Firebase Cloud Messaging vs Firebase
Discover how Firebase Cloud Messaging compares to Firebase, and understand which is right for your use case, based on dimensions such as core features, pricing, reliability, and scalability.
What is Firebase Cloud Messaging?
Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM) is a free cross-platform messaging service for sending and receiving messages and notifications across platforms like iOS, Android, and the web via cloud-based infrastructure. It supports both upstream and downstream messaging.
What is Firebase?
Firebase is a cloud-native backend by Google that allows developers to build mobile and web applications. Firebase services include Firebase Realtime data, Firestore database, authentication, and Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM), among others.
Compare Firebase Cloud Messaging and Firebase
Let’s compare Firebase Cloud Messaging and Firebase, 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 Firebase Cloud Messaging and Firebase. The content was last updated on 30 Oct 2024 for Firebase Cloud Messaging and on 18 Nov 2024 for Firebase. 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 If you do find anything incorrect or out of date, then please contact us.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. | Firebase Cloud Messaging Partial Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM) is not a Pub/Sub service. However, you can connect it with Google Cloud Pub/Sub to create more advanced messaging patterns, including asynchronous messaging and scaling. Read more | Firebase Partial Firebase does not natively support Pub/Sub messaging. However, this can be implemented with Google's Pub/Sub service. Read more |
Chat capabilities | Accelerates the time to implement rich chat experiences with features such as read receipts, typing indicators, and more. | Firebase Cloud Messaging Partial Firebase doesn’t offer a dedicated messaging solution. However, you can build these features using Firebase services such as Realtime Database, Firestore, and Firebase Storage. | Firebase Yes You can build chat capabilities on top of Firebase's Realtime Database. |
Collaboration capabilities | Enables you to quickly integrate realtime collaborative features like live cursors, member location, avatar stacks, and component locking. | Firebase Cloud Messaging Yes FCM does not have built-in collaboration capabilities like live cursors, member location, avatar stacks, and component locking. However, you can build these using Firebase Realtime Database or Firestore. | Firebase Yes |
State sync capabilities | Enables realtime data synchronization across devices and users, ensuring a cohesive and up-to-date user experience. | Firebase Cloud Messaging Partial FCM does not offer state sync capabilities on its own. You can achieve this by connecting it with Firebase Realtime Database or Firestore. Read more | Firebase Yes The Firebase Realtime Database lets you store and sync data between your users in real time. Read more |
Presence | Maintaining a view of which users are connected, and their associated metadata, enables their online status to be updated in realtime. | Firebase Cloud Messaging Partial FCM does not provide presence capabilities on its own. To incorporate presence, integrate with Firebase Realtime Database, which natively supports presence. Read more | Firebase |
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. | Firebase Cloud Messaging Partial FCM does not have built-in support for occupancy tracking. However, occupancy tracking functionality can be built on top of the Firebase Realtime Database. | Firebase Partial Firebase does not have built-in support for occupancy tracking. However, occupancy tracking functionality can be built on top of the Firebase Realtime Database. |
Message interactions | Enables interaction with previously-sent messages, facilitating the implementation of features like message reactions and threads. | Firebase Cloud Messaging Partial Message interactions are not natively supported in FCM. However, you can programmatically build interactions on top of Firebase's Realtime Database. | Firebase Partial Message interactions are not natively supported in Firebase. However, you can programmatically build interactions on top of Firebase's Realtime Database. |
Message history | Enables clients to catch up on missed messages when inactive, ensuring a user doesn’t miss any important messages. | Firebase Cloud Messaging Yes FCM provides message delivery reports that can be viewed in the Firebase console. :cta[Read more(https://firebase.google.com/support/guides/cloud-audit-logging/firebase-cloud-messaging#permission-type): | Firebase No |
Push notifications | Cross-platform push notifications make it possible to deliver important and timely messages to users even when they’re inactive. | Firebase Cloud Messaging Yes | Firebase |
Message delta compression | Minimizes bandwidth and can reduce latency, particularly in scenarios where continuous updates are sent. | Firebase Cloud Messaging No | Firebase No |
Programmatic management | Enables the automation of provisioning, management, and testing of service resources, simplifying integration with existing development workflows such as CI. | Firebase Cloud Messaging Yes FCM offers programmatic management through its APIs. | Firebase Yes Firebase projects can be managed programmatically using the Firebase Management API. |
| 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. | Firebase Cloud Messaging Yes FCM is free to use. | Firebase Yes The Spark plan (free plan) realtime database is limited to 100 simultaneous connections and 1 GB of storage. Read more |
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. | Firebase Cloud Messaging FCM is free to use. | Firebase Firebase has a free plan and a pay-as-you-go plan:
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| Integrations & interoperability | |||
SDKs | Supporting multiple languages and platforms offers greater flexibility when building cross-platform realtime apps. | Firebase Cloud Messaging
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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. | Firebase Cloud Messaging
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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. | Firebase Cloud Messaging
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Streaming & queueing | Provides a dependable method to reroute messages from the service to third-party streams and queues for further processing. | Firebase Cloud Messaging No | Firebase Yes |
