PubNub vs. Sendbird
A platform solution that offers flexibility
Create a reliable, HIPAA-compliant communication platform—while retaining full control, functionality, and flexibility with integrations to services like EHR lookup, translation, and medical language processing.
Pricing that rewards growth
Scaling with PubNub is easy. You can grow your chat to support unlimited concurrent users, whether that's 10 or 10 million.
Continuous reliability
We value great customer service. With our Solutions Architects, support team, and uptime guarantees, you'll have the peace of mind that you’re building a solid solution that you can rely on.
 | Sendbird | Why does it matter? | |
|---|---|---|---|
| PLATFORM PERFORMANCE | |||
| Uptime guarantee | 99.999% For all customers. | 99.97% - 99.99%
Dependant on Region. (99.999% offered for contract customers) | An uptime guarantee offers peace of mind for you and confidence in the service we provide. |
| Latency | WAN < 30 ms
50% of PubNub’s messages have below 20ms delivery speed. Our intranet latency is below 1ms, while our WAN latency is sub 30ms. | Not listed | Lower latency provides a true real-time experience for users, which is crucial for increased engagement and adoption. |
| Multi Region Support | Yes PubNub defaults you to all 15 data centers at all times - this means that users are dynamically routed to the closest center. | No You have to pick one data center. There are nine options. However your app will be fixed to just one data center. Once selected, you cannot change it. | If you have a user audience across the globe, you will experience higher latency and less localized support if you are fixed to one data center only. |
| Multiplexing | Yes PubNub offers high-volume channel subscriptions, with up to 20,000 channels for each connected user. | Yes For contracted customers, Sendbird provides up to 20,000 channels through its supergroup channels. | Multiplexing allows the transmission of a large number of messages to a large number of channels over the same connection. This is important to reduce complexity and optimize client resource consumption/usage. |
| Channel groups | Yes PubNub offers a server-side channel subscription control. | Yes | This allows end-users to subscribe to a channel group that controls channel subscriptions for each end-user by a Server-side API. Having more data availability and replication ensures that data can always be accessed quickly by users around the globe. |
| Compression for messages | Yes PubNub offers GZIP compression for both inbound and outbound messages. | Yes However, Sendbird offers compression for only outbound messages. | Compressed messages require significantly less storage capacity and in turn may provide lower latency. |
| SCALABILITY | |||
| Concurrency | Unlimited concurrency
| Charges for concurrent users (2% of MAU) | Unlimited concurrency gives our customers the ability to scale without the worry of the additional cost. |
| Channels | Unlimited channels
| Charges for the number of channels used | Unlimited channels give our customers the ability to scale without the worry of additional pricing. This is especially important in use cases that require ephemeral channels (i.e. one-time password use case). |
| Scale presence | Supports millions of users in a channel. | Limited 1,000 simultaneous users in a single channel (starter plan), 2000 (pro plan), 20,000 users (enterprise plan). | Supporting millions of users lets customers scale with ease. |
| Number of devices (As of 2021) | 800 million devices connected per month, and we can support even more. | 110 million monthly active users. | Supporting millions of devices shows that we are trusted and used among many companies. |
| Number of messages (As of 2021) | 2 trillion messages delivered per month, and we can support even more. | 1.5 billion delivered per month | The number of messages shows that PubNub can support a massive amount of usage each month. |
| CHAT CAPABILITIES - MESSAGING | |||
| 1:1 direct messaging | Yes | Yes | Connect users directly. One-on-one. |
| Group messaging | Yes Pubnub also has no limit on the number of users. | Yes However, users can join only up to 2000 group channels with up to 100 users in each channel | Connect groups. No limit on the number of users means no worries when hosting large events. |
| Presence indicators | Yes PubNub Presence lets you track the real-time status of millions of users on a single channel. | Yes However, only up to 1000 users for open channel, 100 users for group channel, and 2000+ for super group channel. | Allows users to see when others are there, allowing for more seamless engagement. |
| Advanced Presence | Yes Custom channel regular expression rules to configure presence events by naming patterns. | No You must pay for all tracking and events, even if they are not needed for your application | Reduces cost by targeting only necessary presence events for your application to be delivered. Improving the user experience enabling faster more efficient applications. |
| Super groups | Yes Up to 60,000 users for presence join/leave and millions of users for occupancy interval mode via presence ACLs | Yes Up to 20,000 users (for premium plan) in open channels | An expanded version of a group channel that supports more than 2000 members. |
| Push notifications | Yes | Yes | This feature ensures the messages users get are seen and received. |
| Advanced Access controls | Yes Access control patterns can be specified as regular expressions to match a diverse range of permissions | Not Listed | Access control patterns can be specified as regular expressions to match a diverse range of permissions |
