Pubnub

What is PubNub

PubNub is a commercial, globally distributed publish/subscribe (pub/sub) messaging platform and network designed to deliver real-time data between devices, browsers, and servers. The platform provides low-latency message delivery, presence and state synchronization, storage-and-playback, stream processing, and a set of SDKs and APIs for web, mobile, and IoT clients. PubNub positions itself as an edge messaging layer that abstracts complexity around scaling, regional delivery, and reliability for event-driven applications.

PubNub operates an event-driven network with points of presence around the world to reduce end-to-end latency and avoid centralized bottlenecks. The service is used across use cases that require sub-second delivery and high concurrency, including chat and collaboration, multiplayer gaming, live dashboards and telemetry, fleet tracking and IoT, and financial or trading applications that need live updates. PubNub also exposes management and monitoring tooling so teams can observe message throughput, latencies, and connection patterns.

Operationally, PubNub focuses on three core capabilities: global message routing (pub/sub), client SDKs and protocol adaptors, and operational services such as access control, storage & replay, and analytics. Customers can offload messaging infrastructure to PubNub and concentrate on application logic, while PubNub handles capacity, failover, and geographic delivery characteristics.

PubNub features

PubNub provides a broad feature set oriented to real-time application development, deployment, and operations. The platform bundles core messaging capabilities with developer-friendly SDKs, management consoles, and integrations for common backend and analytics systems.

Key technical capabilities include:

• Low-latency global delivery: an edge network designed to deliver messages in tens of milliseconds depending on geography and conditions
• Publish/Subscribe messaging: channel-based pub/sub with fan-out to many subscribers
• Presence and state synchronization: track which clients are online and share lightweight state such as cursor position, typing indicators, or device metadata
• Stream storage and playback: optional message persistence and replay for late-joining clients or audit trails
• Access control and encryption: per-channel access management, tokenization, and transport encryption
• Monitoring and analytics: telemetry on message rates, latencies, connection counts, and error trends
• SDKs and protocol support: native SDKs for JavaScript, Android, iOS, server-side languages, and REST APIs for custom clients

What does PubNub do?

PubNub delivers real-time events from producers to consumers using a managed pub/sub network. Developers publish messages to channels and any subscribed client receives those events almost immediately. PubNub handles connection multiplexing, retry logic, failover, and routing across its distributed edge nodes.

For application teams, PubNub removes the operational burden of scaling real-time messaging. Instead of managing brokers, load balancers, and geographic replication, teams use PubNub’s APIs to subscribe to channels, receive presence updates, and request historical message playback when needed. This simplifies building features like chat rooms, collaborative editing cursors, or real-time dashboards.

PubNub also supplies administrative APIs and dashboards to configure keys, tokens, and channel permissions as well as to monitor usage. Combined with integrations and webhooks, the platform can forward events into backend systems, analytics pipelines, or third-party services for processing, auditing, or monetization.

PubNub pricing

PubNub offers flexible pricing tailored to different business needs, from individual developers to large enterprises. The platform provides a free tier for small projects and usage-based or custom enterprise plans for production deployments where message volume, monthly active users (MAUs), or API transaction counts drive billing. PubNub also supports pay-as-you-go models as well as negotiated enterprise contracts for high-volume customers.

Typical plan structure and billing concepts you will encounter when evaluating PubNub:

• Free Plan: $0/month — useful for prototypes and small apps; PubNub advertises a free tier that covers a baseline number of monthly active users and includes core SDK access and features for development and testing. Check PubNub’s current limits for MAUs and included features on their pricing site.
• Usage-based or Starter / Professional: billed monthly based on API transactions, message delivery volumes, and additional feature usage (encryption, storage, or add-on modules). Pricing varies with volume, so per-transaction or per-MAU rates are typically applied.
• Enterprise: custom pricing for large-scale deployments with SLAs, dedicated support, and enterprise features. Enterprise contracts often include annual billing and volume discounts.

