Electric (ElectricSQL)

Postgres sync engine, read path

Free tier + paidRealtime, comments & collabelectric.ax

What it is

Sync engine that streams partial replicas of Postgres — called shapes — to clients over plain HTTP. It handles the read path only: your app writes through your own API and Electric fans the resulting changes out to every subscribed client. Now rebranded simply as Electric and positioned around collaborative multi-agent systems.

Why it earns a slot

Turns an ordinary Postgres table into a live-updating client cache without rewriting your backend or adopting a proprietary database. Because reads and fan-out are free, a liveblog read by 50,000 people costs close to nothing.

Know before you commit

Read-path only — writes, conflict resolution and auth remain your problem, which catches out people expecting two-way sync. The project has moved domains from electric-sql.com to electric.ax and revised its pricing model more than once.

Getting started

npm i @electric-sql/client

Field notes

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Pricing snapshot

Cloud pay-as-you-go: $0/mo base, $1 per 1M writes, $0.10 per GB-month retention, with usage under $5/mo waived. Reads, egress, fan-out and concurrent users are free. Pro $249/mo; Scale $1,999/mo. Sync service is open source and self-hostable

Snapshots move fast — verify at checkout, and post a field note if it changed.

Drop into your Lovable chat

Evaluate Electric (ElectricSQL) (https://electric.ax) for this project, then use it only if it fits what we are already building.
Context: Postgres sync engine, read path. Sync engine that streams partial replicas of Postgres — called shapes — to clients over plain HTTP. It handles the read path only: your app writes through your own API and Electric fans the resulting changes out to every subscribed client. Now rebranded simply as Electric and positioned around collaborative multi-agent systems.
Reviewer notes (general, not written for this codebase): Turns an ordinary Postgres table into a live-updating client cache without rewriting your backend or adopting a proprietary database. Because reads and fan-out are free, a liveblog read by 50,000 people costs close to nothing.
Watch out for: Read-path only — writes, conflict resolution and auth remain your problem, which catches out people expecting two-way sync. The project has moved domains from electric-sql.com to electric.ax and revised its pricing model more than once.
Pricing: Cloud pay-as-you-go: $0/mo base, $1 per 1M writes, $0.10 per GB-month retention, with usage under $5/mo waived. Reads, egress, fan-out and concurrent users are free. Pro $249/mo; Scale $1,999/mo. Sync service is open source and self-hostable
Setup: npm i @electric-sql/client
Rules: treat the notes above as background only. Do not assume a theme, style, layout or feature that is not already in this project — inspect the existing code first and ask me before changing visual direction.

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Neighbourhood

How Electric (ElectricSQL) sits against the rest of the atlas — swaps, companions and the tools builders actually save alongside it.

Instead of thisGiscus PartyKit Socket.IO Yjs Ably Agora Chatwoot Circle Crisp

Named in the wiringStream

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Ably

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Realtime messaging platform

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Free: 6M messages/mo, 200 concurrent connections, 200 channels, 500 msg/sec. Standard $29/mo plus usage (10k connections, 10k channels); Pro $399/mo plus usage (50k). Usage: $2.50 per million messages, $1.00 per million connection-minutes, $0.25/GiB transfer

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Agora

agora.io

Metered RTC voice and video API

Free tier + paidRealtime, comments & collab

Free monthly: 10,000 combined RTC minutes, 1M signaling messages, 500 chat users, 300 conversational AI minutes. RTC $0.59 per 1,000 minutes; recording $0.99 per 1,000; speech-to-text $16.99 per 1,000; real-time translation $8.99 per 1,000 per language. Analytics add-on from $449/mo

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Chatwoot

chatwoot.com

Open-source support inbox + chat

Free tier + paidRealtime, comments & collab

Self-host free under the MIT licence. Cloud Hacker $0 (2 agents, 500 conversations/mo, live chat only, 30-day retention); Startups $19/agent/mo annual; Business $39/agent/mo; Enterprise $99/agent/mo. Extra Captain AI credits $20 per 1,000

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Circle

circle.so

Hosted community and courses

PaidRealtime, comments & collab

Professional $89/mo (3 admin seats, 2% transaction fee, 200 GB); Business $199/mo (5 seats, 1% fee, 500 GB); Circle Plus custom (unlimited seats, 0.5% fee, 1 TB). Unlimited members on every plan. 14-day trial, no permanent free plan

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