Rails ActionCable vs Rails AnyCable
Discover how Rails ActionCable compares to Rails AnyCable, and understand which is right for your use case, based on dimensions such as core features, pricing, reliability, and scalability.
What is Rails ActionCable?
Rails Action Cable is a framework built into Ruby on Rails that integrates WebSockets for real-time communication, allowing developers to create interactive applications.
What is Rails AnyCable?
Rails AnyCable is a robust and scalable drop-in alternative to the default ActionCable in Ruby on Rails applications. It is a WebSocket server that enables real-time bilateral communication.
Compare Rails ActionCable and Rails AnyCable
Let’s compare Rails ActionCable and Rails AnyCable, 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 Rails ActionCable and Rails AnyCable. The content was last updated on 25 Oct 2024 for Rails ActionCable and on 26 Sept 2024 for Rails AnyCable. 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 If you do find anything incorrect or out of date, then please contact us.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. | Rails ActionCable Partial Supports basic pub/sub via channels. | Rails AnyCable |
Chat capabilities | Accelerates the time to implement rich chat experiences with features such as read receipts, typing indicators, and more. | Rails ActionCable Partial Rails ActionCable does not have an out-of-the box chat solution, but provides the building blocks for a basic chat implementation, and several resources for self-building specific chat use cases. Read more | Rails AnyCable Yes Rails AnyCable supports chat capabilities through its broadcasting feature, which publishes messages from your application to connected clients. Read more |
Collaboration capabilities | Enables you to quickly integrate realtime collaborative features like live cursors, member location, avatar stacks, and component locking. | Rails ActionCable Partial Rails ActionCable provides basic support, but lacks advanced features like live cursors or component locking. | Rails AnyCable No |
State sync capabilities | Enables realtime data synchronization across devices and users, ensuring a cohesive and up-to-date user experience. | Rails ActionCable Partial Rails ActionCable offers basic state sync capabilities, but it does not offer advanced tools to ensure continued synchronization between clients and devices. | Rails AnyCable Partial AnyCable enables real-time WebSocket communication but lacks built-in state synchronization. To achieve state sync, it's common to pair AnyCable with tools like Rails' Active Record or other synchronization frameworks that manage data consistency. Read more |
Presence | Maintaining a view of which users are connected, and their associated metadata, enables their online status to be updated in realtime. | Rails ActionCable Partial Rails ActionCable doesn't offer presence out of the box, but can support presence when custom built on a user appearance channel. Read more | Rails AnyCable 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. | Rails ActionCable No | Rails AnyCable No |
Message interactions | Enables interaction with previously-sent messages, facilitating the implementation of features like message reactions and threads. | Rails ActionCable Partial Rails ActionCable supports basic message interactions like broadcasting but advanced features like reactions require custom code. | Rails AnyCable No |
Message history | Enables clients to catch up on missed messages when inactive, ensuring a user doesn’t miss any important messages. | Rails ActionCable No | Rails AnyCable |
Push notifications | Cross-platform push notifications make it possible to deliver important and timely messages to users even when they’re inactive. | Rails ActionCable No | Rails AnyCable No |
Message delta compression | Minimizes bandwidth and can reduce latency, particularly in scenarios where continuous updates are sent. | Rails ActionCable No | Rails AnyCable No |
Programmatic management | Enables the automation of provisioning, management, and testing of service resources, simplifying integration with existing development workflows such as CI. | Rails ActionCable Yes Rails ActionCable can be managed through Rails. | Rails AnyCable 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. | Rails ActionCable Yes The Rails framework, including Rails ActionCable, is completely free and open-source. | Rails AnyCable Yes AnyCable's open-source (free) version offers several out-of-the-box features, including Hotwire support, JWT authentication, consistency, and Prometheus and StatsD instrumentation. |
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. | Rails ActionCable Completely free, no paid plans. | Rails AnyCable AnyCable has an open-source, free version, a Pro version ($1490/yr), a managed version, and a consulting version. For more information, visit AnyCable's pricing page. |
| Integrations & interoperability | |||
SDKs | Supporting multiple languages and platforms offers greater flexibility when building cross-platform realtime apps. | Rails ActionCable
| Rails AnyCable
