Why teams upgrade from PubNub to Ably
The enterprise choice for realtime at scale. Ably outperforms PubNub at every level, powering 2B+ devices and 2T+ API ops per month. Scale with speed, reliability, and economics that reward growth.
Realtime infrastructure you can rely on - at scale
We’re the only WebSocket network powering billions of devices every month with 100% uptime. Brands like Dialpad, Kraken, and Hubspot trust us to power their critical applications - reliably, securely, and without fail.
<37ms
median roundtrip latency
30B+
connections opened monthly
100%
uptime over 5 years
Why Ably is the #1 choice for engineering teams
Unmatched reliability – no more outages
100% uptime over the past 5 years! Backed by a globally distributed, multi-region network with no single point of failure.
Scale without stress
Whether you’re supporting thousands or millions of concurrent connections, Ably delivers - handling over 2T+ API operations and 2B+ connected devices per month.
Award-winning support
Ably’s white-glove service includes unlimited architectural consultations, 24/7 mission-critical support with real engineers and a premium SLA with 99.999% uptime guarantees.
Enterprise-grade features built to scale
Get unmatched expertise paired with a host of value-adding options to keep your business-critical applications running at optimal performance. Built for realtime at scale — not just MVPs.
Actively invested, constantly shipping
We’re investing heavily in the platform, launching new products and features, shipping improvements, and giving developers the tools they need to move faster. We’re independent, developer-first, and built for the long haul.
Predictable, scalable pricing
Ably offers a choice of per minute usage-based billing and MAU pricing models, with a host of features designed to optimize your costs. No surprises on your bill. Just scale aligned with your growth.
REAL-WORLD RESULTS
When doxy.me’s realtime stack started showing cracks, they turned to Ably:
- Migrated 250k daily video sessions in weeks
- Cut realtime infra costs by 65%
- Achieved zero downtime and faster notification delivery
“We saw a full ROI in under six months, despite using an external team to handle the migration. That’s unheard of.”
Ben Anderson-Dukes
Vice President of Engineering
“From the very first quarter with Ably, we saw significant improvements in both the consistency and speed of our notification delivery.”
Arnaud Budkiewicz
VP Engineering
Highly rated on G2
Ably earns top G2 reviews for its reliable realtime infrastructure, developer-friendly SDKs and customer support.
| Ably Advantages vs. PubNub | ||
|---|---|---|
| Global Infrastructure | Ably Yes Distributed network with 635+ PoPs across 11 regions | PubNub No Single-region deployment per app |
| Message Reliability | Ably Yes Guaranteed message delivery - exactly once and in order | PubNub No No message delivery guarantees; messages may be lost during disconnections |
| 100% uptime | Ably Yes 100% uptime for over 5 years | PubNub — |
| Low Latency | Ably Yes <37ms median roundtrip latency | PubNub No <90-200ms due to centralized architecture |
| Scalability | Ably Yes
| PubNub Limited
|
| Chat Features | Ably Yes Comprehensive chat SDK with 1:1 and group messaging, reactions, moderation, typing indicators, and more | PubNub No Does not provide a Chat SDK |
| Presence & Occupancy | Ably Yes Full presence support with occupancy metrics | PubNub Limited Presence supported; occupancy metrics not available |
| Message History | Ably Yes Built-in message history retrieval; persistent and queryable | PubNub No No native message history feature |
| Protocol Adapters | Ably Yes Supports multiple protocols including Pusher, PubNub, MQTT, and SSE | PubNub Limited Limited protocol support |
| Integrations | Ably Yes Native integrations with Kafka, AWS Lambda, and more | PubNub Limited Lacks native support for event streaming platforms |
| Security & Compliance | Ably
| PubNub GDPR compliant, but lacks broader certifications |
| Pricing | Ably Choice of per-minute billing or MAU pricing. | PubNub Fixed consumption packages. |
| Cost optimization | Ably Yes
| PubNub No |
| Support Quality | Ably
| PubNub Limited |
Seamless migration - zero code changes required
- Swap endpoints, keep your client code
- Run PubNub and Ably in parallel during migration
- No need for rewrites or retraining
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const apiKey = "ablyApiKey";
const pubnub = PubNub({
subscribe_key: apiKey,
publish_key: apiKey,
origin: 'main.pubnub.ably.net',
ssl: true
});Ready to upgrade your realtime stack?
Join brands like doxy.me and Hubspot who’ve switched from PubNub to Ably.