Observability services | Enables realtime monitoring and troubleshooting by offering insights into service behavior directly in your observability platform of choice. | Firebase Cloud Messaging Partial FCM does not directly offer built-in observability services, but you can integrate with Firebase Performance Monitoring to monitor your application performance based on location, device, or version. | Firebase Yes Using Firebase Performance Monitoring you can monitor your application performance based on location, device, or version. |
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. | Firebase Cloud Messaging No | Firebase Yes Supports:
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| Quality of Service | |||
Scalability | Scalability is vital as it ensures the service can handle increased data load or users without compromising performance. | Firebase Cloud Messaging According to FCM, FCM can scale to over 115 billion notifications to more than 400 million users globally. At a recorded peak time, FCM has handled 46 million queries per second (QPS) from its average baseline of 18 million QPS. Read more | Firebase Firebase Realtime Database is limited to 200,000 simultaneous connections, 1000 Cloud Functions per write (500 for v2 per region), 1 MB event size, and 10 MB/sec data transfer to Cloud Functions. |
Guaranteed message delivery | Ensures messages are never lost during transmission, even in the presence of network disruptions. | Firebase Cloud Messaging No FCM does not guarantee message delivery without loss or duplication. It operates on a "best effort" model. | Firebase 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. | Firebase Cloud Messaging No | Firebase 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. | Firebase Cloud Messaging No | Firebase 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. | Firebase Cloud Messaging FCM uptime SLA is unclear. However, Firebase's SLA has a monthly uptime SLA of at least 99.95%. Read more | Firebase 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. | Firebase Cloud Messaging Yes FCM benefits from Google's global edge network. | Firebase Yes Firebase benefits from Google's global edge network. |
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. | Firebase Cloud Messaging No | Firebase No Multi-region data replication is currently not supported in Firebase Realtime Database, but it is supported in Firestore databases. |
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. | Firebase Cloud Messaging Yes FCM's distributed architecture and implementation of load balancing strategies ensure the re-routing of requests and distribution of message traffic evenly across servers, preventing single points of failure and congestion. | Firebase No Each Realtime Database instance is tied to a single region chosen at the time of creation. |
Latency | Low latency is crucial for realtime apps as it ensures swift and efficient data transmissions, providing a smoother and more responsive user experience. | Firebase Cloud Messaging Unknown. | Firebase Unknown. |
| Security & compliance | |||
API key authentication | Simplifies the authentication code on trusted servers compared to requesting, managing, and refreshing tokens. | Firebase Cloud Messaging Yes | Firebase No |
Token-based authentication | Provides a means to securely authenticate user devices against your user management system. | Firebase Cloud Messaging Yes | Firebase |
Single Sign-On (SSO) authentication | SSO streamlines login processes, boosts security by minimizing password use, and meets compliance needs for secure data access management. | Firebase Cloud Messaging No | Firebase Yes SSO in a Firebase application can be implemented using SAML (Security Assertion Markup Language). Read more |
Rules for permissions and operations | Provides control over which users can subscribe and publish to certain channels. | Firebase Cloud Messaging Partial FCM does not implement rules for permissions and operations. Firebase's security features manage permissions and security. Read more | Firebase Yes Using Firebase Realtime Database Security Rules you can set who has access to your database. 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. | Firebase Cloud Messaging No | Firebase No Data in transit is encrypted using HTTPS in all Firebase services, but this does not include end-to-end encryption. Read more |
Encryption at rest | Ensures data stored by the service is secure and compliant, while also mitigating the risks of a data breach. | Firebase Cloud Messaging Yes Read more | Firebase Partial Some Firebase services are encrypted at rest while others are not. Firebase Realtime Database and Firebase Cloud Messaging are encrypted at rest. Read more |
Compliance | Compliance with regulations can impact your ability to meet legal obligations in your industry. | Firebase Cloud Messaging
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Alternatives to Firebase Cloud Messaging and Firebase
While both Firebase Cloud Messaging and Firebase 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 Firebase Cloud Messaging
Amazon SNS is an AWS service for designed to distribute notifications from applications to subscribers via SMS, email, etc.
Pusher is a first-generation pub/sub messaging service that provides bi-directional hosted APIs for adding realtime features to applications.
OneSignal is a customer engagement platform that offers push notifications, messages, and email sends for businesses to manage communication with their users.
Alternatives to Firebase
Supabase Realtime is a globally distributed real-time server network built on PostgreSQL, enabling developers to build applications with real-time data sync.
Pusher is a first-generation pub/sub messaging service that provides bi-directional hosted APIs for adding realtime features to applications.
OneSignal is a customer engagement platform that offers push notifications, messages, and email sends for businesses to manage communication with their users.
Discover how Firebase Cloud Messaging and Firebase stack up against Ably
Ably is the definitive realtime experience platform of the internet. See how we compare to Firebase Cloud Messaging and Firebase on key dimensions such as core features, pricing, integrations, QoS, performance, and security and compliance.
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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
