Pushervs
Ably
Ably: Ably provides similar realtime pub/sub infrastructure with global edge delivery and usage-based pricing.
Pusher
Realtime messaging API for building live features into apps
As of 29 August 2026, Pusher has a free plan and paid plans start at $49/month. Hosted realtime messaging API (Pusher Channels) for adding live updates, chat, and notifications to web and mobile apps. Softwr lists it under APIs. Pusher is available on Web, iOS, Android, API.
Overview
What Pusher does
Pusher provides hosted APIs, including Pusher Channels, for adding realtime features such as live updates, chat, and notifications to web and mobile applications without managing WebSocket infrastructure. It handles connection scaling, message delivery, and presence, with client libraries for major platforms. Pricing scales across many tiers from a free Sandbox plan to Enterprise, based on daily messages and concurrent connections.
What people use it for
- Adding live chat to a web or mobile app
- Showing realtime presence of online users
- Pushing live notifications or dashboard updates
- Building collaborative features without managing WebSocket servers
Related searches
The honest half
Where it falls short
Concrete and checkable, so you can decide whether any of them matter to you. This is the half of a review a vendor will not write about Pusher.
- The free Sandbox plan is capped at 100 concurrent connections, which is quickly outgrown by production apps.
- Pricing jumps sharply between tiers (e.g. $49 to $99 to $299), leaving few options for teams with moderate but growing usage.
- Priority support with faster response times costs an additional $3,000/month on top of plan pricing.
Cross-shopped
What people choose instead of Pusher
Each pairing was judged by two reviewers asking whether a buyer would genuinely weigh the two against each other. The ones that failed were deleted rather than published.
- PushervsPubNub
PubNub: PubNub is a long-established realtime messaging platform with a comparable MAU-based pricing model.
Pricing
What Pusher costs
Taken from the vendor's own pricing page. Prices move, so check before you buy.
Sandbox
Free
- 200k messages/day
- 100 concurrent connections
- Standard support
Startup
$49 /mo
- 1M messages/day
- 500 concurrent connections
Pro
$99 /mo
- 4M messages/day
- 2,000 concurrent connections
Business
$299 /mo
- 10M messages/day
- 5,000 concurrent connections
- Premium support
Capabilities
Features
Pub/sub channels
Publish and subscribe to realtime channels over WebSockets
Presence channels
Track which users are online in a channel
Client libraries
SDKs for JavaScript, iOS, Android, and server-side languages
Webhooks
Receive events for channel activity via webhooks
24/7 monitoring
Infrastructure monitoring included across all plans
Priority support
Faster response time SLAs on higher tiers
Answered, with sources
Questions people ask
Each answer names the page it came from, so you can check it rather than take our word for it.
What does Pusher cost?
Pusher Channels offers a free Sandbox plan (200k messages/day, 100 connections) and paid plans starting at $49/month for Startup, scaling up through Pro, Business, and several higher tiers up to $1,199/month, plus custom Enterprise pricing.
SourceCan I change or cancel my plan?
Yes, customers can log into the dashboard and adjust their plan at any time, including upgrading, downgrading, or cancelling.
SourceHow is usage metered?
Usage is measured by concurrent connections and messages per day; a message counts both the publish and each delivery, so publishing one message to 50 subscribers counts as 51 messages.
SourceKeep looking
Where to go from Pusher
- Pusher alternativesEvery product people weigh against it
- Pusher pricingPlans, floors and what the tiers exclude
- Pusher badgesWhich rules it meets, and the figure behind each
- All APIs softwareThe full category
- Best APIs softwareThe shortlist, and how it was cut
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Softwr does not host reviews and shows no star rating for Pusher, because a rating we did not collect is not ours to publish. What is here is the pricing and platform detail from the vendor’s own pages, limitations we could state concretely, and alternatives a reviewer confirmed people weigh against it. Tell us if any of it is wrong.
More on Pusher
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What people switch to, and what they give up
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Every tier, and where the cost actually lands
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