# PubNub Software Pricing, Alternatives & More 2026 | Capterra > With the help of Capterra, learn about PubNub Software - reviews, pricing plans, popular comparisons to other Application Development products and more. Source: https://www.capterra.com/p/169852/ChatEngine --- # PubNub Software Review 2026: Features, Reviews, Integrations, Pros & Cons Last updated on March 13, 2026 Provider data verified by our Software Research team, and reviews moderated by our Reviews Verification team. Independent research methodology Capterra’s researchers use a mix of verified reviews, independent research and objective methodologies to bring you selection and ranking information you can trust. While we may earn a referral fee when you visit a provider through our links or speak to an advisor, this has no influence on our research or methodology. [Learn more](https://www.capterra.com/resources/proprietary-data-research/) How Capterra verifies reviews Capterra carefully verified over 2.5 million+ reviews to bring you authentic software experiences from real users. Our human moderators verify that reviewers are real people and that reviews are authentic. They use leading tech to analyze text quality and to detect plagiarism and generative AI. [Learn more](https://www.capterra.com/resources/how-we-verify-reviews/) How Capterra ensures transparency Capterra lists all providers across its website—not just those that pay us—so that users can make informed purchase decisions. Capterra is free for users. Software providers pay us for sponsored profiles to receive web traffic and sales opportunities. Sponsored profiles include a link-out icon that takes users to the provider’s website. [Learn more](https://www.capterra.com/resources/how-we-ensure-transparency/) [Description](#description)[Use cases](#use-cases)[Alternatives](#alternatives)[Features](#features)[Pricing](#pricing)[Support](#support)[Reviews](#reviews) PubNub ## What is PubNub? PubNub is a Pub/Sub service for sending data between devices in realtime. It is ideal for developers building chat apps, IoT device signaling, realtime GPS location tracking, multiplayer online games & more. Messages generally make it from publisher to subscriber in 80100ms, regardless of their locations. There are PubNub SDKs for every programming language so your server, web browser, mobile phone or smart device can use PubNub right away. After free signup, you get live API keys instantly. ## What is PubNub used for? [IoT](https://www.capterra.com/iot-software/)[Application Development](https://www.capterra.com/application-development-software/)[API Management](https://www.capterra.com/api-management-software/) Top alternative Featured Overall rating Based on 6 user reviews Reviews sentiment Positive \- Neutral \- Negative \- Starting price $49 Per Feature, Per Month Free trial available Capterra Shortlist charts the highest-rated and most popular products... Our "Best of" badge program showcases products with the highest ratings... Our "Best of" badge program showcases products with the highest ratings... Do you work for PubNub?[Manage this product listing](https://digitalmarkets.gartner.com/get-listed/claim-bx?url=https://www.pubnub.com&name=PubNub) ## Compare with a popular alternative Capterra selects software alternatives based on relevant features, verified user reviews and user interactions. Placement may be influenced by client status. ### PubNub 4.8 (6) VS. [4.6 (85)](https://www.capterra.com/p/148729/Workato/reviews/) Starting Price $49 Per Feature, Per Month Starting Price Contact vendor Free Trial Free Version Pricing Options Free Trial Free Version Ease Of Use 4.8 (6) Ease Of Use 4.4 (82) Value For Money 4.8 (5) Value For Money 4.3 (71) Customer Service 4.7 (6) Customer Service 4.6 (75) ## PubNub alternatives [4.3 (169)](https://www.capterra.com/p/211755/Zoho-Creator/reviews/) Starting price $8.00 Per User, Per Month Pricing Options Free Trial Free Version User Rating 90% of reviewers rated it above 4 stars Highest Rated [4.6 (2,228)](https://www.capterra.com/p/146652/Airtable/reviews/) Starting price $20.00 Per User, Per Month Pricing Options Free Trial Free Version User Rating 96% of reviewers rated it above 4 stars [4.6 (249)](https://www.capterra.com/p/137206/Caspio/reviews/) Starting price $600.00 Per User, Per Month Pricing Options Free Trial Free Version User Rating 93% of reviewers rated it above 4 stars [4.6 (368)](https://www.capterra.com/p/163343/Backup-and-Recovery/reviews/) Starting price Contact vendor for pricing Pricing Options Free Trial Free Version User Rating 95% of reviewers rated it above 4 stars [View all alternatives](https://www.capterra.com/p/169852/ChatEngine/alternatives/) ## Features Features with the highest number of reviews are displayed first. Those that have no reviews appear next, sorted