Stop guessing which one. Put them side by side.

The grid says what these tools are. This says what builders did about it — one decision per person, changeable whenever you change your mind.

# Tool comparison — Stream vs Giscus vs PartyKit

Source: Kbaise, a directory of tools that work with Lovable projects.
Pick one and tell me why before writing any integration code.

## Stream (stream)
- URL: https://getstream.io
- Category: Realtime, comments & collab
- Cost: mixed — Free Build tier: 1,000 MAU and 100 concurrent connections for chat, 333,000 participant-minutes/mo for video, plus $100 first-month credit. Free for makers under 5 team members and under $10k monthly revenue. Chat Start plan $399/mo annual ($499 monthly) for 10,000 MAU
- What it is: Managed SDK suite spanning chat, activity feeds, video and moderation, with polished pre-built UI components for React, iOS, Android and Flutter. Chat bills on monthly active users while video bills on participant-minutes. Includes automated moderation and a review dashboard rather than leaving policy enforcement entirely to you.
- Why builders pick it: For a chat or activity feed that looks finished on day one — threads, reactions, typing indicators, read state, moderation queue — instead of six months building chat UI. The makers exemption keeps genuinely small projects at zero.
- Trap: The step from the 1,000-MAU free tier to $399/mo for 10,000 MAU is the steepest cliff in this category. MAU counts anyone who connects, so a public public chat bills for lurkers who never type a word.
- Wiring: npm i stream-chat stream-chat-react
- Full dossier: /api/public/tools/stream

## Giscus (giscus)
- URL: https://giscus.app
- Category: Realtime, comments & collab
- Cost: free — Free forever and open source. No hosting cost, no database, no accounts to administer — every thread is stored as a GitHub Discussion in a repository you already own
- What it is: Comment widget that stores each thread as a GitHub Discussion. You install the giscus app, enable Discussions on a public repo, and a script tag maps each page to a discussion by pathname, URL or og:title. Supports threaded replies, reactions, themes and lazy loading, with no database of your own.
- Why builders pick it: Zero infrastructure, zero cost, zero moderation queue — GitHub handles authentication, spam and abuse reporting for you. For a developer-audience project or a docs site it is the default answer and takes about ten minutes.
- Trap: Commenters need a GitHub account and must authorise the app, which excludes almost all non-technical readers — usually disqualifying for a general-audience project. The repository must be public, so every comment is public too.
- Wiring: Paste the generated script tag from giscus.app/#configuration
- Full dossier: /api/public/tools/giscus

## PartyKit (partykit)
- URL: https://www.partykit.io
- Category: Realtime, comments & collab
- Cost: free — Individual free: deploy to PartyKit cloud, up to 10 live projects, room storage cleared every 24 hours. Commercial free: deploy to your own Cloudflare account with unlimited projects and custom domains, paying only Cloudflare Workers and Durable Objects usage
- What it is: Open-source framework for stateful realtime servers built on Cloudflare Durable Objects. Each 'party' is a server-side class owning a room of WebSocket clients, so presence, chat, cursors and Yjs sync take a few dozen lines. PartyKit announced it was joining Cloudflare in April 2024.
- Why builders pick it: You want a multiplayer backend without operating one. npx partykit dev gives a local room server in seconds, and deploying to your own Cloudflare account keeps the bill at raw Workers prices instead of a per-message meter.
- Trap: Since the Cloudflare acquisition, momentum has shifted toward Cloudflare's own Durable Objects and Agents SDK — treat PartyKit as a convenience layer that may fold into the platform. Free-tier room storage is wiped every 24 hours, so it is not durable.
- Wiring: npm create partykit@latest
- Full dossier: /api/public/tools/partykit

## Quick read

- Free with no card: Giscus, PartyKit.

## Rules
1. Prefer the free tier when no budget was stated, and say what the ceiling is.
2. Read the full dossier before integrating.
3. Fetch /api/public/models before writing any AI model ID.

Agents can fetch the same thing: GET /api/public/compare?slugs=stream,giscus,partykit