What persistent realtime connections cost per month.
Realtime cost splits between how many clients are connected and how much they talk. Know which one dominates before picking a plan. Compare always-on compute on the serverless cost calculator.
Free WebSocket cost calculator — peak connections and messages to your monthly realtime bill.
Managed services (Pusher, Ably, PubNub) charge on peak concurrent connections and messages sent. Both meters matter: a chat app is message-heavy, a live dashboard is connection-heavy — check which dominates your use.
Managed handles scaling, presence and reconnects for you at a premium. Self-hosting is far cheaper per connection but reconnect storms and horizontal scaling are genuinely hard. For spiky, global apps the managed premium is often worth it.