Developer Tools · head to head
Restate vs Soketi
Restate
Developer Tools
Durable execution engine in Rust with a free tier and low-latency workflows
- 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: Restate the runtime is under a Business Source Licence rather than an open source licence, so building a competing managed offering on it is prohibited and some procurement functions will reject it on licence grounds alone.; 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: Restate covers Durable execution, Soketi covers Pusher protocol compatibility.
- Prices and features above were last checked on 31 August 2026.
Where they differ
Only the attributes on which Restate 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 Restate
- Durable execution
- Virtual objects
- Single binary runtime
- Multi-language SDKs
- Workflows and sagas
- Restate Cloud
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.
Restate
- Payment or order flows where a crash between two external API calls must not double-charge or lose the ordernot Soketi
- AI agent loops that call tools over minutes or hours and must survive a deployment mid-runnot Soketi
- Replacing hand-rolled retry, idempotency key and outbox code across a set of microservicesnot Soketi
- A small team that wants durable workflows without operating a Temporal cluster and its databasenot Soketi
Soketi
- A Laravel application that already uses Echo and wants to stop paying a hosted realtime providernot Restate
- Realtime notifications or presence indicators where data must not leave your own infrastructure for compliance reasonsnot Restate
- A local or CI environment that needs a Pusher-compatible server without hitting a paid accountnot Restate
- A high-connection-count application where hosted per-connection pricing has become the largest line in the infrastructure billnot Restate
Where each one falls short
Documented limitations, not opinions. Every one is a constraint you would hit in normal use.
Restate
- The runtime is under a Business Source Licence rather than an open source licence, so building a competing managed offering on it is prohibited and some procurement functions will reject it on licence grounds alone.
- Restate Cloud jumps from a free fifty thousand actions straight to 300 US dollars a month for twenty million, so a workload sitting at a few hundred thousand actions pays enterprise-shaped money for hobby-shaped volume.
- It is a young project against Temporal’s established base, so hiring engineers who already know it is unrealistic and the answer to most questions is in the docs rather than on Stack Overflow.
- The programming model requires structuring code around durable handlers and virtual objects, which is a genuine rewrite for existing services rather than a library you add.
- The single-binary simplicity that makes small deployments cheap also means fewer operational knobs at very large scale than a system designed as separable components.
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
Restate
Free- FreeFree
- Fifty thousand durable actions per month
- No credit card required
- Community support
- Starter$300/month
- Twenty million actions per month
- Two hundred actions per second, bursting to one thousand
- Twenty GB storage
- Pro$1000/month
- Fifty million actions per month
- Five hundred actions per second, bursting to two thousand
- Fifty GB storage
- Enterprise$undefined/year
- Negotiated volume
- Twenty-four seven P0 support
- 99.99 per cent SLA
Soketi
Free- SoketiFree
- MIT licensed
- Unlimited connections subject to your own hardware
- No vendor billing
Which should you pick?
Choose Restate if
- You need durable execution.
- You want to start without paying.
- You work on Linux, macOS, Web.
- You also want virtual objects.
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 Restate or Soketi better?
- Neither clearly leads. Restate 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, Restate or Soketi?
- Restate starts at Free and Soketi at Free.
- Does Restate or Soketi run on more platforms?
- Restate runs on Linux, macOS, Web. Soketi runs on Linux, macOS, Windows.
- Can I use Restate for free?
- Both have a free tier, so you can try either at no cost before committing.
- What is Restate best used for?
- Restate is most often used for payment or order flows where a crash between two external api calls must not double-charge or lose the order, ai agent loops that call tools over minutes or hours and must survive a deployment mid-run, replacing hand-rolled retry, idempotency key and outbox code across a set of microservices, a small team that wants durable workflows without operating a temporal cluster and its database. Of those, payment or order flows where a crash between two external api calls must not double-charge or lose the order and ai agent loops that call tools over minutes or hours and must survive a deployment mid-run are not what Soketi is typically brought in for.
- What can Restate do that Soketi cannot?
- Restate covers Durable execution, Virtual objects, Single binary runtime, Multi-language SDKs. Soketi covers Pusher protocol compatibility, Presence and private channels, Horizontal scaling, App management backends.
Answered from the vendors’ own pages
Restate: Is Restate open source?
The SDKs are MIT. The runtime is under a Business Source Licence, which permits self-hosting but not offering it as a competing service.
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.
Restate: How does it compare with Temporal?
Same problem, different shape: one Rust binary with embedded storage instead of a server plus database plus workers, and lower per-step latency.
Soketi: Do I need to change my client code?
No. Pusher client SDKs and Laravel Echo work by changing the host, port and credentials.
Restate: Is there a free tier?
Yes, fifty thousand durable actions a month on Restate Cloud with no card required.
Soketi: What does it cost?
Nothing in licence fees. It is MIT licensed; you pay for the server it runs on.
Restate: Which languages are supported?
TypeScript, Java, Kotlin, Go, Python and Rust.
Soketi: What are people moving to?
Laravel Reverb for Laravel applications, and Sockudo, a Rust reimplementation, for others.
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- Soketi vs Prettier
- Soketi vs StackBlitz
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- Soketi vs Webpack
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- Soketi vs GNU Emacs
- Soketi vs Bazel
- Soketi vs Eclipse IDE
- Soketi vs Pants Build
- Soketi vs Swagger UI
- Soketi vs Ansible
- Soketi vs Cody
- Soketi vs ConfigCat
- Soketi vs Cortex
- Soketi vs Dagger
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