Because PubNub’s commercial offering scales to very large volumes (their marketing cites trillions of API calls per month), actual costs depend on your expected message rate, retention needs, and advanced services. For authoritative, up-to-date rates and plan comparisons, check PubNub’s published pricing information and contact their sales team for quotes tailored to your traffic profile. Visit their official pricing page for the most current information.

How much is PubNub per month

PubNub starts at $0/month with its free tier for small projects and development use. Paid usage-based plans are billed monthly and vary by API transaction volume, number of monthly active users, and add-on services such as storage or advanced security. For production workloads, estimate monthly costs by modeling expected message rates (messages per second), MAUs, and retention windows, then request a quote or use PubNub’s published calculator where available.

How much is PubNub per year

PubNub can cost $0/year for the Free Plan for prototype or hobby projects, while professional and enterprise usage is typically arranged on monthly or annual contracts with custom pricing. Annual billing often includes negotiated discounts compared with month-to-month usage, and larger customers frequently receive volume-based pricing and dedicated terms in an annual contract. For specific annual pricing and potential savings, consult PubNub’s sales team or review their enterprise pricing information on the official pricing page.

How much is PubNub in general

PubNub pricing ranges from $0 (free) to enterprise-level contracts based on usage and features. Small apps and prototypes can be run on the free tier, while production systems with high throughput or retention requirements are charged based on API transaction counts, MAUs, and additional modules. To estimate costs, capture your expected peak messages per second, average message size, and retention needs, then compare against PubNub’s published volume pricing or request a custom quote. Visit their official pricing page for the most current information.

What is PubNub used for

PubNub is used to deliver real-time interactions and data synchronization across devices, browsers, and servers. Primary use cases include:

• Chat and messaging systems where real-time delivery, typing indicators, read receipts, and presence are required
• Multiplayer or synchronous gaming where rapid state updates and low latency are essential
• Live dashboards and monitoring that require continuous telemetry updates from servers, IoT devices, or user clients
• IoT device communication and telemetry, including location updates, sensor streams, and command-and-control messaging
• Collaborative applications (shared whiteboards, co-editing, presence-aware apps) that require state synchronization

Organizations pick PubNub when they want a turnkey real-time messaging layer without operating a complex messaging stack. The platform is particularly relevant where global reach, operational simplicity, and the ability to support millions of concurrent connections matter. PubNub’s message persistence, stream replay, and access controls also make it suitable for workflows that need auditability, offline playback, or secure data flows.

Pros and cons of PubNub

Pros:

• Global edge network designed to reduce latency and support very large scale (PubNub cites multi-trillion monthly API calls and hundreds of millions of devices).
• Broad SDK coverage across platforms (web, iOS, Android, server languages) and protocol options to integrate into existing architectures.
• Built-in features for presence, storage & playback, access control, and stream management that reduce engineering overhead.
• Enterprise features and compliance posture for regulated industries, including security controls and formal SLAs.

Cons:

• Cost models based on API transactions and MAUs can become expensive for extremely high-frequency messaging patterns; careful capacity and usage planning is needed.
• Tight coupling to a managed network means less control over the underlying messaging fabric compared with self-hosted options.
• Some advanced features or very specialized customizations may require enterprise contracts or direct engagement with PubNub’s professional services.
• Vendor lock-in risk for systems built deeply on PubNub-specific semantics (channels, presence tokens) unless abstraction layers are adopted.

Considerations when evaluating PubNub include message size, required retention and replay, expected message frequency, geographic distribution of clients, and compliance or data residency needs.

PubNub free trial

PubNub provides a free tier intended to let developers prototype and validate real-time features without immediate cost. The free offering typically includes core SDK access, a baseline number of monthly active users, and basic account management features so you can integrate PubNub into a development or staging environment.

A free tier is useful to validate integration patterns, measure real-world message volumes, and verify latency characteristics from your target client geographies. For production readiness, teams should load-test against expected peak rates and evaluate the billing impact of real traffic patterns.

