Developer Tools · head to head
Earthly vs Soketi
Soketi
Developer Tools
Self-hosted, Pusher-compatible WebSockets server with a stalled maintenance record
- From
- Free
- Rated
- -
The short version
- Each has a real cost: Earthly pricing model not published; requires sales contact; Soketi maintenance has effectively stalled: the maintainer has said time is severely limited, releases are infrequent, and the community has been discussing whether the project is abandoned, which means security fixes may not arrive.
- They diverge on capability: Earthly covers Policy as code, Soketi covers Pusher protocol compatibility.
- Prices and features above were last checked on 31 August 2026.
Where they differ
Only the attributes on which Earthly and Soketi actually diverge.
Identical on both: starting price (Free), free tier (Yes), user rating (Not yet rated), category (Developer Tools).
What each one covers
Drawn from each product's published feature list. An absence here means we hold no record of it - not that the product lacks it.
Only in Earthly
- Policy as code
- Multi-stage enforcement
- AI agent governance
- Repository-wide policies
- Incident response automation
- Compliance management
- Earthfiles build tool
- Satellites
Only in Soketi
- Pusher protocol compatibility
- Presence and private channels
- Horizontal scaling
- App management backends
- Webhooks
- Prometheus metrics
What people use each for
The jobs each tool is most often brought in to do.
Earthly
- Enforcing engineering standards across AI and human developersnot Soketi
- Automating incident response procedures across all repositoriesnot Soketi
- Embedding compliance requirements into development workflowsnot Soketi
- Standardizing build processes with Earthfilesnot Soketi
Soketi
- A Laravel application that already uses Echo and wants to stop paying a hosted realtime providernot Earthly
- Realtime notifications or presence indicators where data must not leave your own infrastructure for compliance reasonsnot Earthly
- A local or CI environment that needs a Pusher-compatible server without hitting a paid accountnot Earthly
- A high-connection-count application where hosted per-connection pricing has become the largest line in the infrastructure billnot Earthly
Where each one falls short
Documented limitations, not opinions. Every one is a constraint you would hit in normal use.
Earthly
- Pricing model not published; requires sales contact
- Earthly Lunar is a recent launch (2025) with limited track record
- Primarily GitHub-focused; limited integration with other platforms
- No public documentation on pricing or feature tiers
Soketi
- Maintenance has effectively stalled: the maintainer has said time is severely limited, releases are infrequent, and the community has been discussing whether the project is abandoned, which means security fixes may not arrive.
- Dependency drift on Node and uWebSockets.js will eventually force you to fork or migrate, and that cost is unbudgeted at the point you adopt it.
- There is no commercial support to buy, so a production incident at three in the morning is entirely your problem with no escalation path.
- Scaling beyond a single node needs Redis and careful configuration, and getting presence channels correct across nodes is a genuine source of subtle bugs.
- It implements the Pusher protocol rather than tracking it, so any protocol feature Pusher adds later will not appear, and the compatibility guarantee slowly decays.
Pricing, plan by plan
Earthly
FreeNo published plan breakdown. See the Earthly review.
Soketi
Free- SoketiFree
- MIT licensed
- Unlimited connections subject to your own hardware
- No vendor billing
Which should you pick?
Choose Earthly if
- You need policy as code.
- You want to start without paying.
- You work on Web, CLI.
- You also want multi-stage enforcement.
Choose Soketi if
- You need pusher protocol compatibility.
- You want to start without paying.
- You work on Linux, macOS, Windows.
- You also want presence and private channels.
Questions people ask
- Is Earthly or Soketi better?
- Neither clearly leads. Earthly starts at Free and Soketi at Free, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
- Which is cheaper, Earthly or Soketi?
- Earthly starts at Free and Soketi at Free.
- Does Earthly or Soketi run on more platforms?
- Earthly runs on Web, CLI. Soketi runs on Linux, macOS, Windows.
- Can I use Earthly for free?
- Both have a free tier, so you can try either at no cost before committing.
- What is Earthly best used for?
- Earthly is most often used for enforcing engineering standards across ai and human developers, automating incident response procedures across all repositories, embedding compliance requirements into development workflows, standardizing build processes with earthfiles. Of those, enforcing engineering standards across ai and human developers and automating incident response procedures across all repositories are not what Soketi is typically brought in for.
- What can Earthly do that Soketi cannot?
- Earthly covers Policy as code, Multi-stage enforcement, AI agent governance, Repository-wide policies. Soketi covers Pusher protocol compatibility, Presence and private channels, Horizontal scaling, App management backends.
Answered from the vendors’ own pages
Earthly: What is the difference between Earthfiles and Earthly Lunar?
Earthfiles is an open-source build tool that reached 12,000 GitHub stars and is used by companies like NVIDIA, Intel, and Databricks. Earthly Lunar is a separate governance platform launched in 2025 for enforcing standards across development workflows.
SourceSoketi: Is Soketi still maintained?
Barely. The maintainer has stated that available time is very limited and releases have been sparse; treat it as community-maintained.
Earthly: How does Earthly Lunar enforce standards?
Lunar converts engineering standards, compliance requirements, and processes documented in AGENTS.md files, wikis, and incident postmortems into enforceable guardrails that apply consistently across repositories and development stages.
SourceSoketi: Do I need to change my client code?
No. Pusher client SDKs and Laravel Echo work by changing the host, port and credentials.
Earthly: What is the pricing for Earthly Lunar?
Pricing is not published on the website. Interested customers should contact Earthly's sales team for current pricing and feature tiers.
SourceSoketi: What does it cost?
Nothing in licence fees. It is MIT licensed; you pay for the server it runs on.
Soketi: What are people moving to?
Laravel Reverb for Laravel applications, and Sockudo, a Rust reimplementation, for others.
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- Soketi vs Fig
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- Soketi vs Penpot
- Soketi vs Atlantis
- Soketi vs Coder
- Soketi vs Backstage
- Soketi vs Visual Studio Code
- Soketi vs GNU Emacs
- Soketi vs Bazel
- Soketi vs Eclipse IDE
- Soketi vs Pants Build
- Soketi vs Swagger UI
- Soketi vs Ansible
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