alphabetically. Access Controls/Permissions Define levels of authorization for access to specific files or systems API Application programming interface that allows for integration with other systems/databases Collaboration Tools Provides a channel for team members to share media files, communicate, and work together Data Security Protect sensitive data for digital privacy Deployment Management Manage the processes involved when making the application ready for use Integrated Development Environment An application for source code editing, compiling, and debugging PubNub 12 features Define levels of authorization for access to specific files or systems Application programming interface that allows for integration with other systems/databases Provides a channel for team members to share media files, communicate, and work together Protect sensitive data for digital privacy Manage the processes involved when making the application ready for use An application for source code editing, compiling, and debugging Development of applications for mobile devices Pre-defined templates within a library for common cases such as contracts, websites, emails, and more View and track pertinent metrics to find patterns and gain insights from data Development of software programs Set up connections to third-party platforms to improve business processes Development of applications that are delivered over the internet through a browser Features 5.0 (6) 5.0 Based on 6 reviews ## Pricing Value for money 4.8 (5) Free Trial Free Version Basic $49.00 Per Feature,Per Month Value for money 4.8 (5) 4.8 Based on 5 reviews ## Support, customer service and training options Customer Service 4.7 (6) Support - Email/Help Desk - FAQs/Forum - Knowledge Base - Phone Support - 24/7 (Live rep) - Chat Training - In Person - Live Online - Webinars - Documentation - Videos Deployment - Web - Android - iPhone/iPad Typical users - Freelancers - Small businesses - Mid size businesses - Enterprises Customer Service 4.7 (6) 4.7 Based on 6 reviews ## User reviews Overall rating 4.8 Based on 6 reviews Filter by rating 5(5) 4(1) 3(0) 2(0) 1(0) Mentioned topic Sorted by most recent SV Subbu V. CEO E-Learning ### "Solid product for real-time networking" 5.0 Overall Rating 5.0 5.0 Ease of Use 5.0 5.0 Features 5.0 5.0 Customer Service 5.0 5.0 Likelihood to Recommend 10/10 December 22, 2020 We have been using Pubnub for our real-time communication needs on our collaborative live training tool - we moved to Pubnub after moving from the open source Socket.io. Pubnub takes away the headache of managing the infrastructure for any real-time communication - they are extremely reliable and performant, keeping up their promise of 250 ms for message delivery time. They are extremely customer friendly and do not treat you as a revenue-producing machine, like some of the more successful companies in the Valley do. Pros Highly reliable - their services rarely go down. Pubnub's team is extremely customer-friendly and have always responded to our custom requests. The product is very scalable and we can easily do billions of messages per day. Cons Would love to have reduced pricing for ping pong (keep-alive) messages which do not constitute the core business logic. Also, if they support web sockets instead of using classic HTTP that would be great. Support for sending large messages would also be very helpful. Reasons for choosing PubNub Easy-to-use product and an extremely developer-friendly onboarding process. Review source Incentivized review: software users are invited to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive for their time and effort. All incentivized reviews are subject to our verification process prior to publication. AZ Anhang Z. CTO Entertainment ### "Reliable and fast" 5.0 Overall Rating 5.0 5.0 Ease of Use 5.0 5.0 Features 5.0 5.0 Customer Service 4.0 4.0 Likelihood to Recommend 10/10 December 20, 2020 Pros Set up was easy, integration into our existing codebase took less an a week. It's also reliable, and has never gone down for us. Cons Support could take a while to figure out your problem, so if you have advanced features you're trying use and are running into edge cases, your own timeline could be delayed by a week. Review source Incentivized review: software users are invited to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive for their time and effort. All incentivized reviews are subject to our verification process prior to publication. NA Naveen A. Senior UI developer Information Technology and Services ### "Good features and easy to use" 4.0 Overall Rating 4.0 4.0 Ease of Use 4.0 4.0 Features 5.0 5.0 Customer Service 4.0 4.0 Likelihood to Recommend 9/10 December 19, 2020 I have used pubNub to support push notifications in mobile devices and was using javascript and Java