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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. | Rails ActionCable
| Rails AnyCable
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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. | Rails ActionCable None. | Rails AnyCable Supported with AnyCable's serverless library for NodeJS - more details here. |
Streaming & queueing | Provides a dependable method to reroute messages from the service to third-party streams and queues for further processing. | Rails ActionCable No | Rails AnyCable Yes |
Observability services | Enables realtime monitoring and troubleshooting by offering insights into service behavior directly in your observability platform of choice. | Rails ActionCable No | Rails AnyCable No |
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. | Rails ActionCable No | Rails AnyCable No |
| Quality of Service | |||
Scalability | Scalability is vital as it ensures the service can handle increased data load or users without compromising performance. | Rails ActionCable No metrics available. | Rails AnyCable No metrics available. |
Guaranteed message delivery | Ensures messages are never lost during transmission, even in the presence of network disruptions. | Rails ActionCable No | Rails AnyCable 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. | Rails ActionCable No | Rails AnyCable No AnyCable leverages the ActionCable protocol which does not guarantee message ordering. This is due to concurrent broadcasts. |
Exactly-once message delivery | Guarantees that each message is processed exactly once, preventing data inconsistencies that can arise from duplicate processing or missing messages. | Rails ActionCable No | Rails AnyCable Yes With AnyCable, you can boost data consistency from at-most-once to at-least-once and exactly-once delivery. |
| 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. | Rails ActionCable No uptime SLA. | Rails AnyCable No uptime SLA. |
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. | Rails ActionCable No | Rails AnyCable 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. | Rails ActionCable No | Rails AnyCable Partial AnyCable itself does not support multi-region data replication, but with the available hosting options for AnyCable, such as AWS, you can achieve multi-region data replication. |
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. | Rails ActionCable No | Rails AnyCable 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. | Rails ActionCable Unknown. | Rails AnyCable Unknown. |
| Security & compliance | |||
API key authentication | Simplifies the authentication code on trusted servers compared to requesting, managing, and refreshing tokens. | Rails ActionCable No | Rails AnyCable No |
Token-based authentication | Provides a means to securely authenticate user devices against your user management system. | Rails ActionCable No | Rails AnyCable Yes Supported with JWTS. |
Single Sign-On (SSO) authentication | SSO streamlines login processes, boosts security by minimizing password use, and meets compliance needs for secure data access management. | Rails ActionCable No | Rails AnyCable No |
Rules for permissions and operations | Provides control over which users can subscribe and publish to certain channels. | Rails ActionCable Yes | Rails AnyCable Partial AnyCable doesn't have built-in features for managing permissions and operations. These are typically handled at the application level using Rails' authorization mechanisms or by integrating with other frameworks or services. |
End-to-end encryption | Ensures that the data transmitted between the client and the API server remains confidential and secure while in transit. | Rails ActionCable No | Rails AnyCable No |
Encryption at rest | Ensures data stored by the service is secure and compliant, while also mitigating the risks of a data breach. | Rails ActionCable No | Rails AnyCable No |
Compliance | Compliance with regulations can impact your ability to meet legal obligations in your industry. | Rails ActionCable None. | Rails AnyCable
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Alternatives to Rails ActionCable and Rails AnyCable
While both Rails ActionCable and Rails AnyCable 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 Rails ActionCable
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.
PubNub is a developer API platform that powers the realtime infrastructure in apps to build engaging Virtual Spaces where online communities can connect.
Alternatives to Rails AnyCable
Rails ActionCable is a Ruby on Rails framework for realtime WebSockets communication.
PubNub is a developer API platform that powers the realtime infrastructure in apps to build engaging Virtual Spaces where online communities can connect.
Pusher is a first-generation pub/sub messaging service that provides bi-directional hosted APIs for adding realtime features to applications.
Discover how Rails ActionCable and Rails AnyCable stack up against Ably
Ably is the definitive realtime experience platform of the internet. See how we compare to Rails ActionCable and Rails AnyCable 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
