How much does PubNub cost?

PubNub publishes 3 tiers, from Free for Free up to On request for Pro. The entry tier costs nothing.

What is the difference between Free and Starter on PubNub?

Starter costs $98/month against Free, and adds 1,000 mau included, user management, insights, 6-month history.

Is the Pro plan on PubNub worth it?

That depends entirely on whether you need what it adds, which on the published record is custom mau packages, volume discounts, enterprise-scale configurations. It costs On request against $98/month for Starter. Softwr has not used either tier, so this page can tell you what changes, not whether it is worth the difference to you.

What am I actually paying for with PubNub?

The record lists 6 features across 2 areas: core, security. In practice it is brought in for building realtime chat applications, streaming live iot sensor data, adding presence indicators to collaborative apps.

Does PubNub charge per user?

The record carries a price and a billing period for each of its 3 tiers, but not the unit that price is charged in. Per-seat and flat-rate billing look identical in this data, so check the vendor's page before budgeting for a team.

Are these PubNub prices current?

They are what the catalogue entry holds, refreshed when the entry is. Vendors change pricing without notice and nobody at Softwr re-verifies each tier by hand, so treat this as a structured summary and the vendor's own pricing page as the authority.

What should I compare PubNub against before paying?

Nothing else in this directory is filed close enough to PubNub to make a useful price comparison.

Software · pricing

PubNub pricing

PubNub publishes 3 tiers. Below is each one, what it adds over the tier beneath it, and where the ladder stops being worth climbing for most people.

Entry price: Free, then $98/month
Model: Freemium
Tiers: 3
Free tier: Yes

PubNub plans, side by side

Every published tier in ascending order of price, with the number of features each one lists. An absence here means the record does not itemise it, not that the tier lacks it.

PubNub pricing tiers
Plan	Price	Features listed	Step up from the tier below
Free	Free	4	Entry tier
Starter	$98/month	4	+$98/month, 4 more features
Pro	On request	3	Priced on request

What each tier adds

The set difference between each tier's feature list and the one beneath it. Where a tier lists nothing new, the vendor has either stopped repeating the inherited list or the tier raises limits rather than adding capability, the record does not distinguish the two, so this page does not either.

Free

The entry tier. It covers up to 200 mau or 1m transactions, 1gb data storage (7 days), 5 test serverless functions, no credit card required.

Starter

$98/month

Over Free, this tier adds:

1,000 MAU included
User management
Insights
6-month history

Pro

On request

Over Starter, this tier adds:

Custom MAU packages
Volume discounts
Enterprise-scale configurations

Where PubNub stops being free

Free, Free

Up to 200 MAU or 1M transactions
1GB data storage (7 days)
5 test Serverless Functions
No credit card required

Starter, $98/month

The first thing you pay for:

1,000 MAU included
User management
Insights
6-month history

What the product covers

The full PubNub feature record, grouped as the catalogue groups it. This is the product as a whole; the record does not map every feature onto a specific tier.

core

Pub/sub messaging
Presence tracking
Message persistence
Serverless Functions
File sharing

security

Encryption and access controls

People bring PubNub in for building realtime chat applications, streaming live iot sensor data, adding presence indicators to collaborative apps, running edge logic with serverless functions on realtime events. If that is not the job you are buying for, the alternatives to PubNub are worth a look before you commit to a tier.

Before you pay for PubNub

Three things this page cannot tell you, and all three change the bill. The record carries a price and a billing period but not the unit - per-seat and flat-rate pricing are indistinguishable in this data, so a five-person team may be looking at five times the figure above. It carries no annual rate, so any discount for paying yearly is not something this page can quote. And it carries no trial length.

What it can tell you is the shape of the ladder: 3 tiers between Free and On request, with the jump itemised above. Because there is a free tier, the cheapest way to answer the rest is to use it before paying anything.

PubNub runs on web, ios, android, api, and is published by PubNub. The full record is on the PubNub review.

PubNub pricing on the vendor's own site

PubNub pricing questions

How much does PubNub cost?: PubNub publishes 3 tiers, from Free for Free up to On request for Pro. The entry tier costs nothing.
Does PubNub have a free plan?: Yes. The Free tier costs nothing and covers up to 200 mau or 1m transactions, 1gb data storage (7 days), 5 test serverless functions. Paying starts at $98/month for Starter.
What is the difference between Free and Starter on PubNub?: Starter costs $98/month against Free, and adds 1,000 mau included, user management, insights, 6-month history.
Is the Pro plan on PubNub worth it?: That depends entirely on whether you need what it adds, which on the published record is custom mau packages, volume discounts, enterprise-scale configurations. It costs On request against $98/month for Starter. Softwr has not used either tier, so this page can tell you what changes, not whether it is worth the difference to you.
What am I actually paying for with PubNub?: The record lists 6 features across 2 areas: core, security. In practice it is brought in for building realtime chat applications, streaming live iot sensor data, adding presence indicators to collaborative apps.
Does PubNub charge per user?: The record carries a price and a billing period for each of its 3 tiers, but not the unit that price is charged in. Per-seat and flat-rate billing look identical in this data, so check the vendor's page before budgeting for a team.
Are these PubNub prices current?: They are what the catalogue entry holds, refreshed when the entry is. Vendors change pricing without notice and nobody at Softwr re-verifies each tier by hand, so treat this as a structured summary and the vendor's own pricing page as the authority.
What should I compare PubNub against before paying?: Nothing else in this directory is filed close enough to PubNub to make a useful price comparison.

PubNub head to head

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