Firebase Cloud Messaging vs Google Cloud Pub/Sub
Discover how Firebase Cloud Messaging 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.
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 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 Firebase Cloud Messaging and Google Cloud Pub/Sub
Let’s compare Firebase Cloud Messaging 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 Firebase Cloud Messaging and Google Cloud Pub/Sub. The content was last updated on 30 Oct 2024 for Firebase Cloud Messaging 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 If you do find anything incorrect or out of date, then please contact us.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. | 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 | 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. | 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. | 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. | 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. | 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. Read more |
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 | 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. | 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 | 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. | 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. | 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. | 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. | 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. | 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): | 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. Read more |
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 | 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. | Firebase Cloud Messaging 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. | Firebase Cloud Messaging Yes FCM offers programmatic management through its APIs. | 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. | Firebase Cloud Messaging Yes FCM is free to use. | 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. | Firebase Cloud Messaging FCM is free to use. | 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. | Firebase Cloud Messaging
| Google Cloud Pub/Sub
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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
| 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. | Firebase Cloud Messaging
| Google Cloud Pub/Sub
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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 | 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. | 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. | Google Cloud Pub/Sub Yes The Google Monitoring, Alerting and Logging integration provides observability services. 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. | Firebase Cloud Messaging No | Google Cloud Pub/Sub 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 | 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. | Firebase Cloud Messaging No FCM does not guarantee message delivery without loss or duplication. It operates on a "best effort" model. | 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. | Firebase Cloud Messaging No | 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. Read more |
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 | 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. | Firebase Cloud Messaging FCM uptime SLA is unclear. However, Firebase's SLA has a monthly uptime SLA of at least 99.95%. Read more | 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. | Firebase Cloud Messaging Yes FCM benefits from Google's global edge network. | 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. | Firebase Cloud Messaging No | 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. | 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. | 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. | Firebase Cloud Messaging 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. | Firebase Cloud Messaging Yes | 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. | Firebase Cloud Messaging Yes | 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. | Firebase Cloud Messaging No | 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. | Firebase Cloud Messaging Partial FCM does not implement rules for permissions and operations. Firebase's security features manage permissions and security. Read more | 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. | Firebase Cloud Messaging 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. | Firebase Cloud Messaging Yes Read more | Google Cloud Pub/Sub Yes |
Compliance | Compliance with regulations can impact your ability to meet legal obligations in your industry. | Firebase Cloud Messaging
| Google Cloud Pub/Sub
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Alternatives to Firebase Cloud Messaging and Google Cloud Pub/Sub
While both Firebase Cloud Messaging 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 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 Google Cloud Pub/Sub
AWS SQS is a message queuing solution for decoupling apps, services & architectures.
Apache Kafka is an open-source realtime data streaming platform.
Azure Service Bus is a fully managed message service with message queues and Pub/Sub topics.
Discover how Firebase Cloud Messaging and Google Cloud Pub/Sub stack up against Ably
Ably is the definitive realtime experience platform of the internet. See how we compare to Firebase Cloud Messaging and Google Cloud Pub/Sub on key dimensions such as core features, pricing, integrations, QoS, performance, and security and compliance.
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