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Rails ActionCable vs Supabase Realtime

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

Rails ActionCable

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.

Supabase Realtime

What is Supabase Realtime?

Supabase Realtime is a globally distributed network of real-time servers. Supabase Realtime is built on top of PostgreSQL database and enables developers to build applications with real-time data synchronization capabilities.

Compare Rails ActionCable and Supabase Realtime

Let’s compare Rails ActionCable and Supabase Realtime, 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 Supabase Realtime. The content was last updated on 25 Oct 2024 for Rails ActionCable and on 9 Oct 2024 for Supabase Realtime. 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 If you do find anything incorrect or out of date, then please contact us.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.

Supabase Realtime

Yes

Supabase's Broadcast feature supports Pub/Sub messaging, allowing clients to publish messages to specific channels and have those messages received by all subscribers.

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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
Supabase Realtime

Yes

Supabase supports chat capabilities through Broadcast for typing indicators, Presence, and Postgres Changes for messages history filesharing and emojis.

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.

Supabase Realtime

Yes

You can build collaboration capabilities like live cursors and profile stacks using the Presence, Postgres Changes, and Broadcast features of Supabase.

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.

Supabase Realtime

Yes

Supabase supports state sync with its Postgres Changes feature to listen to changes in the database. When the database updates, changes are pushed to the client in real time.

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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
Supabase Realtime

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

Supabase Realtime

Yes

Supabase Realtime's Presence feature enables occupancy tracking by allowing you to monitor user joins/leaves in channels, retrieve online user lists, and receive real-time updates on occupancy changes.

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.

Supabase Realtime

Yes

Supabase enables message interactions using Presence for tracking, Postgres Changes for listening to changes, and Broadcast for custom events. These features can be used to build message interactions like reactions.

Message history

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

Rails ActionCable

No

Supabase Realtime

No

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

Supabase Realtime

No

Supabase supports push notifications only with the integration of external services.

Read more
Message delta compression

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

Rails ActionCable

No

Supabase Realtime

No

Supabase uses the Brotli compression algorithm for all responses, rather than delta compression.

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.

Supabase Realtime

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.

Supabase Realtime

Yes

Supabase offers a free plan with the a limit of 200 concurrent clients and 100 messages per second.

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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.

Supabase Realtime

Supabase uses a tiered pricing model based on monthly active users (MAUs):

  • Free tier: Basic features with limits (200 concurrent clients, 100 messages per second)
  • Pro tier ($25/month): Higher limits and additional features (500 concurrent clients, 500 messages per second)
  • Team tier ($599/month)
  • Enterprise tier: Custom pricing with advanced features, dedicated support, and higher limits tailored to business needs.
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Integrations & interoperability
SDKs

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

Rails ActionCable
  • Ruby
  • JavaScript
Supabase Realtime
  • JavaScript
  • Python
  • Dart
  • C#
  • Kotlin
  • Swift
Supported realtime protocols

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

Rails ActionCable
  • WebSockets
Supabase Realtime
  • WebSockets
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.

Supabase Realtime
  • Supabase Edge Functions
Streaming & queueing

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

Rails ActionCable

No

Supabase Realtime

Yes

Observability services

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

Rails ActionCable

No

Supabase Realtime

Partial

Supabase supports integration with observability tools like Sentry, New Relic, and Supabase-Grafana.

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

Supabase Realtime

Yes

Supports:

  • GitHub Actions
  • GitLab CI
  • Bitbucket Pipelines
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.

Supabase Realtime

Supabase can handle up to 10,000 concurrent clients, 2,500 channel joins per second, and 2,500 messages per second.

Read more
Guaranteed message delivery

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

Rails ActionCable

No

Supabase Realtime

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.

Rails ActionCable

No

Supabase Realtime

Yes

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

Supabase Realtime

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.

Rails ActionCable

No uptime SLA.

Supabase Realtime

99.0%.

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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.

Rails ActionCable

No

Supabase Realtime

Yes

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

Supabase Realtime

Yes

Multi-region data replication is natively supported in Supabase through their Publications feature.

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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

Supabase Realtime

Yes

Supabase provides a globally distributed cluster of realtime servers. The realtime servers are designed to be highly available and fault-tolerant.

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.

Supabase Realtime

Unknown.

Security & compliance
API key authentication

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

Rails ActionCable

No

Supabase Realtime

Yes

Token-based authentication

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

Rails ActionCable

No

Supabase Realtime

Yes

Supported with JSON Web Tokens (JWTs).

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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

Supabase Realtime

Yes

Rules for permissions and operations

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

Rails ActionCable

Yes

Supabase Realtime

Yes

Supabase offers the Row Level Security (RLS) system, allowing fine-grained access control at the database level.

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

Supabase Realtime

Yes

Data in transit is encrypted via TLS.

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

Supabase Realtime

Yes

Supabase encrypts all users' data at rest using the AES-256 standard.

Compliance

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

Rails ActionCable

None.

Supabase Realtime
  • HIPAA
  • SOC2

Alternatives to Rails ActionCable and Supabase Realtime

While both Rails ActionCable and Supabase Realtime 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 logo

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

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.

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.

See more alternatives to Rails ActionCable

Alternatives to Supabase Realtime

Firebase logo

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

tech provider image

Prisma Pulse provides realtime data synchronization and monitoring across third-party databases. Only supports PostgresSQL databases.

tech provider image

Hasura is an open-source engine that provides instant GraphQL APIs that integrate with your backend.

See more alternatives to Supabase Realtime

Discover how Rails ActionCable and Supabase Realtime stack up against Ably

Ably is the definitive realtime experience platform of the internet. See how we compare to Rails ActionCable and Supabase Realtime 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