Pusher Channels

Hosted pub/sub WebSockets

Free tier + paidRealtime, comments & collabpusher.com

What it is

The classic hosted pub/sub WebSocket service: your backend triggers events on named channels and browser clients subscribe. Supports private and presence channels with server-side auth endpoints, official SDKs for every major platform, and webhooks for connection and channel events. No infrastructure to run.

Why it earns a slot

Notification badges, live comment counts and 'N people reading this' banners in an afternoon. The API surface is small enough to learn in one sitting, and 200,000 free messages a day covers a lot of ordinary ordinary traffic.

Know before you commit

Billing keys on concurrent connections and messages per day, both of which spike exactly when an article goes viral. Exhausting the daily message cap on the free plan stops delivery entirely until the counter resets at midnight UTC.

Getting started

npm i pusher pusher-js

Field notes

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Field check

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Pricing snapshot

Sandbox free: 200,000 messages/day, 100 concurrent connections. Startup $49/mo (1M msgs/day, 500 connections); Pro $99/mo (4M, 2,000); Business $299/mo (10M, 5,000); Premium $499/mo (20M, 10,000); Growth $699/mo (40M, 15,000)

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

Drop into your Lovable chat

Evaluate Pusher Channels (https://pusher.com/channels) for this project, then use it only if it fits what we are already building.
Context: Hosted pub/sub WebSockets. The classic hosted pub/sub WebSocket service: your backend triggers events on named channels and browser clients subscribe. Supports private and presence channels with server-side auth endpoints, official SDKs for every major platform, and webhooks for connection and channel events. No infrastructure to run.
Reviewer notes (general, not written for this codebase): Notification badges, live comment counts and 'N people reading this' banners in an afternoon. The API surface is small enough to learn in one sitting, and 200,000 free messages a day covers a lot of ordinary ordinary traffic.
Watch out for: Billing keys on concurrent connections and messages per day, both of which spike exactly when an article goes viral. Exhausting the daily message cap on the free plan stops delivery entirely until the counter resets at midnight UTC.
Pricing: Sandbox free: 200,000 messages/day, 100 concurrent connections. Startup $49/mo (1M msgs/day, 500 connections); Pro $99/mo (4M, 2,000); Business $299/mo (10M, 5,000); Premium $499/mo (20M, 10,000); Growth $699/mo (40M, 15,000)
Setup: npm i pusher pusher-js
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.

/api/public/tools/pusher-channels

Neighbourhood

How Pusher Channels 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 wiringPusher Beams

Also in Realtime, comments & collab

Ably

ably.com

Realtime messaging platform

Free tier + paidRealtime, comments & collab

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

Open dossier

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

Open dossier

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

Open dossier