Ably vs PubNub comparison

Ably and PubNub are both solutions in the AWS Marketplace category. Ably is ranked #11 with an average rating of 9.0, while PubNub is ranked #17 with an average rating of 8.0. Ably holds a 0.2% mindshare in AWSM, compared to PubNub’s 0.2% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Ably users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of PubNub users who would recommend it.

Ably

Read 6 Ably reviews

1,656 Views
1,159 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

PubNub

Read 6 PubNub reviews

1,698 Views
1,104 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Ably

PubNub

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Ably and PubNub based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two AWS Marketplace solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed Ably vs. PubNub Report (Updated: June 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Ably vs. PubNub

June 2026

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Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

Ably

Ranking in AWS Marketplace

11th

Average Rating

9.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

PubNub

Ranking in AWS Marketplace

17th

Average Rating

8.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the AWS Marketplace category, the mindshare of Ably is 0.2%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of PubNub is 0.2%, down from 0.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

AWS Marketplace Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Ably	0.2%
PubNub	0.2%
Other	99.6%

AWS Marketplace

Featured Reviews

Uday Nagpure

Program Manager at Zensar Technologies

Reduced manual work and built reliable real-time collaboration with serverless messaging

I love Ably for its advanced pub/sub messaging capabilities, which help us with messaging Delta Compression, allowing us to send only changes from previous messages instead of entire payloads every time. For example, if I have to say 'hi', instead of sending the whole payload, it only sends the change in the current payload, reducing bandwidth consumption and enabling high-frequency data streaming. This major change has made our clients really happy as they receive notifications and messages without latency. Additionally, if a client goes offline, Ably stores messages in history for up to 72 hours, allowing clients to query history and catch up on missed events, ensuring complete stream continuity. It also supports multi-protocol, using WebSockets and gracefully falling back to server-sent events and long polling as needed, including support for MQTT and IoT devices along with pub/sub control for easy migration.I appreciate the serverless integration that has the integrated native web hook, instantly triggering serverless functions such as AWS Lambda and Azure Function when specific real-time events occur. It also allows Kafka Connector for seamless ingestion of messages from Kafka topics to stream them out to millions of users in milliseconds.

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Kirtishil Patil

Senior Frontend Developer at Globant

Real-time chat has boosted one-to-one messaging and user engagement in my mobile projects

The best features PubNub offers, in my opinion, are one-to-one chat, as I mentioned in my review, and the great SDK documentation which allows for easy integration that does not take much time. Setting up channels, message listeners, tracking user status to determine whether users are online or offline, and ensuring reliable message delivery are all great features. I find myself relying on all three of those features the most because the presence tracking is great, the delivery speed is superb compared to other SDKs, and the user status updates immediately pop up, which is significant. The integration is very easy, so any new developers can easily understand the integration process thanks to the clear documentation. PubNub has positively impacted my organization as I have received numerous reviews and feedback stating that the chat works much faster and cleaner, and everyone appreciates it, saying it feels powerful. After implementing PubNub, I noticed positive outcomes such as client feedback acknowledging that they enjoyed the chat features and found them much faster than in other applications, which I believe is very positive feedback for any organization.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"Ably's API integration is intuitive; it definitely improved our efficiency, and we saw faster user interaction and around a 20% reduction in latency during peak times, which improved user experience as well."

"Ably has a big capacity to stream data all over the world, has higher reliability and a 99.99% uptime, offers robust security guarantees and ease of integration, and saved at least 80% of the cost that would have required more developers and more time for integration testing and development."

"We experience vast improvements across many areas with Ably; when users connect bank accounts, we previously had to poll repeatedly, which is now replaced by Ably's real-time infrastructure that maintains a persistent back-end connection, significantly reducing the need for infrastructure management and API load, resulting in average bank connection display times decreasing from eight to twelve seconds down to one to two seconds, and with persistent back-end connections reducing API calls, we achieve a lower operational load, seeing an impressive reduction of thirty thousand to forty thousand calls monthly."

"Ably has positively impacted our organization by providing a good return on investment by avoiding the labor cost of building and maintaining a custom WebSocket server."

"Ably has improved our organization by enhancing real-time communication capabilities and providing reliable data delivery."

"My most-liked feature is its highly reliable real-time messaging capacity."

"PubNub has positively impacted my organization as I have received numerous reviews and feedback stating that the chat works much faster and cleaner, and everyone appreciates it, saying it feels powerful."

"PubNub's push notification and chat features stand out because of ease of use and very easy integration within our application."

"PubNub has positively impacted my organization by reducing implementation time and developers' work, making it very easy to implement and enabling fast development that has reduced the developers' time by 40-50%."

"If we had implemented all of this on our own, we would have had to hire at least 50 more employees for that, so we are very happy with PubNub and we have saved a lot of time."

"The speed and efficiency of PubNub, which helps transfer data in real-time with very low latency, received positive feedback from our customers."

"PubNub saves development time because we do not have to create a complete chat backend and frontend from scratch, enabling a plug-and-play approach that saves time, effort, and money for the company."

Cons

"Overall, Ably appears strong for managed real-time operations, but could improve areas such as pricing predictability."

"Ably can be improved in several areas."

"It falls just short of a perfect ten only because full twenty-four-hour phone or live chat escalation is heavily gated behind their highest enterprise pricing tiers."

