PubNub vs Stream
Discover how PubNub compares to Stream, and understand which is right for your use case, based on dimensions such as scalability, pricing, security, and their chat features.
What is PubNub?
PubNub is a developer API platform that powers the realtime 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.
What is Stream?
Stream is a platform for building scalable, realtime chat and activity feed applications. It provides APIs and SDKs to easily integrate messaging, video calls, and social feeds into apps.
Compare PubNub and Stream
Let’s compare PubNub and Stream, looking at key elements of their offering such as their scalability, pricing, security and chat feature set.
| Scalability | |||
Concurrent connections | Number of users that can be supported in a single chat. | PubNub 10,000 users can be supported in a single chat. They recommend you limit the number of online users in a single chat room or space to 10,000 users for optimal performance. | Stream 2500 users supported in a single chat. Supported within Start and Elevate packages. Overages apply if you exceed plan quota - $0.79 per additional concurrent user. Read more |
Connections | Number of connections that can be handled across the platform. | PubNub Unlimited. Overages apply if you exceed plan quota - $0.15 per additional user. | Stream |
Channels / rooms | Number of channels or rooms that can be handled across the platform. | PubNub Unlimited. | Stream Unlimited. |
Messages | Number of messages that can be handled across the platform. | PubNub Unlimited. Overages apply if you exceed 3000 per user - $43 per additional 1M transactions. | Stream Unlimited. |
Message throughput | Number of messsages that can be published per second. | PubNub 10-15 messages per second can be published. Read more | Stream 5 messages per second. When concurrent connections exceeds 100 in a group messages are throttled to 5 per second. |
| Data integrity | |||
Guaranteed message delivery | Ensures messages are never lost during transmission, even in the presence of network disruptions. | PubNub No | Stream 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. | PubNub No | Stream 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. | PubNub No | Stream 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. | PubNub PubNub offers a 99.999% uptime SLA for its users. | Stream
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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. | PubNub Yes | Stream Yes Stream has data centers located around the world, including:
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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. | PubNub Yes PubNub supports multi-region data replication across different points of presence except for file sharing. Read more | Stream 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. | PubNub No | Stream Yes Stream's chat infrastructure does not rely on a single data center due to global edge network support, thus avoiding a single point of failure and congestion. |
Latency | Low latency is crucial for realtime apps as it ensures swift and efficient data transmissions, providing a smoother and more responsive user experience. | PubNub <100 milliseconds delivery. | Stream Stream does not provide a global latency figure. However, it achieves a region-based average roundtrip latency of 170 ms between Amsterdam and the US East. |
Server-side batching | Reduces the overall message count, lowers costs, and mitigates the risk of hitting rate limits during high-throughput scenarios. | PubNub No | Stream |
Connection state recovery | Automatically re-establish failed connections and replay missed messages. | PubNub Yes PubNub supports connection state recovery and has an automatic reconnection process to handle brief network interruptions. PubNub message delivery page | Stream Yes Stream SDKs automatically attempt to recover the connection and ensure that a connection to Stream chat is always kept alive. That chat state is recovered when the user's internet connection comes back online. |
| Ecosystem support | |||
Supported realtime protocols | Support for multiple protocols provides the flexibility to choose a protocol that best suits your project’s requirements. | PubNub
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. | Stream WebSocket. |
Supported languages | Supporting multiple languages and platforms offers greater flexibility when building cross-platform realtime apps. | PubNub
| Stream
