Is Longhorn or Soketi better?

Neither clearly leads. Longhorn 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, Longhorn or Soketi?

Longhorn starts at Free and Soketi at Free.

Does Longhorn or Soketi run on more platforms?

Longhorn runs on Linux, Kubernetes. Soketi runs on Linux, macOS, Windows.

Can I use Longhorn for free?

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

What is Longhorn best used for?

Longhorn is most often used for an on-premises kubernetes cluster with local disks and no san that needs replicated persistent volumes, edge sites where shipping a storage array is impractical and three nodes is the whole cluster, a k3s deployment where the storage layer must be light enough to run alongside the workloads, a team that wants snapshots and s3 backups of persistent volumes without paying per-node storage licences. Of those, an on-premises kubernetes cluster with local disks and no san that needs replicated persistent volumes and edge sites where shipping a storage array is impractical and three nodes is the whole cluster are not what Soketi is typically brought in for.

What can Longhorn do that Soketi cannot?

Longhorn covers Per-volume controllers, Synchronous replication, Snapshots and backups, Volume expansion. Soketi covers Pusher protocol compatibility, Presence and private channels, Horizontal scaling, App management backends.

Cloud · head to head

Longhorn vs Soketi

Longhorn

Cloud

Open source distributed block storage for Kubernetes, incubating at the CNCF

From: Free
Rated: -

Full review Website

Soketi

Developer Tools

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

From: Free
Rated: -

Full review Website

The short version

Each has a real cost: Longhorn there is no vendor and no SLA, so a production incident at three in the morning is your own problem unless you buy SUSE Rancher Prime support separately.; 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: Longhorn covers Per-volume controllers, Soketi covers Pusher protocol compatibility.
Prices and features above were last checked on 1 September 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Longhorn and Soketi actually diverge.

Attributes where Longhorn and Soketi differ
Attribute	Longhorn	Soketi
Platforms	Linux, Kubernetes	Linux, macOS, Windows
Category	Cloud	Developer Tools

Identical on both: starting price (Free), pricing model (Open source, no licence fee), 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 Longhorn

Per-volume controllers
Synchronous replication
Snapshots and backups
Volume expansion
Disaster recovery volumes
Web interface

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.

Longhorn

An on-premises Kubernetes cluster with local disks and no SAN that needs replicated persistent volumesnot Soketi
Edge sites where shipping a storage array is impractical and three nodes is the whole clusternot Soketi
A K3s deployment where the storage layer must be light enough to run alongside the workloadsnot Soketi
A team that wants snapshots and S3 backups of persistent volumes without paying per-node storage licencesnot Soketi

Soketi

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

Where each one falls short

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

Longhorn

There is no vendor and no SLA, so a production incident at three in the morning is your own problem unless you buy SUSE Rancher Prime support separately.
Synchronous replication across nodes means write latency depends on the slowest replica and the network between nodes, which makes it a poor fit for latency-sensitive databases.
Every replica is a full copy, so three-way replication consumes three times the raw capacity, unlike erasure-coded systems that are far more space efficient.
It is designed for block storage on modest clusters and does not scale to the node counts or throughput that Ceph or a commercial array handles, so growth eventually forces a migration.
Recovery from certain degraded states, such as a volume stuck detaching or replicas failing to rebuild, requires manual intervention and knowledge of Longhorn internals that is not widely held.

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

Longhorn

Free

LonghornFree
- Apache 2.0 licensed, no licence fee
- Community support via GitHub and Slack only
- No vendor SLA or escalation path

Soketi

Free

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

Which should you pick?

Choose Longhorn if

You need per-volume controllers.
You want to start without paying.
You work on Linux, Kubernetes.
You also want synchronous replication.

Longhorn 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 Longhorn or Soketi better?: Neither clearly leads. Longhorn 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, Longhorn or Soketi?: Longhorn starts at Free and Soketi at Free.
Does Longhorn or Soketi run on more platforms?: Longhorn runs on Linux, Kubernetes. Soketi runs on Linux, macOS, Windows.
Can I use Longhorn for free?: Both have a free tier, so you can try either at no cost before committing.
What is Longhorn best used for?: Longhorn is most often used for an on-premises kubernetes cluster with local disks and no san that needs replicated persistent volumes, edge sites where shipping a storage array is impractical and three nodes is the whole cluster, a k3s deployment where the storage layer must be light enough to run alongside the workloads, a team that wants snapshots and s3 backups of persistent volumes without paying per-node storage licences. Of those, an on-premises kubernetes cluster with local disks and no san that needs replicated persistent volumes and edge sites where shipping a storage array is impractical and three nodes is the whole cluster are not what Soketi is typically brought in for.
What can Longhorn do that Soketi cannot?: Longhorn covers Per-volume controllers, Synchronous replication, Snapshots and backups, Volume expansion. Soketi covers Pusher protocol compatibility, Presence and private channels, Horizontal scaling, App management backends.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Longhorn: Who do we call when it breaks?

Nobody, unless you buy SUSE Rancher Prime, which includes commercial support for Longhorn. This is the decisive question for production use.

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.

Longhorn: How much capacity does replication cost?

Full copies, so three replicas means three times the raw capacity. Budget accordingly rather than assuming erasure coding efficiency.

Soketi: Do I need to change my client code?

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

Longhorn: Is it suitable for production databases?

For modest workloads yes, but synchronous replication adds write latency and high-transaction databases usually want something faster.

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.

Longhorn vs Soketi

Longhorn

Soketi

The short version

Where they differ

What each one covers

Only in Longhorn

Only in Soketi

What people use each for

Longhorn

Soketi

Where each one falls short

Longhorn

Soketi

Pricing, plan by plan

Longhorn

Soketi

Which should you pick?

Choose Longhorn if

Choose Soketi if

Questions people ask

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Related pages

More on Longhorn

More on Soketi

Keep looking

Other head to heads