Stream Chat vs. PubNub

Stream Chat is a messaging API and SDK suite for developers building in-app chat. Teams integrate it to ship production messaging in weeks instead of building and maintaining real-time infrastructure in-house. Client SDKs cover React, Swift, Android, Flutter, React Native, Angular, JavaScript, Unity, and Unreal, each with a UI kit you can customize or replace entirely. The backend runs on Go and RocksDB across 12 global edge locations, holding sub-40ms latency and 5M concurrent connections in a single channel behind a 99.999% uptime SLA.

PubNub is a real-time platform for developers who build in-app chat and live features. The Chat SDK includes typing indicators, presence, message history, read receipts, reactions, and threads. PubNub supports unlimited subscribers per channel. PubNub assigns each message a server-side timetoken. Messages on a channel form one ordered sequence. End-to-end delivery latency is sub-100ms. DAZN uses PubNub to power chat and Watch Party experiences for 10 million users. PubNub charges by Monthly Active Users or transactions, depending on the plan.