Soketivs
Pusher
Pusher: Pusher if you want the same protocol with a vendor on the hook for uptime and patches.
Soketi
Self-hosted, Pusher-compatible WebSockets server with a stalled maintenance record
As of 31 August 2026, Soketi is free to use. An open source drop-in replacement for Pusher that lets you keep the Pusher client SDKs and stop paying Pusher. Softwr lists it under Developer Tools. Soketi is made by Soketi (community project), available on Linux, macOS, Windows.
Overview
What Soketi does
Soketi implements the Pusher Channels protocol, so any application already using a Pusher client library, including Laravel Echo, can point at a self-hosted Soketi instance by changing a host and a key. It is written in TypeScript on uWebSockets.js, ships as a single Node process or Docker image, supports public, private and presence channels, webhooks on channel events, horizontal scaling via a Redis adapter and an app-management layer backed by SQL or DynamoDB. The economic case is direct. A hosted realtime service charges by connections and messages; Soketi on a small virtual machine costs the price of that machine. For a Laravel application broadcasting notifications to a few thousand concurrent users, that is the difference between a few hundred dollars a month and around ten dollars. The fact that should change the shortlist is maintenance. The maintainer has said publicly that available time is very limited, releases have been infrequent, and a GitHub issue titled to the effect that the project is abandoned has attracted sustained discussion, with the community pointing at alternatives including Laravel Reverb and a Rust reimplementation called Sockudo. Soketi still runs and is still deployed in production by many teams, but adopting it now means accepting that security patches and dependency upgrades may be on you.
What people use it 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
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 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.
Cross-shopped
What people choose instead of Soketi
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.
- SoketivsAbly
Ably: Ably if you need guaranteed message ordering, global edge presence and a commercial SLA.
- SoketivsLiveblocks
Liveblocks: Liveblocks if the real requirement is collaborative editing primitives rather than raw channel broadcasting.
Pricing
What Soketi costs
Taken from the vendor's own pricing page. Prices move, so check before you buy.
Soketi
Free
- MIT licensed
- Unlimited connections subject to your own hardware
- No vendor billing
- Community support only
- Self-hosting and patching are your responsibility
Capabilities
Features
Pusher protocol compatibility
Existing Pusher and Laravel Echo clients work with a configuration change
Presence and private channels
Authenticated channels with member lists for collaborative features
Horizontal scaling
Redis adapter so multiple nodes share channel state
App management backends
Multi-tenant app credentials stored in SQL, DynamoDB or configuration
Webhooks
HTTP callbacks on channel occupied, vacated and member events
Prometheus metrics
Connection and message metrics exposed for monitoring
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.
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.
Do I need to change my client code?
No. Pusher client SDKs and Laravel Echo work by changing the host, port and credentials.
What does it cost?
Nothing in licence fees. It is MIT licensed; you pay for the server it runs on.
What are people moving to?
Laravel Reverb for Laravel applications, and Sockudo, a Rust reimplementation, for others.
Keep looking
Where to go from Soketi
- Soketi alternativesEvery product people weigh against it
- Soketi pricingPlans, floors and what the tiers exclude
- Soketi badgesWhich rules it meets, and the figure behind each
- All Developer Tools softwareThe full category
- Best Developer Tools softwareThe shortlist, and how it was cut
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Softwr does not host reviews and shows no star rating for Soketi, 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.
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