WebSockets vs. Server-Sent-Events vs. Long-Polling vs. WebRTC vs. WebTransport

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  • Centrifugo

    Scalable real-time messaging server in a language-agnostic way. Self-hosted alternative to Pubnub, Pusher, Ably. Set up once and forever.

  • Hello, I am author of https://github.com/centrifugal/centrifugo. Our users can choose from WebSocket, EventSource, WebTransport (experimental stabilize in the future). WebRTC is out of scope as the main purpose is central server based real-time json/binary messaging, and WebRTC makes things much more complex since it shines for peer-to-peer and rich media communications.

    What I'd like to add is that Centrifugo also supports HTTP-streaming – not mentioned by the OP – but this is a transport which has advantages over Eventsource - like possibility to send POST body on initial request from web browser (with SSE you can not), it supports binary, and with Readable Streams browser API it's widely supported by modern browsers.

    Another thing I'd like to mention about Centrifugo - it supports bidirectional WebSocket fallbacks with EventSource and HTTP-streaming, and does this without sticky sessions requirement. I guess nobody else have this at this point. See https://centrifugal.dev/blog/2022/07/19/centrifugo-v4-releas.... Which solves one more practical concern. Sticky sessions is an optimization in Centrifugo case, not a requirement.

    If you are interested in topic, we also have a post about WebSocket scalability - https://centrifugal.dev/blog/2020/11/12/scaling-websocket - it covers some design decisions made in Centrifugo.

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