Set up your account
The first step of working with PubNub is to create an account. To do that, sign up in the Admin Portal, PubNub's single entry point for account configuration.
Public Admin Portal demo
Want to browse through the Admin Portal without creating an account? Explore it through the Public Demo that shows examples of most PubNub features for transport and logistics use case.
Sign up
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When you log in to the Admin Portal for the first time, you create an application and a keyset. Create keysets for testing and production as needed.
To get started with PubNub:
- Create a new application for your project.
- Generate a keyset within that application.
Each keyset contains a publish key and a subscribe key. Include both in your app. In the Admin Portal, you can also configure features such as Presence, App Context, and Message Persistence.
For production keysets, you need at least the Starter plan. Free tier keysets are suitable for development and testing only.
Limit of 3 keysets for Free tier accounts
Effective February 3, 2025, all Free tier accounts will be limited to a maximum of three keysets. If your account exceeds this limit, you must delete existing keysets to create new ones.
See PubNub Account Setup to learn how to create keysets for different environments. Then, see the Admin Portal documentation to create and configure your keyset.
Pricing
We offer a free plan with basic support for testing and development. When you move to production or exceed 200 monthly active users (MAUs) and/or one million transactions/Functions executions, upgrade to a paid account.
MAUs are unique users (unique user IDs) who connect to PubNub at least once in a calendar month and send an API call. If you prefer to pay for transactions, consider transaction-based pricing.
Now that you have a keyset, get the SDK.