Sendbird vs Stream
Discover how Sendbird 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 Sendbird?
Sendbird provides APIs and SDKs for mobile and web to integrate live chats and realtime messaging with message history, typing indicators, and push notifications features. It uses WebSocket connections and offers customizability using UI kits and backend integrations. It also supports video and audio integrations for calls.
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 Sendbird and Stream
Let’s compare Sendbird 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. | Sendbird Up to 20K users in super groups are supported in a single chat. Overages apply if you exceed plan quota - $5 per additional concurrent connection. | 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. | Sendbird Unlimited - depends on plan. Overages apply if you exceed plan quota - $0.05 per additional user. | Stream |
Channels / rooms | Number of channels or rooms that can be handled across the platform. | Sendbird Unlimited. | Stream Unlimited. |
Messages | Number of messages that can be handled across the platform. | Sendbird Unlimited. | Stream Unlimited. |
Message throughput | Number of messsages that can be published per second. | Sendbird 5 messages per second. | 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. | Sendbird 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. | Sendbird 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. | Sendbird 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. | Sendbird A 99.9% SLA uptime guarantee is provided on paid plans. | 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. | Sendbird Yes Sendbird has servers deployed across 11 worldwide regions. | 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. | Sendbird No | 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. | Sendbird 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. | Sendbird Unknown. | 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. | Sendbird No | Stream |
Connection state recovery | Automatically re-establish failed connections and replay missed messages. | Sendbird Yes Sendbird implements connection state recovery through their chat SDKs, which are designed to automatically handle reconnections and message delivery. | 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. | Sendbird
| Stream WebSocket. |
Supported languages | Supporting multiple languages and platforms offers greater flexibility when building cross-platform realtime apps. | Sendbird
:cta[Sendbird chat messaging page[(https://sendbird.com/products/chat-messaging/sdk): :ctaGithub page Sendbird blog page | 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. | Sendbird
| 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. | Sendbird Yes | 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. | Sendbird Yes | Stream No |
Typing indicators | Show when others are typing in a chat room, enhancing realtime communication flow. | Sendbird Yes Sendbird offers text and bubble typing indicators in its SDKs and UI kits. | 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. | Sendbird Yes | Stream No |
| Chat message attributes | |||
Message edits and deletes | Allow users to modify or remove messages. | Sendbird Yes Sendbird supports both deleting and editing messages. It offers options to delete messages individually or clear all messages in a channel and allows users to edit messages directly. | Stream Yes |
Message reactions & emoticons | Boost engagement by enabling users to quickly express emotions or feedback on messages. | Sendbird Yes | Stream Yes |
Rich text support | Enhance messages with rich text formatting in chat. | Sendbird No | Stream Yes Stream SDKs offer markdown formatting for channel messages. |
Media attachments | Support for sharing images, videos, and files in chat. | 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. | Sendbird Yes | Stream Partial Stream only supports in-app notification feeds. |
Role-based permissions | Control user roles and permissions to ensure proper access and moderation. | Sendbird Yes Sendbird offers role-based permissions. Users can have different roles based on their participation in chat channels. | Stream Yes |
UI kit | Customizable UI elements for a seamless chat integration. | Sendbird Yes Sendbird offers a UI kit called Sendbird UIKit. This toolkit provides pre-built components for rapidly integrating chat functionality. Read more | 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. | Sendbird Yes | Stream Yes |
Asynchronous - automated moderation | Detect and manage harmful content automatically, after the message is broadcast to participants. | Sendbird Yes Sendbird offers rule-based automated moderation to detect and manage harmful content. Its Advanced Moderation combines AI rules with human review. | Stream |
Manual moderation via dashboards | Tools for moderators to detect harmful messages and manage them effectively. | Sendbird Yes Sendbird offers a moderation dashboard for manual oversight, allowing moderators to identify and handle harmful content within chat channels by banning users, removing messages, and configuring moderation settings. | 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. | Sendbird Yes Sendbird offers a feature to ban users from chat channels, which can be applied to both group and open channels, allowing moderators to restrict specific users' participation. | 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. | Sendbird 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. | Sendbird Sendbird pricing is based on the number of MAUs. Overages apply for additional MAU's and peak concurrent connections over the set quota. Sendbird 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. | Sendbird $25,549.00
Note: Assumes same users attend each event, to keep MAU at minimum. | 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. | Sendbird Yes The free plan allows a maximum of 100 MAUs and 10 peak concurrent connections. | Stream Yes Offers:
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Pricing plans | The pricing plans offered by cost. | Sendbird
Overages:
| 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. | Sendbird No | Stream No |
Collaboration capabilities | Enables you to quickly integrate realtime collaborative features like live cursors, member location, avatar stacks, and component locking. | Sendbird Yes | 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. | Sendbird 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. | Sendbird Yes | Stream Yes |
Asset tracking | State-of-the-art asset tracking across last mile logistics, food delivery applications, and urban mobility services. | Sendbird No | Stream No |
| Integrations & interoperability | |||
AI models | Allows you to integrate AI models, like GPT, into your app. | Sendbird Yes Sendbird integrates AI chatbots into apps and websites. It supports the following AI models:
| 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. | Sendbird No | Stream No |
Streaming & queueing | Provides a dependable method to reroute messages from the service to third-party streams and queues for further processing. | Sendbird Yes Sendbird offers streaming integrations natively using webhooks through its Sendbird Live feature. Read more | Stream No |
Observability services | Enables realtime monitoring and troubleshooting by offering insights into service behavior directly in your observability platform of choice. | Sendbird No Sendbird does not provide integrated observability services, such as detailed realtime monitoring. It only offers a status monitoring system where users can track uptime, service incidents, and some historical data. | Stream No |
| Security & compliance | |||
API key authentication | Simplifies the authentication code on trusted servers compared to requesting, managing, and refreshing tokens. | Sendbird Yes Sendbird supports API key authentication for: | 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. | Sendbird Yes | 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. | Sendbird Yes | 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. | Sendbird No Sendbird does not currently offer E2EE for its messaging services. It provide TLS encryption for data in transit and AES256 encryption for files stored on its servers. | 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. | Sendbird Sendbird maintains compliance with four key standards and regulations:
| 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 Sendbird and Stream. The content was last updated on 1 May 2025 for Sendbird 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 Sendbird and Stream
While both Sendbird 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 Sendbird
Twilio is a platform that provides developers with a suite of communication tools for building messaging infrastructure in their applications.
Bird (formerly MessageBird) provides SMS, voice, chat, and video APIs for omnichannel communication.
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 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 Sendbird and Stream stack up against Ably
Ably is the definitive realtime experience platform of the internet. See how we compare to Sendbird 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
