Is Soketi or SST better?

Neither clearly leads. Soketi starts at Free and SST at Free, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.

Which is cheaper, Soketi or SST?

Soketi starts at Free and SST at Free.

Does Soketi or SST run on more platforms?

Soketi runs on Linux, macOS, Windows. SST runs on AWS, Cloudflare, Node.js.

Can I use Soketi for free?

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

What is Soketi best used for?

Soketi is most often used for a laravel application that already uses echo and wants to stop paying a hosted realtime provider, realtime notifications or presence indicators where data must not leave your own infrastructure for compliance reasons, a local or ci environment that needs a pusher-compatible server without hitting a paid account, a high-connection-count application where hosted per-connection pricing has become the largest line in the infrastructure bill. Of those, a laravel application that already uses echo and wants to stop paying a hosted realtime provider and realtime notifications or presence indicators where data must not leave your own infrastructure for compliance reasons are not what SST is typically brought in for.

What can Soketi do that SST cannot?

Soketi covers Pusher protocol compatibility, Presence and private channels, Horizontal scaling, App management backends. SST covers Single config file, Resource linking, Local development, Multi-cloud support.

Developer Tools · head to head

Soketi vs SST

Soketi

Developer Tools

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

From: Free
Rated: -

Full review Website

SST

Cloud

Build full-stack apps on your own infrastructure

From: Free
Rated: -

Full review Website

The short version

Each has a real cost: 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.; SST primarily optimized for AWS with Cloudflare support
They diverge on capability: Soketi covers Pusher protocol compatibility, SST covers Single config file.
Prices and features above were last checked on 31 August 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Soketi and SST actually diverge.

Attributes where Soketi and SST differ
Attribute	Soketi	SST
Pricing model	Open source, no licence fee	Unknown
Platforms	Linux, macOS, Windows	AWS, Cloudflare, Node.js
Category	Developer Tools	Cloud

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 Soketi

Pusher protocol compatibility
Presence and private channels
Horizontal scaling
App management backends
Webhooks
Prometheus metrics

Only in SST

Single config file
Resource linking
Local development
Multi-cloud support
Multiple deployment stages
VPC tunneling

What people use each for

The jobs each tool is most often brought in to do.

Soketi

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

SST

Deploying Next.js frontends with serverless backendsnot Soketi
Managing databases and storage alongside application codenot Soketi
Creating staging environments for feature testingnot Soketi

Where each one falls short

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

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.

SST

Primarily optimized for AWS with Cloudflare support
Learning curve for developers unfamiliar with infrastructure concepts
Limited documentation for some advanced use cases

Pricing, plan by plan

Soketi

Free

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

SST

Free

No published plan breakdown. See the SST review.

Which should you pick?

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

Choose SST if

You need single config file.
You want to start without paying.
You work on AWS, Cloudflare, Node.js.
You also want resource linking.

SST review

Questions people ask

Is Soketi or SST better?: Neither clearly leads. Soketi starts at Free and SST at Free, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Soketi or SST?: Soketi starts at Free and SST at Free.
Does Soketi or SST run on more platforms?: Soketi runs on Linux, macOS, Windows. SST runs on AWS, Cloudflare, Node.js.
Can I use Soketi for free?: Both have a free tier, so you can try either at no cost before committing.
What is Soketi best used for?: Soketi is most often used for a laravel application that already uses echo and wants to stop paying a hosted realtime provider, realtime notifications or presence indicators where data must not leave your own infrastructure for compliance reasons, a local or ci environment that needs a pusher-compatible server without hitting a paid account, a high-connection-count application where hosted per-connection pricing has become the largest line in the infrastructure bill. Of those, a laravel application that already uses echo and wants to stop paying a hosted realtime provider and realtime notifications or presence indicators where data must not leave your own infrastructure for compliance reasons are not what SST is typically brought in for.
What can Soketi do that SST cannot?: Soketi covers Pusher protocol compatibility, Presence and private channels, Horizontal scaling, App management backends. SST covers Single config file, Resource linking, Local development, Multi-cloud support.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

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.

SST: Is SST free?

Yes, SST is open source and free. You only pay for cloud resources from AWS and other providers.

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.

SST: What cloud providers does SST support?

SST supports over 150 providers through built-in AWS and Cloudflare components, plus Pulumi and Terraform providers.

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.

Soketi vs SST

Soketi

SST

The short version

Where they differ

What each one covers

Only in Soketi

Only in SST

What people use each for

Soketi

SST

Where each one falls short

Soketi

SST

Pricing, plan by plan

Soketi

SST

Which should you pick?

Choose Soketi if

Choose SST if

Questions people ask

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Related pages

More on Soketi

More on SST

Keep looking

Other head to heads