If you need extended evaluation or enterprise feature trials (for example, higher MAU thresholds, longer retention, or advanced security capabilities), PubNub’s sales and support teams can arrange temporary upgrades or pilot programs. Always confirm the exact quotas and limitations of the free tier on PubNub’s website before relying on it for any production testing. Visit PubNub’s pricing information and free tier details for current limits and signup steps.

Is PubNub free

Yes, PubNub offers a free tier. The free plan provides a no-cost option for developers to start building and testing real-time functionality, typically including a baseline number of monthly active users and full access to SDKs for development. For production usage above the free thresholds, you will need to move to paid or usage-based billing.

PubNub API

PubNub exposes both SDKs and RESTful APIs to publish and subscribe to channels, manage access keys and tokens, query presence information, and control message storage and replay. The API surface is designed to be simple for common operations (publish, subscribe, history, presence) while allowing more advanced operations through administrative endpoints.

Common API features include:

• Publish/Subscribe endpoints for delivering events to channels
• Presence APIs to list and query client connection state and metadata
• History APIs for message retrieval and replay
• Access management endpoints for issuing and revoking tokens or keys
• Hooks and webhooks for forwarding events into backend systems

PubNub provides client SDKs for JavaScript, Android, iOS, React Native, and several server-side languages. The SDKs manage connection lifecycle, reconnection, and local buffering, enabling developers to build resilient clients without implementing low-level socket management. For authoritative developer references and code samples, consult PubNub’s official documentation and SDK guides at PubNub’s developer docs: check the PubNub API documentation for detailed endpoints and examples.

10 PubNub alternatives

Paid alternatives to PubNub

• Pusher — A hosted real-time messaging service with Channels and Beams products for pub/sub messaging and notifications; widely used for live updates and in-app notifications.
• Ably — A managed pub/sub messaging platform focused on reliable delivery, throughput guarantees, and protocol compatibility (WebSockets, MQTT); positions itself for global low-latency messaging.
• Firebase Realtime Database / Firebase Cloud Messaging — Part of Google Firebase, providing real-time data synchronization for mobile and web apps and push delivery for notifications; integrated with Google Cloud ecosystem.
• AWS AppSync — A managed GraphQL service from AWS that supports real-time subscriptions and offline synchronization integrated with other AWS services.
• Azure SignalR Service — Microsoft’s managed real-time messaging service for ASP.NET Core SignalR applications, suitable for integrating real-time features into Azure-hosted apps.
• SendBird — A chat- and messaging-focused platform offering managed chat, moderation, and developer SDKs with features tuned to user messaging experiences.
• Fanout — A hosted pub/sub proxy that can deliver realtime updates over WebSockets, HTTP streaming, and long-polling, built for scaling event distribution.

Open source alternatives to PubNub

• Socket.IO — A JavaScript library for real-time web applications that provides WebSocket abstraction with fallbacks; often self-hosted or used with managed hosting.
• NATS — A high-performance messaging system for cloud-native applications offering pub/sub and request/reply patterns; suitable for microservices and event streaming.
• Mosquitto (MQTT) — An open source MQTT broker commonly used in IoT for lightweight pub/sub messaging across constrained devices.
• Apache Kafka — A distributed event streaming platform designed for high-throughput, durable event logs; often used for backend streaming and analytics rather than direct mobile/web client pub/sub.
• Eclipse Mosquitto / EMQX (EMQ) — MQTT brokers that are open source and can be deployed for IoT messaging at scale, with clustering and plugin ecosystems.

Each alternative has trade-offs in terms of operational overhead, latency characteristics, protocol support, and suitability for mobile or browser clients. Choose based on whether you prefer a hosted managed service versus self-hosted control, required SDKs, compliance needs, and expected throughput.

Frequently asked questions about PubNub

What is PubNub used for?

PubNub is used for real-time messaging and presence. It enables applications to send and receive events between clients and servers with low latency, which supports chat, multiplayer gaming, live dashboards, and IoT telemetry. Developers use PubNub to avoid building and operating a global, low-latency messaging infrastructure themselves.

How does PubNub work?

