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Testing · head to head

GrowthBook vs Soketi

GrowthBook logo

GrowthBook

Testing

Open source feature flags and A/B testing that run experiment analysis inside your own data warehouse

From
Free
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite
Soketi logo

Soketi

Developer Tools

Self-hosted, Pusher-compatible WebSockets server with a stalled maintenance record

From
Free
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite

The short version

  • Each has a real cost: GrowthBook warehouse-native analysis is only an advantage if you have a warehouse with clean event data in it; without one, GrowthBook has nothing to compute against and you are back to buying an event-collecting platform.; 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: GrowthBook covers Feature flags, Soketi covers Pusher protocol compatibility.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 31 August 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which GrowthBook and Soketi actually diverge.

Attributes where GrowthBook and Soketi differ
AttributeGrowthBookSoketi
Pricing modelPer user per monthOpen source, no licence fee
PlatformsWeb, Self-hosted, DockerLinux, macOS, Windows
CategoryTestingDeveloper Tools

Identical on both: starting price (Free), free tier (Yes), user rating (Not yet rated).

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 GrowthBook

  • Feature flags
  • Warehouse-native analysis
  • Reusable metric definitions
  • Bayesian and frequentist engines
  • CUPED variance reduction
  • Visual editor
  • Self-hosting
  • Guardrail metrics

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.

GrowthBook

  • An engineering team that wants feature flags without a per-monthly-active-user bill that grows with product successnot Soketi
  • A data team that needs experiment results to reconcile exactly with the metrics reported in its BI toolnot Soketi
  • A company with data residency or privacy constraints that cannot send user-level event data to a third-party vendornot Soketi
  • Running long-tail experiments where sequential testing and CUPED shorten the time to a decision on low-traffic surfacesnot Soketi

Soketi

  • A Laravel application that already uses Echo and wants to stop paying a hosted realtime providernot GrowthBook
  • Realtime notifications or presence indicators where data must not leave your own infrastructure for compliance reasonsnot GrowthBook
  • A local or CI environment that needs a Pusher-compatible server without hitting a paid accountnot GrowthBook
  • A high-connection-count application where hosted per-connection pricing has become the largest line in the infrastructure billnot GrowthBook

Where each one falls short

Documented limitations, not opinions. Every one is a constraint you would hit in normal use.

GrowthBook

  • Warehouse-native analysis is only an advantage if you have a warehouse with clean event data in it; without one, GrowthBook has nothing to compute against and you are back to buying an event-collecting platform.
  • Metrics are SQL, so a marketing or product team without data engineering support cannot define or fix them, and a badly written metric silently produces a confident wrong answer.
  • Cloud Pro bills per seat and then adds CDN request and bandwidth overages, so a high-traffic site can find the variable component exceeds the seat cost it budgeted for.
  • Self-hosting means you own the Mongo database, the SDK endpoint availability and the upgrade path, and a flag service that is down is a production incident, not an analytics inconvenience.
  • The statistics engine exposes real choices, Bayesian versus frequentist, sequential testing, variance reduction, and the tool will not stop a team that configures them wrongly, so it rewards statistical literacy and punishes its absence.

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

GrowthBook

Free
  • Open source (self-hosted)Free
    • Unlimited users, feature flags and experiments
    • One project
    • MIT licensed, you run the infrastructure
  • Starter (cloud)Free
    • Up to 3 users
    • 1 project
    • Unlimited flags, experiments and traffic
  • Pro (cloud)$40/month
    • Per seat, up to 50 users
    • 3 projects
    • CDN overage at $10 per million requests beyond the included allowance
  • Enterprise$undefined/year
    • Unlimited users and projects
    • SSO, audit logs and advanced permissions
    • Available on cloud or self-hosted

Soketi

Free
  • SoketiFree
    • MIT licensed
    • Unlimited connections subject to your own hardware
    • No vendor billing

Which should you pick?

Choose GrowthBook if

  • You need feature flags.
  • You want to start without paying.
  • You work on Web, Self-hosted, Docker.
  • You also want warehouse-native analysis.
GrowthBook review

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.
Soketi review

Questions people ask

Is GrowthBook or Soketi better?
Neither clearly leads. GrowthBook 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, GrowthBook or Soketi?
GrowthBook starts at Free and Soketi at Free.
Does GrowthBook or Soketi run on more platforms?
GrowthBook runs on Web, Self-hosted, Docker. Soketi runs on Linux, macOS, Windows.
Can I use GrowthBook for free?
Both have a free tier, so you can try either at no cost before committing.
What is GrowthBook best used for?
GrowthBook is most often used for an engineering team that wants feature flags without a per-monthly-active-user bill that grows with product success, a data team that needs experiment results to reconcile exactly with the metrics reported in its bi tool, a company with data residency or privacy constraints that cannot send user-level event data to a third-party vendor, running long-tail experiments where sequential testing and cuped shorten the time to a decision on low-traffic surfaces. Of those, an engineering team that wants feature flags without a per-monthly-active-user bill that grows with product success and a data team that needs experiment results to reconcile exactly with the metrics reported in its bi tool are not what Soketi is typically brought in for.
What can GrowthBook do that Soketi cannot?
GrowthBook covers Feature flags, Warehouse-native analysis, Reusable metric definitions, Bayesian and frequentist engines. Soketi covers Pusher protocol compatibility, Presence and private channels, Horizontal scaling, App management backends.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

GrowthBook: Is the self-hosted version actually usable, or crippled?

It is genuinely usable: unlimited users, flags and experiments on one project under an MIT licence. The paid tiers add multiple projects, SSO, audit logs and support.

Soketi: 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.

GrowthBook: Do I need a data warehouse?

For experiment analysis, effectively yes. Feature flagging works without one, but the reason to choose GrowthBook over a flag-only tool is the warehouse-native statistics.

Soketi: Do I need to change my client code?

No. Pusher client SDKs and Laravel Echo work by changing the host, port and credentials.

GrowthBook: How does the cost compare with LaunchDarkly or Optimizely?

GrowthBook charges per seat rather than per monthly active user or per tracked event, so cost stops scaling with traffic. At high volume that difference is large.

Soketi: What does it cost?

Nothing in licence fees. It is MIT licensed; you pay for the server it runs on.

GrowthBook: Does it support mobile and server-side flags?

Yes, there are SDKs across JavaScript, React, Python, Go, Ruby, PHP, Java, Kotlin, Swift and more, covering client, server and mobile evaluation.

Soketi: What are people moving to?

Laravel Reverb for Laravel applications, and Sockudo, a Rust reimplementation, for others.

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