"Regarding customer support from PubNub, around six years ago, we did not receive good support."

"I gave PubNub a rating of nine out of ten because of the many features discussed, but I deducted one point because the cost increases with scale."

"Most of the time there are some instances at the load peak hours or sometimes payload is missed by the application or SDK at the SDK level."

"Since PubNub is a paid library, it may not be useful for everyone."

"The reliability of PubNub is really good, but occasionally we face issues where users complain about messages or push notifications not being delivered within a short period of time, as it occasionally takes longer, which could be due to outages."

"I believe PubNub can improve in terms of pricing transparency, as I previously mentioned, since that is the only thing I think should be improved because for smaller projects or startups, estimating scaling costs can be challenging."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Construction Company

34%

Outsourcing Company

19%

Comms Service Provider

Consumer Goods Company

Construction Company

38%

Manufacturing Company

14%

Comms Service Provider

Outsourcing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	7
Midsize Enterprise	3
Large Enterprise	9

No data available

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Ably?

For the use I have made, I didn't see any limit or margin to implement to go higher.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Ably?

My main use case for Ably is integrating the Kafka queue with Ably and sending notifications to IoT devices like a smartwatch. After the topic was reached by the message, Ably can fetch it from thi...

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What advice do you have for others considering Ably?

I would recommend trying Ably if you have a wider range of IoT device types to deliver notifications. I gave this review a rating of 9.

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for PubNub?

The setup cost is very low. Regarding pricing, when the data scales, the pricing increases gradually, but PubNub does not charge much in the initial phase.

See all answers

What needs improvement with PubNub?

The subscription and the SDK part can be improved. If the client is offline and the application is killed, and the user comes back again, sometimes the subscription to the channel is missed, so tha...

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What is your primary use case for PubNub?

We are mostly using PubNub for payload sending and for live chat. We are a mobile-based application with an admin side, so it's a live chat application. Whenever a user comes online or offline or s...

See all answers

Comparisons

No data available

flow platform ACE-Salesforce CRM integration package vs PubNub

Compared 72% of the time

IoT aaS vs PubNub

Compared 28% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Ably

August 2026

Download Ably product report

Buyer's Guide

PubNub

August 2026

Download PubNub product report

Overview

Ably provides a real-time communication platform designed to manage complex streaming data and messaging, delivering reliability and scalability. It facilitates seamless integration with global messaging services, offering low latency and high availability across networks.

Ably is crafted to support a diverse range of use cases including real-time dashboards, live chat applications, multiplayer games, and collaborative tools. It offers versatile API support and ensures data integrity. Through consistent performance, Ably simplifies the process of building live functionalities by allowing engineers to focus on core application development rather than scaling challenges.

What Are Ably's Most Important Features?

Real-time Messaging: Ensures low-latency communication for live interactions.
Scalable Infrastructure: Accommodates millions of concurrent connections seamlessly.
Data Integrity: Guarantees message delivery ensuring consistency across platforms.
Versatile API Support: Provides various programming interfaces for easier integration.

What Benefits or ROI Should Users Look for in Reviews?

Enhanced User Engagement: Real-time updates boost interaction.
Scalability: Effortless adaptation to increasing demand without service disruption.
Reliability: Consistent service delivery minimizing downtime.
Developer Productivity: Simplifies complex integrations, reducing development time.

In the finance industry, Ably supports live trading platforms by delivering instantaneous data updates. In gaming, it enables real-time multiplayer experiences with synchronized data. Within education, Ably facilitates live webinars and interactive learning sessions, thanks to its robust real-time messaging capabilities.

Ably

PubNub delivers real-time communication solutions that enable seamless data transmission, catering to businesses requiring instant messaging and tracking capabilities. It supports developers with robust SDKs and multiple protocol integrations for scalable and reliable applications.

Specializing in real-time interactivity, PubNub offers a platform designed for scalability and efficiency. It provides a secure and globally distributed network to manage millions of messages per second with low latency. Businesses leverage PubNub for chat applications, live audience engagement, IoT device management, and more. The dynamic infrastructure facilitates rapid development and deployment, making it a preferred choice for developers seeking to enhance connectivity and data flow.

What are PubNub's most important features?

Real-Time Messaging: Instantly delivers messages to ensure immediate communication across platforms.
Presence Detection: Monitors online status, allowing apps to react dynamically to users coming online or going offline.
Stream Controller: Manages data streams independently across numerous channels for enhanced organization.
Data Encryption: Ensures secure data communication through end-to-end encryption for user privacy.
Push Notifications: Provides timely alerts to users, keeping them informed and engaged with minimal delay.

What are the benefits or ROI to consider?

Scalability: Supports rapid growth in user base without performance degradation.
Latency Reduction: Enhances user experience by minimizing delays in data transmission.
Cost Efficiency: Reduces infrastructure costs by pre-built integrations that cut down implementation time.
Security: Protects data integrity, fostering trust with users through robust encryption protocols.
Developer Support: Offers comprehensive documentation and SDKs for simplified development and integration.

In the finance industry, PubNub supports instant transaction alerts and stock trading applications by providing the real-time data processing that is crucial for market activities. E-commerce platforms use PubNub to handle customer queries and facilitate live support. Its implementation in IoT allows for efficient device monitoring and smart city applications. Gaming companies rely on PubNub for multiplayer matchmaking and live event streaming, creating immersive experiences for users worldwide.

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