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Django Channels vs PubNub

Discover how Django Channels compares to PubNub, 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.

Suitable for:

  • Real-time chat applications
  • Multiplayer games
  • Collaborative editing tools
  • Live voting or polling systems
  • Realtime data visualization
  • Monitoring systems

Not suitable for:

  • Non-collaborative applications
  • Offline-first applications
  • Low-data change dashboards
  • High-latency tolerance
  • Static websites

Pros:

  • Seamless integration
  • Flexibility
  • Stable technology
  • Large developer community
  • Extensive documentation

Cons:

  • Learning curve
  • Complex deployment
  • Potential for race conditions
  • Dependency on ASGI

What is PubNub?

PubNub is a developer API platform that powers the real-time 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.

Suitable for:

  • Chat
  • Live audience engagement
  • Multi-user collaboration
  • Device control
  • Data streaming
  • Geolocation /dispatch

Not suitable for:

  • Audio and video

Pros:

  • Highly scalable
  • Global edge network

Cons:

  • No message delivery guarantees
  • No message ordering guarantees
  • No exactly-once delivery guarantees
  • No WebSockets support
  • Reduced message continuity when clients are disconnected

Compare Django Channels and PubNub

Let’s compare Django Channels and PubNub, 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 PubNub. The content was last updated on 29 Jul 2024 for Django Channels and on 1 Aug 2024 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 If you do find anything incorrect or out of date, then please contact us.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
PubNub

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
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.

PubNub

Partial

Via Presence, no dedicated SDK to make it easier.

State sync capabilities

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

Django Channels
PubNub

Yes

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

PubNub

Yes

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

PubNub

Yes

Via presence.

See Presence docs
Message interactions

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

Django Channels

No

PubNub

Yes

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.

PubNub

Yes

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.

PubNub

Yes

Message delta compression

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

Django Channels

No

PubNub

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.

PubNub

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.

Django Channels

Yes

PubNub

Yes

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.

PubNub

PubNub offers Free, Starter, and Pro packages. Their support packages, separate from their standard plans, also include an Enterprise option.

See the pricing page
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.

PubNub
  • REST API
  • Asyncio
  • C-Core
  • C-Sharp
  • Cocoa Objective-C
  • Cocoa Swift
  • Dart
  • FreeRTOS
  • Go
  • Java
  • JavaScript
  • Kotlin
  • Lua
  • Mbed
  • MQTT
  • Objective-C
  • PHP
  • POSIX C
  • POSIX C++
  • Python
  • React
  • Redux
  • Ruby
  • Rust
  • Swift
  • Unity
  • Windows C
  • Windows C++

Source: SDKs

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)
PubNub
  • HTTP
  • MQTT
  • Fallback to Comet (XHR) and Long Polling for older browsers

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.

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.

PubNub
  • PubNubFunctions - proprietary functions

PubNub allows you to run code on its own platform using proprietary PubNub Functions in the form of “Blocks”. The code you can run in Blocks is limited to the Javascript API available in PubNub’s system.

Streaming & queueing

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

Django Channels

Yes

PubNub

Egress:

  • AWS Kinesis
  • AWS SQS
  • Apache Pulsar
  • RabbitMQ
  • AMQP
  • Kafka

Ingress:

  • Kafka
Observability services

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

Django Channels

No

PubNub

Yes

PubNub provides integrations with Datadog and NewRelic

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
PubNub

PubNub provides a Command Line Interface (CLI) specifically for managing and deploying PubNub Functions.

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.

PubNub
  • 2 trillion monthly transactions
  • 800 million device connections monthly
  • Under 100 milliseconds delivery
  • 99.999% reliability

Source: Edge messaging solutions page

Guaranteed message delivery

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

Django Channels

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.

Django Channels

Django Channels guarantees message ordering in all cases.

Read more
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.

Django Channels

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.

Django Channels

None.

PubNub

99.999%

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

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.

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.

PubNub

Yes

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

PubNub

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.

PubNub

<100 milliseconds delivery

Security & compliance
API key authentication

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

Django Channels

No

PubNub

No

PubNub does not provide configurable private key permissions. It uses a different model where each client’s access is configured with the PubNub Access Manager (PAM).

Token-based authentication

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

Django Channels
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.

Django Channels

No

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

PubNub

Yes

Google and SSO

Rules for permissions and operations

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

Django Channels

No

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

PubNub

Yes

All customer data stored within PubNub is encrypted in transit over public networks using TLS 1.2+. Customer data stored in PubNub cloud products and services is AES-256 encrypted at rest.

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

PubNub

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.

PubNub
  • HIPAA compliant
  • GDPR compliant
  • SOC2 type 2 compliant
  • CCPA compliant

Alternatives to Django Channels and PubNub

Whilst both Django Channels 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 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.

tech provider image

SignalR is an open-source library that simplifies adding real-time web functionality to ASP.NET Core web apps.

See more alternatives to PubNub

Discover how Django Channels and PubNub stack up against Ably

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