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| Chat room types | |||
Multi-type chat support (group, DM, supergroups) | Enables chat experiences to be tailored to various user needs, from one-on-one to large, scalable group discussions. | PubNub Yes PubNub supports:
| Stream Stream provides the following chat room types:
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| Chat room management | |||
Presence | Maintaining a view of which users are connected, and their associated metadata, enables their online status to be updated in realtime. | PubNub Yes Read more | Stream 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. | PubNub Yes PubNub's Presence API allows developers to access and integrate occupancy information into their applications. Read more | Stream No |
Typing indicators | Show when others are typing in a chat room, enhancing realtime communication flow. | PubNub Yes Read more | Stream Yes Stream supports typing indicators, which appear on the channel list item where someone is typing or in the chat channel view. |
Room reactions | Customize the chat environment with reactions and other shared room states. | PubNub No | Stream No |
| Chat message attributes | |||
Message edits and deletes | Allow users to modify or remove messages. | PubNub Yes PubNub stores all messages in a time-series database and doesn’t expose an API to directly update a message. Users can delete or edit messages using the Message Reactions feature. | Stream Yes |
Message reactions & emoticons | Boost engagement by enabling users to quickly express emotions or feedback on messages. | PubNub Yes | Stream Yes |
Rich text support | Enhance messages with rich text formatting in chat. | PubNub No | Stream Yes Stream SDKs offer markdown formatting for channel messages. |
Media attachments | Support for sharing images, videos, and files in chat. | PubNub Yes | Stream Yes |
| Chat application and user state | |||
In-app notifications | Notify users of important events from other chat rooms without them leaving the current chat, keeping them engaged and informed. | PubNub Yes PubNub supports in-app notifications through its mobile push gateway. | Stream Partial Stream only supports in-app notification feeds. |
Role-based permissions | Control user roles and permissions to ensure proper access and moderation. | PubNub Yes | Stream Yes |
UI kit | Customizable UI elements for a seamless chat integration. | PubNub No | Stream Yes Stream offers UI kits for social media design and chat interfaces. |
| Storage and history | |||
Synchronous - automated moderation | Detect and manage harmful content automatically, before the message is broadcast to participants. | PubNub Yes Integration with 3rd party moderation tools via Functions. | Stream Yes |
Asynchronous - automated moderation | Detect and manage harmful content automatically, after the message is broadcast to participants. | PubNub Yes Integration with 3rd party moderation tools via Functions. | Stream |
Manual moderation via dashboards | Tools for moderators to detect harmful messages and manage them effectively. | PubNub Yes PubNub offers a Moderation Dashboard that allows admins to manually moderate chat app users through the Users view. | Stream Yes Stream offers manual moderation capabilities through its Chat Dashboard, which allows you to do standard moderation tasks. Read more |
Ban users | Remove problematic users from the chat to maintain a healthy environment. | PubNub Yes PubNub users can automatically disable default access to channels, channel groups, and other users' metadata through the access manager and admin portal. | Stream Yes |
| Dev tools | |||
Programmatic management | Enables the automation of provisioning, management, and testing of service resources, simplifying integration with existing development workflows such as CI. | PubNub Yes | Stream Yes |
| Pricing | |||
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. | PubNub PubNub offers Free, Starter, and Pro packages. Their support packages, separate from their standard plans, also include an Enterprise option. Their pricing model is based on monthly active users (MAUs). See the pricing page | Stream Stream's pricing plan is based on MAUs. Overages apply for additional MAU's and peak concurrent connection - over set quota. Read more |
Pricing illustration | An example price based on 5 live streaming chat events and 50K attendees. | PubNub $23,048.00
Note: Assumes same users attend each event to keep MAU at minimum. PubNub pricing page | Stream $22,186.50.
