Developer Tools · head to head
Dagger vs Soketi
Dagger
Developer Tools
Programmable CI/CD engine that runs your pipeline as containers on any runner
- From
- Free
- Rated
- -
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: Dagger dagger is not a CI provider, so you keep paying for GitHub Actions or GitLab runners underneath it; the Dagger Cloud subscription is an addition to your CI bill, not a replacement for it.; 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: Dagger covers Pipelines 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 Dagger 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 Dagger
- Pipelines as code
- Local and CI parity
- Content-addressed caching
- Dagger Functions and modules
- CI-provider agnostic
- Dagger Cloud traces
- GitHub Checks integration
- Container-native execution
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.
Dagger
- A platform team maintaining near-identical build YAML across forty repositories that wants one versioned module every repository calls insteadnot Soketi
- An engineering organisation migrating off a CI provider that does not want to rewrite every pipeline as part of the migrationnot Soketi
- A team whose engineers waste hours pushing commits to debug CI-only failures and needs to reproduce the exact run locallynot Soketi
- A monorepo where most commits touch a small subset of services and cache-accurate step skipping cuts build minutes materiallynot Soketi
Soketi
- A Laravel application that already uses Echo and wants to stop paying a hosted realtime providernot Dagger
- Realtime notifications or presence indicators where data must not leave your own infrastructure for compliance reasonsnot Dagger
- A local or CI environment that needs a Pusher-compatible server without hitting a paid accountnot Dagger
- A high-connection-count application where hosted per-connection pricing has become the largest line in the infrastructure billnot Dagger
Where each one falls short
Documented limitations, not opinions. Every one is a constraint you would hit in normal use.
Dagger
- Dagger is not a CI provider, so you keep paying for GitHub Actions or GitLab runners underneath it; the Dagger Cloud subscription is an addition to your CI bill, not a replacement for it.
- Writing pipelines in Go or TypeScript raises the barrier to entry: a release engineer who could edit a YAML step now needs to read code, and the people who can fix a broken build shrink to those comfortable with the SDK.
- The engine runs as a container on the runner and needs a persistent cache volume to deliver its main benefit, so ephemeral CI runners give you correctness without the speed, and provisioning durable cache storage is extra platform work.
- The Team plan caps at ten users and ten million events per month; an organisation of any size crosses that quickly and moves to Enterprise pricing that is not published, so cost at scale is unknowable up front.
- The module ecosystem is young and thinly maintained relative to the marketplace of a mature CI provider, so integrations that exist as a one-line Action often have to be written yourself as a Dagger function.
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
Dagger
Free- IndividualFree
- One user
- One million events per month
- Workflow logs and function call traces
- Team$50/month
- Up to ten users
- Ten million events per month
- Module insights and module catalogue
- Enterprise$undefined/year
- Custom user and event limits
- SSO
- Managed single-tenant deployment
Soketi
Free- SoketiFree
- MIT licensed
- Unlimited connections subject to your own hardware
- No vendor billing
Which should you pick?
Choose Dagger if
- You need pipelines as code.
- You want to start without paying.
- You work on Linux, macOS, Windows, Self-hosted.
- You also want local and ci parity.
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 Dagger or Soketi better?
- Neither clearly leads. Dagger 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, Dagger or Soketi?
- Dagger starts at Free and Soketi at Free.
- Does Dagger or Soketi run on more platforms?
- Dagger runs on Linux, macOS, Windows, Self-hosted. Soketi runs on Linux, macOS, Windows.
- Can I use Dagger for free?
- Both have a free tier, so you can try either at no cost before committing.
- What is Dagger best used for?
- Dagger is most often used for a platform team maintaining near-identical build yaml across forty repositories that wants one versioned module every repository calls instead, an engineering organisation migrating off a ci provider that does not want to rewrite every pipeline as part of the migration, a team whose engineers waste hours pushing commits to debug ci-only failures and needs to reproduce the exact run locally, a monorepo where most commits touch a small subset of services and cache-accurate step skipping cuts build minutes materially. Of those, a platform team maintaining near-identical build yaml across forty repositories that wants one versioned module every repository calls instead and an engineering organisation migrating off a ci provider that does not want to rewrite every pipeline as part of the migration are not what Soketi is typically brought in for.
- What can Dagger do that Soketi cannot?
- Dagger covers Pipelines as code, Local and CI parity, Content-addressed caching, Dagger Functions and modules. Soketi covers Pusher protocol compatibility, Presence and private channels, Horizontal scaling, App management backends.
Answered from the vendors’ own pages
Dagger: Does Dagger replace GitHub Actions?
No. Dagger runs inside GitHub Actions or any other CI. It replaces the YAML that describes your pipeline steps, not the trigger and runner layer.
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.
Dagger: Is the engine open source?
Yes, the Dagger engine and SDKs are open source and free. Dagger Cloud, the observability product, is what costs money.
Soketi: Do I need to change my client code?
No. Pusher client SDKs and Laravel Echo work by changing the host, port and credentials.
Dagger: What is an event in the pricing?
Dagger Cloud meters pipeline telemetry events. One million per month is free; the Team plan at 50 USD per month allows ten million.
Soketi: What does it cost?
Nothing in licence fees. It is MIT licensed; you pay for the server it runs on.
Dagger: Can I run the same pipeline on my laptop?
Yes, that is the main reason teams adopt it. The dagger CLI executes the identical graph locally, so CI-only failures become reproducible.
Soketi: What are people moving to?
Laravel Reverb for Laravel applications, and Sockudo, a Rust reimplementation, for others.
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