Snapshot
Continue to About ↓- What it does
- Centrifugo is a self-hosted, open-source real-time messaging server.
More detail
- You run it next to your existing backend, and it holds the long-lived client connections (WebSocket, HTTP-streaming, SSE, WebTransport, gRPC) while your backend publishes messages through a simple HTTP API that Centrifugo fans out to channel subscribers across nodes.
- It also provides real-time state sync primitives such as map subscriptions and shared poll subscriptions.
- Best for
- Backend teams that want to add real-time updates without rebuilding their stack, especially those on frameworks with weak long-lived-connection support (Django, Flask, Laravel, Rails) and teams broadcasting to very large audiences or needing self-hosting and no per-message billing.
- Pricing
- The core is open-source and self-hosted, so there is no monthly subscription and no per-message billing
More detail
- you pay for your own infrastructure and operations.
- A commercial PRO tier from Centrifugal Labs LTD adds ClickHouse analytics, realtime tracing, performance optimisations, a push notification API
- Main limitation
- Teams wanting a zero-ops SaaS, and use cases needing hard real-time with guaranteed latency — Centrifugo describes itself as soft real-time and does not guarantee delivery delays.
More detail
- Individual consumers also cannot buy PRO; licences are for companies only.
- Record
- Living and monitored
- Reviewed
- Evidence
- Public web research
- Machine access
- Structured profile ↗
About
- Centrifugo is a self-hosted, open-source real-time messaging server.
- You run it next to your existing backend, and it holds the long-lived client connections (WebSocket, HTTP-streaming, SSE, WebTransport, gRPC) while your backend publishes messages through a simple HTTP API that Centrifugo fans out to channel subscribers across nodes.
- It also provides real-time state sync primitives such as map subscriptions and shared poll subscriptions.
What it helps with
- Application backends built on frameworks with limited concurrency support struggle to hold many persistent client connec
- Pushing real-time updates to very large audiences requires efficient fan-out that a typical application server does not
- Cloud real-time services bring per-message billing and send data outside your own network, which some teams cannot accep
- Keeping client state consistent in real time alongside a database requires extra synchronisation primitives.
Capabilities
A practical view of what is available and where limitations apply.
| Offering | Available | Detail |
|---|---|---|
| Transport coverage | Yes | Bidirectional over WebSocket, with JS SDK fallbacks over HTTP-streaming, SSE and experimental WebTransport; unidirectional over native WebSocket, SSE, HTTP-streaming and gRPC. |
| Channel-based publish/subscribe | Yes | Clients subscribe to channels; subscriptions are multiplexed over a single connection, with massive and targeted broadcast. |
| History and recovery on reconnect | Yes | Channel history with automatic stream recovery when a client reconnects. |
| Online presence | Yes | Shows who is currently subscribed to a channel. |
| Delta compression | Yes | Reduces bandwidth usage for subscribers. |
| Horizontal scaling | Yes | Multiple nodes via Redis (including Redis Cluster and compatible stores), PostgreSQL and NATS; the OSS PostgreSQL controller allows multi-node clusters without Redis or NATS. |
| Real-time state sync | Yes | Map subscriptions and shared poll subscriptions provide state synchronisation beyond plain publish/subscribe. |
| Official client SDKs | Yes | SDKs listed for JavaScript, Dart, Swift, Kotlin, Python and Go. |
| Strict latency guarantees | No | Documented as soft real-time; delivery delays cannot be guaranteed. |
| Excluding the publisher from a broadcast | No | The FAQ states this is currently not supported. |
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- Last reviewed
- Primary source
- centrifugal.dev
Technical profile details
Record ID
42e9ce36-6e83-4697-9b50-05fa410ddd59Canonical URLhttps://profiles.scribble.network/listing/centrifugo-42e9ce36