Developer Tools · head to head
Soketi vs Timeplus
Soketi
Developer Tools
Self-hosted, Pusher-compatible WebSockets server with a stalled maintenance record
- From
- Free
- Rated
- -
Timeplus
Databases
Streaming SQL engine built on ClickHouse internals, shipping as one small binary
- From
- Free
- Rated
- -
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.; Timeplus proton, the free version, is single-node by design, so any requirement for high availability or horizontal scale forces the commercial licence; the open source edition is a trial in practical terms.
- They diverge on capability: Soketi covers Pusher protocol compatibility, Timeplus covers Streaming SQL.
- Prices and features above were last checked on 31 August 2026.
Where they differ
Only the attributes on which Soketi and Timeplus actually diverge.
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 Timeplus
- Streaming SQL
- Unified streaming and historical
- ClickHouse-based engine
- Single binary deployment
- External streams
- Materialised views
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 Timeplus
- Realtime notifications or presence indicators where data must not leave your own infrastructure for compliance reasonsnot Timeplus
- A local or CI environment that needs a Pusher-compatible server without hitting a paid accountnot Timeplus
- A high-connection-count application where hosted per-connection pricing has become the largest line in the infrastructure billnot Timeplus
Timeplus
- Real-time alerting on Kafka topics where standing up a Flink cluster is more work than the use case justifiesnot Soketi
- Fraud or anomaly detection that must join a live event stream against recent history in one querynot Soketi
- Streaming ETL from Kafka or MySQL change data capture into ClickHouse without writing Javanot Soketi
- A small data team that needs continuous aggregation but has no platform engineers to operate JVM infrastructurenot 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.
Timeplus
- Proton, the free version, is single-node by design, so any requirement for high availability or horizontal scale forces the commercial licence; the open source edition is a trial in practical terms.
- It is a young project against Apache Flink’s decade of production history, so the hiring pool, the connector library and the body of known failure modes are all much smaller.
- Inheriting ClickHouse internals also inherits ClickHouse constraints: memory-hungry queries, awkward updates and a SQL dialect that is not portable to other engines.
- Exactly-once semantics and state recovery guarantees are less battle-tested than Flink checkpointing, which matters if the pipeline moves money.
- Cloud pricing is by provisioned instance size rather than usage, so a bursty workload pays for peak capacity around the clock or has to be resized by hand.
Pricing, plan by plan
Soketi
Free- SoketiFree
- MIT licensed
- Unlimited connections subject to your own hardware
- No vendor billing
Timeplus
Free- Timeplus ProtonFree
- Apache 2.0 licence
- Single node only
- Full streaming SQL engine
- Timeplus Cloud$199/month
- One to thirty-two CPUs
- 4 GB to 128 GB memory
- From 250 GB SSD storage
- Self-hosted or BYOC$undefined/year
- Multi-node clustering
- Kubernetes or bare metal
- Customisable compute and storage
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.
Choose Timeplus if
- You need streaming sql.
- You want to start without paying.
- You work on Linux, macOS, Docker, Kubernetes, Web.
- You also want unified streaming and historical.
Questions people ask
- Is Soketi or Timeplus better?
- Neither clearly leads. Soketi starts at Free and Timeplus at Free, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
- Which is cheaper, Soketi or Timeplus?
- Soketi starts at Free and Timeplus at Free.
- Does Soketi or Timeplus run on more platforms?
- Soketi runs on Linux, macOS, Windows. Timeplus runs on Linux, macOS, Docker, Kubernetes, Web.
- 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 Timeplus is typically brought in for.
- What can Soketi do that Timeplus cannot?
- Soketi covers Pusher protocol compatibility, Presence and private channels, Horizontal scaling, App management backends. Timeplus covers Streaming SQL, Unified streaming and historical, ClickHouse-based engine, Single binary deployment.
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.
Timeplus: Is Timeplus open source?
The core engine, Timeplus Proton, is Apache 2.0. Timeplus Enterprise and Cloud are commercial.
Soketi: Do I need to change my client code?
No. Pusher client SDKs and Laravel Echo work by changing the host, port and credentials.
Timeplus: What is the difference from Flink?
Timeplus is one binary with SQL as the only interface; Flink is a JVM cluster with a Java and SQL API and far more operational surface.
Soketi: What does it cost?
Nothing in licence fees. It is MIT licensed; you pay for the server it runs on.
Timeplus: Can Proton run in production?
It can, but it is single-node only, so there is no high availability without the commercial edition.
Soketi: What are people moving to?
Laravel Reverb for Laravel applications, and Sockudo, a Rust reimplementation, for others.
Timeplus: How much is the cloud?
From 199 US dollars a month, sized by CPU and memory, with a fourteen day trial.
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- Timeplus vs Tinybird
- Timeplus vs Apache Kafka
- Timeplus vs Apache Pulsar
- Timeplus vs Apache Druid