Pricing teardowns
Pusher Pricing in 2026: What You Actually Pay
Pusher Channels pricing in 2026 runs from a free Sandbox (100 concurrent connections, 200k messages/day) to $49 Startup, $99 Pro, $299 Business, and up to $1,199, billed on two meters: peak concurrent connections and messages per day. The trap is peak connections, because your plan must cover your highest simultaneous connection count, so a single 25-minute spike can push you from $99 to $499 for the whole month. This teardown works three real monthly bills, shows why the same app costs $99 on Pusher, about $278 on Ably, and about $630 on Liveblocks purely because each bills on a different meter, and does the self-host crossover math with Soketi.
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