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OneSignal vs SignalR

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

OneSignal

What is OneSignal?

OneSignal is a platform that delivers push notifications, in-app messages, and emails. It offers tools for targeting, automation, and analytics to help businesses manage and optimize their communication with users.

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 OneSignal and SignalR

Let’s compare OneSignal 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 OneSignal and SignalR. The content was last updated on 30 Oct 2024 for OneSignal 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 If you do find anything incorrect or out of date, then please contact us.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.

OneSignal

No

OneSignal is not a pub/sub service. It is a multi-channel customer engagement platform providing push notifications, emails, SMS, and in-app messages.

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.

OneSignal

No

OneSignal provides in-app messaging for users to send messages but does not offer a full-featured chat capability, such as 1-1 messaging with features like typing indicators, file sharing, and emojis.

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.

OneSignal

No

SignalR

No

State sync capabilities

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

OneSignal

No

SignalR

No

Presence

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

OneSignal

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.

OneSignal

No

SignalR

No

Message interactions

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

OneSignal

No

SignalR

No

Message history

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

OneSignal

No

OneSignal does not offer an archive of messages for retrieval. However, it provides notification history, which is different from message history. The notification history focuses on the records of notifications sent.

SignalR

No

Push notifications

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

OneSignal

Yes

OneSignal offers push notifications for both mobile and web platforms.

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.

OneSignal

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.

OneSignal

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.

OneSignal

Yes

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.

OneSignal

OneSignal offers a free plan and a tiered pricing model:

  • Free ($0/month - Free access to all channels, 10,000 emails send/month, unlimited mobile push sends)
  • Growth: $9/month - 20,000 email sends/month + everything in Free
  • Professional: custom pricing
  • Enterprise: custom pricing
Read more
SignalR

N/A (self-hosted)

Integrations & interoperability
SDKs

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

OneSignal
  • Server SDKs: C++, Go, Java, Node, PHP, Python, Ruby, Rust
  • Cross-platform SDKs: Cordova, Flutter, Unity, Xamarin, React Native
  • Native mobile SDKs: iOS, Amazon FireOS, Android (FCM), Huawei Mobile Services
  • Web SDKs: Angular, React, Rails, WordPress, TypeScript/JavaScript, Vue.js 2/Vue.js 3
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.

OneSignal

None.

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.

OneSignal

None.

SignalR

None.

Streaming & queueing

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

OneSignal

No

OneSignal provides queuing for messages and notifications but lacks proper streaming and queuing support. OneSignal's Live Activities and Event Webhooks simulate stream-like behavior, though real streaming requires integration with other services.

SignalR

No

Observability services

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

OneSignal

Yes

OneSignal offers observability features, such as tracking notifications, user engagement metrics, and delivery reports.

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.

OneSignal

No

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.

OneSignal

OneSignal can deliver a throughput of over 850,000 notifications per second, which relatively equates to 4 billion push notifications daily. It has also been able to scale its database to 75 terabytes (TB) of stored data across nearly 40 servers.

Read more
SignalR

N/A (self-hosted)

Guaranteed message delivery

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

OneSignal

No

OneSignal does not guarantee message delivery. It only offers confirmed deliveries. That means it does not handle retries in the event of failures, and the message may not be delivered.

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.

OneSignal

No

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.

OneSignal

No

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.

OneSignal

Not publicly mentioned.

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.

OneSignal

No

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.

OneSignal

No

OneSignal locates its datacenters in the EU, and it's unclear if they support multi-region data replication.

Read more
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.

OneSignal

No

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.

OneSignal

Unknown.

SignalR

N/A (self-hosted)

Security & compliance
API key authentication

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

OneSignal

Yes

OneSignal uses user auth API keys for its REST APIs.

Read more
SignalR

No

Token-based authentication

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

OneSignal

Yes

OneSignal has token-based authentication for email, SMS, and notifications.

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.

OneSignal
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.

OneSignal

Yes

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.

OneSignal

No

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.

OneSignal

No

SignalR

No

Compliance

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

OneSignal
  • SOC 2 Type II
  • HIPAA
  • GDPR
  • CCPA
  • Data Privacy Framework
SignalR

N/A

Alternatives to OneSignal and SignalR

While both OneSignal 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 OneSignal

tech provider image

Braze is a cross-channel marketing service that offers email, SMS, push notifications, and in-app messaging with realtime automation and analytics.

tech provider image

CleverTap is a customer engagement platform that offers push notifications, SMS, email, calls, in-app, and mobile and web messaging.

tech provider image

PushEngage is a push notification service for web and mobile.

See more alternatives to OneSignal

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 OneSignal and SignalR stack up against Ably

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