Note: Assumes same users attend each event, to keep MAU at minimum. |
Free plan | With a free plan, you can test the service’s functionality and compatibility with your project before committing to a paid plan. | PubNub Yes | Stream Yes Offers:
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Pricing plans | The pricing plans offered by cost. | PubNub Starter: $98/month/MAU: Up to 1000 MAUs, and up to 3000 transactions per MAU. Pro packages: Custom pricing Their support packages, separate from their standard plans, also include an Enterprise option. Overages apply:
| Stream
Overages:
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| Support for additional realtime features | |||
Pub/Sub messaging | Reduces communication code complexity, simplifying the process of building highly functional and architecturally complex realtime apps. | PubNub Yes | Stream No |
Collaboration capabilities | Enables you to quickly integrate realtime collaborative features like live cursors, member location, avatar stacks, and component locking. | PubNub Partial PubNub's collaboration capabilities are largely powered by its Presence feature. There is no dedicated collaboration SDK. | Stream No |
Database sync capabilities | Database sync capabilities enable realtime updates between your database and UI, ensuring the UI reflects changes in the database instantly, with data consistency, and without the need for polling. | PubNub No | Stream No |
Notifications | Send notifications directly to users screens, from chat responses to news alerts, or game updates, whether or not an application is open and running. | PubNub Yes | Stream Yes |
Asset tracking | State-of-the-art asset tracking across last mile logistics, food delivery applications, and urban mobility services. | PubNub Yes PubNub can be used to track and trace assets, their locations, and status through its realtime visibility feature. Read more | Stream No |
| Integrations & interoperability | |||
AI models | Allows you to integrate AI models, like GPT, into your app. | PubNub Yes PubNub integrates with OpenAI's ChatGPT model. | Stream Yes Stream supports integration with AI models from OpenAI, HuggingFace, Claude, or any LLM for its chat and voice AI SDKs. |
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. | PubNub PubNub operates its own serverless architecture through its feature called PubNub Functions. | Stream No |
Streaming & queueing | Provides a dependable method to reroute messages from the service to third-party streams and queues for further processing. | PubNub Egress:
Ingress:
| Stream No |
Observability services | Enables realtime monitoring and troubleshooting by offering insights into service behavior directly in your observability platform of choice. | PubNub Yes PubNub provides integrations with Datadog and NewRelic. | Stream No |
| Security & compliance | |||
API key authentication | Simplifies the authentication code on trusted servers compared to requesting, managing, and refreshing tokens. | PubNub Yes | Stream Yes Stream uses API keys for authentication. You must include an API key when sending an authenticated request to Stream. |
Single Sign-On (SSO) authentication | SSO streamlines login processes, boosts security by minimizing password use, and meets compliance needs for secure data access management. | PubNub Yes PubNub implements SAML SSO authentication. | Stream Yes Stream offers Single Sign-On (SSO) authentication through GitHub Organizations and SAML 2.0. The SSO is available to organizations on Stream's Enterprise Chat or Feeds plan. Read more |
Rules for permissions and operations | Provides control over which users can subscribe and publish to certain channels. | PubNub Yes PubNub supports rules for permissions and operations through its Access Manager. See Access Manager docs | Stream Yes Stream applications offer customizable built-in roles. Users receive a role with permissions for the whole app and can also have channel-specific roles for single or multiple channels of the same type. |
End-to-end encryption | Ensures that the data transmitted between the client and the API server remains confidential and secure while in transit. | PubNub | Stream No Stream does not natively implement E2EE. It encrypts messages in transit using TLS 1.2 and at rest with AES256. Read more |
Compliance | Compliance with regulations can impact your ability to meet legal obligations in your industry. | PubNub PubNub is compliant with five policies for the security and privacy of its services:
| Stream Stream is compliant with five standards and regulations to ensure the security and privacy of its users' data:
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Disclaimer: This comparison was created based on documentation and resources freely available online about PubNub and Stream. The content was last updated on 30 Apr 2025 for PubNub and on 1 May 2025 for Stream. Be sure to double-check everything before you make any decisions. If you do find anything incorrect or out of date, then please let us know.
Alternatives to PubNub and Stream
While both PubNub and Stream 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.
SignalR is an open-source library that simplifies adding real-time web functionality to ASP.NET Core web apps.
Alternatives to Stream
Ably is the definitive realtime experience platform of the internet. Serving more WebSocket connections than any other pub/sub platform on earth. Businesses trust us to power their critical applications - reliably, securely and at serious scale.
Sendbird offers APIs and SDKs for live chat, realtime messaging, push notifications, and calls with WebSocket connections, UI kits, and backend integrations.
PubNub is a developer API platform that powers the realtime infrastructure in apps to build engaging Virtual Spaces where online communities can connect.
Discover how PubNub and Stream stack up against Ably
Ably is the definitive realtime experience platform of the internet. See how we compare to PubNub and Stream 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
