Soketi Has a Free WebSocket Server — Self-Hosted Pusher Alternative

A chat app needed real-time messaging. Pusher charges $49/month for 500 concurrent connections. Ably charges $29/month. For a side project, that kills profitability.

Soketi is a free, self-hosted WebSocket server that is fully compatible with the Pusher protocol. Use existing Pusher client libraries, pay nothing.

What Soketi Offers for Free

• Pusher Compatible - Drop-in replacement, use existing Pusher SDKs
• Unlimited Connections - No per-connection pricing
• Channels - Public, private, presence, encrypted channels
• Horizontal Scaling - Redis adapter for multi-server setups
• Webhooks - Channel events, member events
• Metrics - Prometheus-compatible metrics
• Low Latency - Written in C++ with uWebSockets.js

Quick Start

docker run -p 6001:6001 -p 9601:9601 quay.io/soketi/soketi:latest-16-alpine

// Client - use existing Pusher library
const pusher = new Pusher('app-key', {
  wsHost: 'localhost',
  wsPort: 6001,
  cluster: 'mt1',
  forceTLS: false,
})
const channel = pusher.subscribe('chat')
channel.bind('message', (data) => console.log(data))

GitHub: soketi/soketi - 5K+ stars

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