SDK. Though it was tricky to use PubNub but sometimes their documentation will give you some hard time finding the stuff you need. Pros PubNub's multiple languages SDK are really good and will work for any major programming language in the market. Their customer support response is quick and to the point most of the time. Cons Documentation and examples are outed or insufficient sometimes which definately need some improvement. Review source Incentivized review: software users are invited to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive for their time and effort. All incentivized reviews are subject to our verification process prior to publication. JC Jason C. Director, Site and Network Operations Information Technology and Services ### "Mission Critical Product for our business" 5.0 Overall Rating 5.0 5.0 Ease of Use 5.0 5.0 Features 5.0 5.0 Customer Service 5.0 5.0 Likelihood to Recommend 9/10 December 17, 2020 Pros Pubnub provides key functionality for our business, a monetized chat system in our ecommerce platform. We rely on pubnub 24/7 for this part of our business, which has thrived in the last couple of years. They've been more than fair as well on pricing as we've grown the business with them. Cons We've had a few small issues with pubnub as far as infrastructure goes, but nothing to complain about the software and its implementation, which has required little work since building out. Review source Incentivized review: software users are invited to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive for their time and effort. All incentivized reviews are subject to our verification process prior to publication. Will J. Senior iOS Engineer Information Technology and Services ### "Built a high volume product with this, thanks for making a sweet product PubNub!!" 5.0 Overall Rating 5.0 5.0 Ease of Use 5.0 5.0 Features 5.0 5.0 Customer Service 5.0 5.0 Likelihood to Recommend 10/10 December 16, 2020 5/5 stars Pros Storage and playback of realtime events works really well, has zero setup cost. Channel groups, message actions, and object metadata. Swift SDK is really good. Especially automatic retry for dropped connections. Native cross platform push notifications Cons There isn't good visibility into how PubNub API calls get translated into APNS JSON payloads. Kudos to them for making this a bit better during the time I've used PubNub. It's also pretty amazing that PubNub now has all the parts needed to make a push reporting and diagnostic dashboard similar to onesignal/google cloud messaging. PubNub added the two missing pieces after we asked which was useful and super cool. Review source Incentivized review: software users are invited to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive for their time and effort. All incentivized reviews are subject to our verification process prior to publication. JA julio a g. CEO+CTO Retail ### "Excellent partner" 5.0 Overall Rating 5.0 5.0 Ease of Use 5.0 5.0 Features 5.0 5.0 Customer Service 5.0 5.0 Likelihood to Recommend 10/10 December 14, 2020 Pros Product quality, technical support and commercial support Cons I haven't identified anything you need to add Review source Incentivized review: software users are invited to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive for their time and effort. All incentivized reviews are subject to our verification process prior to publication. ## Top-rated software of 2026 ### Fill out the form and we'll send a list of the top-rated software based on real user reviews directly to your inbox. Independent research methodology Capterra's researchers use a mix of verified reviews, independent research and objective methodologies to bring you selection and ranking information you can trust. While we may earn a referral fee when you visit a provider through our links or speak to an advisor, this has no influence on our research or methodology. [Learn more](https://www.capterra.com/resources/proprietary-data-research/) How Capterra verifies reviews Capterra carefully verified over 2.5 million+ reviews to bring you authentic software experiences from real users. Our human moderators verify that reviewers are real people and that reviews are authentic. They use leading tech to analyze text quality and to detect plagiarism and generative AI. [Learn more](https://www.capterra.com/resources/how-we-verify-reviews/) How Capterra ensures transparency Capterra lists all providers across its website—not just those that pay us—so that users can make informed purchase decisions. Capterra is free for users. Software providers pay us for sponsored profiles to receive web traffic and sales opportunities. Sponsored profiles include a link-out icon that takes users to the provider's website. [Learn more](https://www.capterra.com/resources/how-we-ensure-transparency/)