Is Honeycomb or Soketi better?

Neither clearly leads. Honeycomb 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, Honeycomb or Soketi?

Honeycomb starts at Free and Soketi at Free.

Does Honeycomb or Soketi run on more platforms?

Honeycomb runs on Web. Soketi runs on Linux, macOS, Windows.

Can I use Honeycomb for free?

Both have a free tier, so you can try either at no cost before committing.

What is Honeycomb best used for?

Honeycomb is most often used for tracing requests through distributed microservices, observing ai agent behavior in production, debugging cloud migrations in real-time, monitoring kubernetes across multiple clouds. Of those, tracing requests through distributed microservices and observing ai agent behavior in production are not what Soketi is typically brought in for.

What can Honeycomb do that Soketi cannot?

Soketi covers Pusher protocol compatibility, Presence and private channels, Horizontal scaling, App management backends.

Technology · head to head

Honeycomb vs Soketi

Honeycomb

Technology

Observability that's actually useful

From: Free
Free plan: Yes

Full review Website

Soketi

Developer Tools

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

From: Free
Free plan: Yes

Full review Website

The short version

Each has a real cost: Honeycomb free tier caps at 20 million events per month and 100 million metrics data points; 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.
Prices and features above were last checked on 31 August 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Honeycomb and Soketi actually diverge.

Attributes where Honeycomb and Soketi differ
Attribute	Honeycomb	Soketi
Pricing model	freemium	Open source, no licence fee
Platforms	Web	Linux, macOS, Windows
Category	Technology	Developer 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 Honeycomb

Nothing recorded that Soketi does not also cover.

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.

Honeycomb

Tracing requests through distributed microservicesnot Soketi
Observing AI agent behavior in productionnot Soketi
Debugging cloud migrations in real-timenot Soketi
Monitoring Kubernetes across multiple cloudsnot Soketi

Soketi

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

Where each one falls short

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

Honeycomb

Free tier caps at 20 million events per month and 100 million metrics data points
Pro tier starts at $150 per month for only 50 million events, with cost scaling per additional event block up to its 750 million event ceiling
Enterprise tier's event and data point volumes are variable and its price is custom, requiring direct sales contact
Telemetry Pipeline is billed separately at $0.10 per GB on top of the base plan price

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

Honeycomb

Free

FreeFree
- 20M events per month
- 100M metrics data points per month
- 2 Triggers
Pro$150/month
- 750M events per month
- 3.75B metrics data points per month
- 100 Triggers

Soketi

Free

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

Which should you pick?

Choose Honeycomb if

You want to start without paying.

Honeycomb 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 Honeycomb or Soketi better?: Neither clearly leads. Honeycomb 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, Honeycomb or Soketi?: Honeycomb starts at Free and Soketi at Free.
Does Honeycomb or Soketi run on more platforms?: Honeycomb runs on Web. Soketi runs on Linux, macOS, Windows.
Can I use Honeycomb for free?: Both have a free tier, so you can try either at no cost before committing.
What is Honeycomb best used for?: Honeycomb is most often used for tracing requests through distributed microservices, observing ai agent behavior in production, debugging cloud migrations in real-time, monitoring kubernetes across multiple clouds. Of those, tracing requests through distributed microservices and observing ai agent behavior in production are not what Soketi is typically brought in for.
What can Honeycomb do that Soketi cannot?: Soketi covers Pusher protocol compatibility, Presence and private channels, Horizontal scaling, App management backends.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Honeycomb: Is Honeycomb free forever?

Honeycomb offers a free plan forever with up to 20M events per month and 100M metrics data points per month, best for testing and individual projects.

Source

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.

Honeycomb: What is the cost of Honeycomb's Telemetry Pipeline?

Honeycomb's Telemetry Pipeline starts at $0.10 per GB, with monthly or annual billing options available.

Source

Soketi: Do I need to change my client code?

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

Honeycomb: Can I get custom Honeycomb pricing?

Yes, Honeycomb offers Enterprise plans with custom pricing and a base allowance starting at 10 billion events per year with dedicated support.

Source

Soketi: 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.

Honeycomb vs Soketi

Honeycomb

Soketi

The short version

Where they differ

What each one covers

Only in Honeycomb

Only in Soketi

What people use each for

Honeycomb

Soketi

Where each one falls short

Honeycomb

Soketi

Pricing, plan by plan

Honeycomb

Soketi

Which should you pick?

Choose Honeycomb if

Choose Soketi if

Questions people ask

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Related pages

More on Honeycomb

More on Soketi

Keep looking

Other head to heads