

Compliance

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

Django Channels

There is no information on Django Channels compliance.

Google Cloud Pub/Sub
  • HIPAA

Alternatives to Django Channels and Google Cloud Pub/Sub

While both Django Channels and Google Cloud Pub/Sub 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 Django Channels

Socketio logo

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.

Pusher logo

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

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.

Alternatives to Google Cloud Pub/Sub

Amazon-sqs logo

AWS SQS is a message queuing solution for decoupling apps, services & architectures.

tech provider image

Apache Kafka is an open-source realtime data streaming platform.

Azure-service-bus logo

Azure Service Bus is a fully managed message service with message queues and Pub/Sub topics.

See more alternatives to Google Cloud Pub/Sub

Discover how Django Channels and Google Cloud Pub/Sub stack up against Ably

Ably is the definitive realtime experience platform of the internet. See how we compare to Django Channels and Google Cloud Pub/Sub 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