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Pusher vs SignalR

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

Pusher logo

What is Pusher?

Pusher is a first-generation pub/sub messaging service that provides bi-directional hosted APIs for adding realtime features to applications. Pusher offers two products:

  • Channels - Build scalable realtime features
  • Beams - Programmatic push notifications

Suitable for:

  • Realtime charts
  • Location tracking
  • Notifications
  • In-app chat

Not suitable for:

  • Audio and video

Pros:

  • Great developer experience

Cons:

  • Not reliable at scale or spikes
  • Must choose one data center to locate apps
  • Bigger message latencies for clients further away from data center
  • No message delivery guarantees
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.

Suitable for:

  • Apps that require high frequency updates from the server, like gaming, social networks, voting, auction, maps, and GPS apps.
  • Dashboards and monitoring apps
  • Collaborative apps
  • Apps that require notifications

Not suitable for:

-Stateless applications -Apps with high scalability requirements -Apps with high throughput requirements

Pros:

  • Open source
  • Free to use

Cons:

  • Self-hosted
  • Complex to manage

Compare Pusher and SignalR

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 If you do find anything incorrect or out of date, then please contact us.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

Pusher

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.

Pusher

No

Pusher has channels which enable read receipts, but no SDK, reactions, or read-receipts built in.

Read more
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.

Pusher

No

SignalR

No

State sync capabilities

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

Pusher

No

Pusher has 'cache channels', but this is just persist-last.

Read more
SignalR

No

Presence

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

Pusher

Yes

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.

Pusher

No

SignalR

No

Message interactions

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

Pusher

No

SignalR

No

Message history

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

Pusher

No

Pusher does not offer any message history functionality. But Cache Channels stores the last event sent to the channel - it is stored for a max of 30 min or until a new event arrives. This can be useful in some use cases.

SignalR

No

Push notifications

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

Pusher

Yes

Pusher's product Beams is a cross-platform push notifications API.

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.

Pusher

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.

Pusher

No

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.

Pusher

Partial

Only in 'sandbox', which is a free plan which gives you 200,000 messages and up to 100 concurrent connections per day.

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.

Pusher

Pusher has free, flexible, and Enterprise plans.

See more information
SignalR

N/A (self-hosted)

Integrations & interoperability
SDKs

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

Pusher
  • Android (uses Java library)
  • AngularJS (uses JavaScript library)
  • iOS: Swift and Objective-C
  • Java
  • JavaScript
  • .NET
  • Unity
  • Flutter
  • React Native
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.

Pusher
  • WebSockets
  • Fallback to Comet (XHR) and Long Polling for older browsers
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.

Pusher
  • Own serverless functions
SignalR

None.

Streaming & queueing

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

Pusher

No

SignalR

No

Observability services

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

Pusher

Yes

Pusher provides Datadog and Librato integrations.

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.

Pusher

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.

Pusher

No scalability metrics published.

SignalR

N/A (self-hosted)

Guaranteed message delivery

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

Pusher

No

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.

Pusher

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.

Pusher

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.

Pusher

Channels SLA: API will be made available with an Annual API Uptime Percentage of 99.95%.

Pusher will use commercially reasonable efforts to make Pusher Beams available with an Annual Uptime Percentage of > 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.

Pusher

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.

Pusher

No

Pusher apps are located in a single data center rather than distributed across multiple data centers. Any latency issues that occur in that data center will affect all apps hosted there.

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.

Pusher

No

Pusher apps are located in a single data center rather than distributed across multiple data centers. If that data center goes offline then all apps hosted there are affected.

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.

Pusher

Not shared. Because apps exist in only one region, message latencies increase for clients the further they are from your chosen data center.

SignalR

N/A (self-hosted)

Security & compliance
API key authentication

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

Pusher

Yes

SignalR

No

Token-based authentication

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

Pusher

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.

Pusher

Partial

For GitHub and Google.

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.

Pusher

Partial

Requires you to implement an endpoint they will call to check if operation is allowed.

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.

Pusher

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.

Pusher

No

SignalR

No

Compliance

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

Pusher
  • GDPR compliant
SignalR

N/A

Alternatives to Pusher and SignalR

While both Pusher 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 Pusher

Firebase logo

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

Pubnub logo

PubNub is a developer API platform that powers the realtime infrastructure in apps to build engaging Virtual Spaces where online communities can connect.

tech provider image

OneSignal is a customer engagement platform that offers push notifications, messages, and email sends for businesses to manage communication with their users.

See more alternatives to Pusher

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 Pusher and SignalR stack up against Ably

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