PubNub runs a globally distributed pub/sub network. Clients publish messages to named channels and subscribers receive those messages via persistent socket connections managed by PubNub’s edge nodes; the platform handles routing, retries, and presence tracking. SDKs abstract connection management so developers can focus on application logic.

Does PubNub offer a free plan?

Yes, PubNub offers a free tier for development and small projects. The free plan includes core SDK access and a baseline amount of monthly active users and message traffic; exact free-tier limits should be confirmed on PubNub’s pricing page. For higher-volume production use, paid or enterprise plans apply.

Can PubNub handle millions of concurrent connected devices?

Yes, PubNub is built for very large scale. PubNub advertises support for hundreds of millions of devices and trillions of API transactions per month, and its architecture is designed to scale horizontally across global edge nodes. For very large deployments, coordinate with PubNub sales to provision enterprise terms and SLAs.

Is PubNub secure and compliant?

Yes, PubNub provides enterprise-grade security and compliance features. The platform supports encrypted transport, access tokens, and configurable access controls; PubNub also documents compliance certifications and security controls appropriate for regulated industries. Review PubNub’s published security and compliance documentation for specifics on SOC 2, ISO, and other certifications.

When should I choose PubNub over a self-hosted broker?

Choose PubNub when you need a managed global delivery layer and want to avoid operating complex broker clusters. PubNub reduces operational overhead for global low-latency messaging and simplifies client SDK integration. If you require full control over the messaging fabric, on-prem deployment, or cost optimizations at extreme scale, a self-hosted broker might be preferable.

Where can I find PubNub pricing details?

PubNub publishes pricing and plan information on their official pricing page. The company offers a free tier and usage-based or enterprise plans; for exact rates and to model costs for your message volume, consult PubNub’s pricing documentation and contact sales for tailored quotes. Visit their official pricing page for the most current information.

How does PubNub charge for API calls and usage?

PubNub typically charges based on a combination of API transactions, monthly active users, and add-on feature usage. Billing models vary by plan and negotiated enterprise terms; heavy-volume customers often receive custom pricing. Estimate costs by measuring expected messages per second, average message size, and retention requirements.

Does PubNub provide SDKs for mobile and web platforms?

Yes, PubNub provides SDKs for JavaScript, Android, iOS, and several server-side languages. The SDKs handle connection lifecycle, reconnection, and higher-level features such as presence and history APIs to simplify client development. See PubNub’s developer documentation for the full list of supported SDKs and examples.

How do I get support for PubNub implementation issues?

PubNub offers multiple support channels including documentation, community resources, and paid support plans. Developers can start with the official documentation and sample apps, and paid plans or enterprise contracts include SLAs and dedicated support options. For complex integrations or performance tuning, contact PubNub’s support or professional services.

PubNub careers

PubNub maintains an engineering-focused organization with roles in backend systems, networking, SDK development, and cloud operations. Positions typically include cloud engineers, platform reliability engineers, software developers for platform SDKs, and product roles that bridge developer needs and platform capabilities. Career pages list job openings, required skills, and descriptions of team responsibilities.

Working at PubNub or similar real-time platform companies often involves understanding distributed systems, high-throughput networking, and secure multi-tenant service design. Candidates with experience in messaging systems, low-latency services, and cloud infrastructure are commonly sought. For current openings and application details, check PubNub’s careers site.

PubNub affiliate

PubNub has partner and reseller programs that enable technology partners, system integrators, and agencies to embed PubNub into customer solutions or resell platform services. Affiliates and partners may gain access to technical resources, joint go-to-market materials, and referral arrangements. If you are evaluating partnership opportunities, reach out to PubNub’s partner team via their business development contact channels on the official site.

Where to find PubNub reviews

To evaluate real-world experiences with PubNub, consult independent review sites, developer forums, and case studies. Useful sources include developer community threads, technology review platforms, and PubNub customer case studies that highlight specific implementations. For security and performance claims, cross-check PubNub’s published network statistics and compliance documentation on their official site and compare with third-party benchmarks where available.