Developer Tools · head to head
Soketi vs Zipkin
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: 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.; Zipkin less active development and smaller community momentum than Jaeger
- They diverge on capability: Soketi covers Pusher protocol compatibility, Zipkin covers Trace collection and search.
- Prices and features above were last checked on 31 August 2026.
Where they differ
Only the attributes on which Soketi and Zipkin actually diverge.
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 Soketi
- Pusher protocol compatibility
- Presence and private channels
- Horizontal scaling
- App management backends
- Webhooks
- Prometheus metrics
Only in Zipkin
- Trace collection and search
- Dependency diagram
- Simple deployment
- Pluggable storage
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 Zipkin
- Realtime notifications or presence indicators where data must not leave your own infrastructure for compliance reasonsnot Zipkin
- A local or CI environment that needs a Pusher-compatible server without hitting a paid accountnot Zipkin
- A high-connection-count application where hosted per-connection pricing has become the largest line in the infrastructure billnot Zipkin
Zipkin
- Adding distributed tracing quickly without standing up heavy infrastructurenot Soketi
- Java and Spring Boot estates, where instrumentation support is long-establishednot Soketi
- Small deployments where Jaeger is more than the problem requiresnot 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.
Zipkin
- Less active development and smaller community momentum than Jaeger
- Fewer features: sampling, storage options and UI are all more limited
- The interface is dated and slower to work with on large trace volumes
- Tracing alone still leaves metrics and logs in separate tools during an incident
Pricing, plan by plan
Soketi
Free- SoketiFree
- MIT licensed
- Unlimited connections subject to your own hardware
- No vendor billing
Zipkin
Free- ZipkinFree
- Full functionality
- No usage limits
- Community support
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 Zipkin if
- You need trace collection and search.
- You want to start without paying.
- You work on Linux, Docker, Kubernetes, Self-hosted.
- You also want dependency diagram.
Questions people ask
- Is Soketi or Zipkin better?
- Neither clearly leads. Soketi starts at Free and Zipkin at Free, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
- Which is cheaper, Soketi or Zipkin?
- Soketi starts at Free and Zipkin at Free.
- Does Soketi or Zipkin run on more platforms?
- Soketi runs on Linux, macOS, Windows. Zipkin runs on Linux, Docker, Kubernetes, Self-hosted.
- 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 Zipkin is typically brought in for.
- What can Soketi do that Zipkin cannot?
- Soketi covers Pusher protocol compatibility, Presence and private channels, Horizontal scaling, App management backends. Zipkin covers Trace collection and search, Dependency diagram, Simple deployment, Pluggable storage.
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.
Zipkin: Is Zipkin free?
Yes, open source with no licence fee.
Soketi: Do I need to change my client code?
No. Pusher client SDKs and Laravel Echo work by changing the host, port and credentials.
Zipkin: Zipkin or Jaeger?
Jaeger has more momentum, more features and CNCF backing. Zipkin is lighter and quicker to stand up, and remains well supported in the Java and Spring ecosystem.
Soketi: What does it cost?
Nothing in licence fees. It is MIT licensed; you pay for the server it runs on.
Zipkin: Does Zipkin work with OpenTelemetry?
Yes. OpenTelemetry can export to Zipkin, which is now the usual way to instrument for it.
Soketi: What are people moving to?
Laravel Reverb for Laravel applications, and Sockudo, a Rust reimplementation, for others.
Related pages
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- Zipkin vs Backstage
- Zipkin vs Visual Studio Code
- Zipkin vs GNU Emacs
- Zipkin vs Bazel
- Zipkin vs Eclipse IDE
- Zipkin vs Pants Build
- Zipkin vs Swagger UI
- Zipkin vs Ansible
- Zipkin vs Cody
- Zipkin vs ConfigCat
- Zipkin vs Cortex
- Zipkin vs Dagger
- Zipkin vs Deno
- Zipkin vs Fig
- Zipkin vs Jaeger
- Zipkin vs Grafana Cloud
- Zipkin vs VictoriaMetrics
- Zipkin vs Deno Deploy
- Zipkin vs Anyscale
- Zipkin vs Cerebrium
- Zipkin vs Go
- Zipkin vs Orca Security
- Zipkin vs Heroku
- Zipkin vs Vault
- Zipkin vs Beam Cloud
- Zipkin vs Caddy
- Zipkin vs DeepInfra
- Zipkin vs OpenTelemetry
- Zipkin vs Thanos
- Zipkin vs Linkerd
- Zipkin vs Longhorn