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Google Cloud Pub/Sub vs SignalR

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

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.

SignalR

What is SignalR?

SignalR is an open-source library that simplifies adding real-time web functionality to apps. It is integrated into the ASP.NET Core web development stack and provides a mechanism for two-way remote procedure calls between client and server.

Compare Google Cloud Pub/Sub and SignalR

Let’s compare Google Cloud Pub/Sub and SignalR, 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 Google Cloud Pub/Sub and SignalR. The content was last updated on 1 Aug 2024 for Google Cloud Pub/Sub and on 26 Sept 2024 for SignalR. 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 If you do find anything incorrect or out of date, then please contact us.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.

Google Cloud Pub/Sub

Yes

SignalR

Partial

The SignalR SDKs do not provide a topic abstraction out of the box, but they provide a "groups" abstraction which lets you implement something similar.

Read more
Chat capabilities

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

SignalR

Yes

SignalR (ASP.net) allows you to implement chat capabilities.

Read more
Collaboration capabilities

Enables you to quickly integrate realtime collaborative features like live cursors, member location, 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.

Read more
SignalR

No

State sync capabilities

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

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.

SignalR

No

Presence

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

Google Cloud Pub/Sub

No

SignalR
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.

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
SignalR

No

Message interactions

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

Google Cloud Pub/Sub

No

SignalR

No

Message history

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

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
SignalR

No

Push notifications

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

Google Cloud Pub/Sub

Yes

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

Read more
SignalR

No

Microsoft Azure Web PubSub has no native push notification functionality. Microsoft has a separate service for this - Azure Notification Hubs.

Read more
Message delta compression

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

Google Cloud Pub/Sub

No

SignalR

No

Programmatic management

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

Google Cloud Pub/Sub

Yes

SignalR

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.

Google Cloud Pub/Sub

No

SignalR

Yes

Self-hosted and free.

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.

Google Cloud Pub/Sub

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

Read more
SignalR

N/A (self-hosted)

Integrations & interoperability
SDKs

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

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

Client SDKs:

  • ASP.NET Core
  • Java
  • JavaScript (browser, Node)
  • C++ (experimental)
  • Swift (experimental)

Server SDKs:

  • ASP.NET Core
Supported realtime protocols

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

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.

SignalR
  • WebSockets
  • Server-sent events (SSEs)
  • Long polling
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.

Google Cloud Pub/Sub
  • Google Cloud Functions
SignalR

None.

Streaming & queueing

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

Google Cloud Pub/Sub

Yes

SignalR

No

Observability services

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

Google Cloud Pub/Sub

Yes

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

Read more
SignalR

Partial

SignalR is integrated with ASP.net Core metrics, and these can be reported to a monitoring system at regular intervals.

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.

Google Cloud Pub/Sub

Yes

Supports:

  • Jenkins
  • Google Cloud Build
SignalR

No

Self-hosted, so you will have to implement your own.

Quality of Service
Scalability

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

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.

SignalR

N/A (self-hosted)

Guaranteed message delivery

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

Google Cloud Pub/Sub

Yes

SignalR

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.

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
SignalR

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.

Google Cloud Pub/Sub

Yes

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

Read more
SignalR

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.

Google Cloud Pub/Sub

99.95%

Read more
SignalR

N/A

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.

Google Cloud Pub/Sub

Yes

SignalR

No

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.

Google Cloud Pub/Sub

Yes

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

SignalR

No

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.

Google Cloud Pub/Sub

Yes

SignalR

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.

Google Cloud Pub/Sub

100ms round trip

SignalR

N/A (self-hosted)

Security & compliance
API key authentication

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

Google Cloud Pub/Sub

No

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

Read more
SignalR

No

Token-based authentication

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

Google Cloud Pub/Sub

Yes

SignalR

Yes

It is possible to use token based authentication with ASP.net Core.

Read more
Single Sign-On (SSO) authentication

SSO streamlines login processes, boosts security by minimizing password use, and meets compliance needs for secure data access management.

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
SignalR

Yes

This is possible in conjunction with an identity platform like Microsoft Entra.

Read more
Rules for permissions and operations

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

Google Cloud Pub/Sub

Yes

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

Read more
SignalR

Yes

You can restrict access to hubs and hub methods to users matching specific authorization policies.

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.

Google Cloud Pub/Sub

Yes

SignalR

No

You would need to implement this yourself.

Encryption at rest

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

Google Cloud Pub/Sub

Yes

SignalR

No

Compliance

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

Google Cloud Pub/Sub
  • HIPAA
SignalR

N/A

Alternatives to Google Cloud Pub/Sub and SignalR

While both Google Cloud Pub/Sub and SignalR 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 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

Alternatives to SignalR

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.

Firebase logo

Firebase Realtime Database is a cloud-hosted database by Google, allowing developers to build realtime applications for web and mobile.

See more alternatives to SignalR

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

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