| Programmable Functions | Yes PubNub can be used to transform messages in transit to provide real-time language translation or profanity filtering. | No | Programmable functions enable you to write code or leverage existing integrations to address your business needs, whether it's transforming, re-routing, augmenting, filtering, and even aggregating data for subsequent use. PubNub Functions are also serverless. |
| Webhooks | Yes Through PubNub’s Events & Actions service. | Yes | Webhooks allow for the publishing of messages on the client-server over HTTP to trigger events. |
| Chat UI Components | No But, UI components are difficult to customize and extend. Our Chat SDK lets you speed up chat development while retaining flexibility. | Yes | Chat UI components lets you quickly integrate chat into your app or game. |
| Dynamic user state | Yes Users can set flexible, dynamic user states. State changes generate state-change events. | No Presence is limited to online/offline status only. | Dynamic user state allows for real-time updates and support needs such as leaderboards etc. |
| Typing indicators | Yes | Yes | This is crucial to providing an engaging chat experience and is built-in to your Chat UI components; implemented in the most cost-effective way. |
| Delivery and read receipts | Yes | Yes | This function gives end users the assurance that their messages are being delivered and read. |
| Unread message counts | Yes | Yes | This allows end-users to easily navigate their messages and catch up with their conversations since their last interaction. |
| Pre-delivery message filtering | Yes Clients can select messages to filter out on the server. Customers only pay for delivered messages. | Yes However customers are charged for each filtered message. | Stream filtering reads input, filters, and passes it on. This can help to reduce overall transaction costs. |
| File and image sharing | Yes | Yes | File sharing adds new functionality to your chat application, allowing users to share files like images, records, documents, etc. |
| Message reactions | Yes | Yes Premium feature supported via Google Cloud Translations APIs. | Allows users to share custom reactions to other posts, allowing for a more dynamic experience for the end-user. |
| Real-time Translation | Yes via PubNub Functions. | Yes Premium feature supported with in-house non AI powered bots. | Real-time translations help to break down language barriers and create a more global conversation. |
| Real-time Profanity Filtering | Yes via PubNub Functions. | Yes Premium feature. | By implementing a filter for your chat, you are taking precautionary actions against offensive words and behaviors before they reach your audience. |
| Chatbots | Yes For PubNub chatbots, developers have full control of which channels have access & how/if/when they respond to messages. | Yes Premium feature supported via Google Cloud Translation APIs | Chatbots can understand and respond to user requests automatically. They can be useful in a variety of situations, such as customer service, new user registration, e-commerce, etc. |
| Slash Commands | Yes PubNub Functions allow you to add programmable logic for slash commands. | No | Create shortcuts and a more seamless process for end-users with slash commands. |
| Voice and Video APIs | Yes We have partner integrations with Vonage, Agora, or Dolby | Yes Through Sendbird Calls. | With PubNub’s partners, these APIs allow for Voice and Video features to end users’ chat apps. |
| CHAT CAPABILITIES - MODERATION | |||
| Moderation Dashboards | Yes via BizOps Workspace and our open source Moderation Dashboard. | Yes However, the dashboard is not useful for large scale events. | Moderation dashboard allows for moderation in realtime, to keep your chats clean and safe for all ages. |
| Profanity filters | Yes The profanity filter function allows you to customize dictionaries and control message behavior on profanity detection. We also support integrations with 3rd-party text moderation APIs, such as Tisane.ai and you can use any vendor of your choice. | Yes Supports channel-level profanity detection with controls on actions. | By implementing a filter for your chat, you are taking precautionary actions against offensive words and behaviors before they reach your audience. |
| Image moderation | Yes We have integrations with third-party vendors such as SightEngine and you can use any vendor of your choice. | Yes Premium feature supported via integration with Google Cloud Vision. | SightEngine’s image moderation allows developers to moderate and filter user-generated photos for adult content, validation, and phototype - Ideal for chat apps, forums, social media aggregators, and more. |
| Mute/Block users | Yes This is easily done through BizOps Workspace, our open-source Moderation Dashboard, or using your own custom solution through Access Manager. | Yes Platform API's are available to mute users from channels. | This enables you to manage access controls for individual users, so they can be muted or blocked on specific channels. |
| SUPPORT & MONITORING | |||
| Message history (persisted data) | Yes Allow persisting messages forever. | Yes | Data persistence is important because of its non-volatility, reliability, stability, and time-independent features. |
| Operational dashboards | Yes | Yes | Ability to monitor your app in realtime for any potential issues. |
| Export Operational metrics to a customer monitoring tool | Yes | No | Easily export data to gain insights and keep track of customers. |
| Support Team | Yes Dedicated 24/7 support team physically located in four time zones and backed by 10 years of experience. | Yes | Support, whenever you need it. No time constraints means timely help and more seamless development. |
