Open Source Ably Alternatives
A curated collection of the 1 best open source alternatives to Ably.
The best open source alternative to Ably is Soketi. If that doesn't suit you, we've compiled a ranked list of other open source Ably alternatives to help you find a suitable replacement.
Ably alternatives are mainly Messaging & Event Streaming but may also be Networking & Connectivity. Browse these if you want a narrower list of alternatives or looking for a specific functionality of Ably.
Pusher-compatible WebSockets server you self-host, giving existing Pusher client code real-time messaging without per-connection pricing or a metered plan.
Soketi speaks the Pusher protocol, so projects already built against Pusher move over by adding a host and port and swapping the credentials. That removes both the connection and message caps of a hosted plan and the friction of testing real-time features against a metered service.
The server is built on uWebSockets.js, a C application ported to Node.js, which the project cites as performing at 8.5 times the level of Fastify and at least 10 times that of Socket.IO. It holds thousands of active connections under heavy traffic on less than 1 GB of memory and a single CPU, which is a cheap cloud instance rather than a subscription tier.
A handful of pieces make it viable beyond a laptop.
- Pusher Protocol v7: existing client libraries connect with minimal code change.
- App-based access: define the apps that gate API and WebSocket access, storing their data in static arrays, DynamoDB or an SQL server such as Postgres.
- Redis scaling: coordinate several instances as traffic grows, from one container to tens of them.
- Prometheus metrics: scrape the built-in endpoint to monitor a deployment.
- Portable deployment: containers or monoliths, with documented installs for each.
Documentation lives on GitBook, one-click deploys exist for Railway and Cleavr, and community projects add a management UI, a Filament plugin and chat components for Laravel. The maintainer is candid that release frequency depends on the time available, that maintenance has been intermittent, and that sponsorship is what would change it.
