Add live updates to an app without running your own websocket servers. Ably is a hosted realtime messaging platform. Its products include Pub/Sub channels, Chat, LiveObjects, Spaces, LiveSync and AI Transport, with SDKs for web, mobile and server languages. The Free plan costs $0 and includes 6 million messages a month, 200 concurrent connections, 200 concurrent channels and 500 messages a second. Standard is $29 a month plus usage and Pro is $399 a month plus usage. Usage is priced at $2.50 per million messages, with connection minutes and channel minutes at $1.00 per million each. G2 shows 4.8 from 67 reviews, and the most common praise is support, ease of use, integrations and reliability. The most common complaints are cost at scale and usage limits that are hard to plan around. The Free plan keeps message history for 1 day and comes with a service level objective rather than an SLA.
Free tier quotas
Free plan price
$0, no commitment
Messages
6 million a month
Concurrent connections
200
Concurrent channels
200
Throughput
500 messages a second
Presence members per channel
200
Message size
64 KiB
Message storage
1 day
Support on Free
Community and email, best effort
Reliability commitment on Free
Service level objective only, no SLA
Usage past the plan base
Paid plans add usage: $2.50 per million messages, $1.00 per million connection minutes, $1.00 per million channel minutes
Last sniffed Oct 13, 2026. Always confirm on the official pricing page.
👍 Good boy
+G2 reviewers rate it highly. The rating is 4.8 from 67 reviews, with 89% giving 5 stars and 10% giving 4 stars. G2's summary counts 14 mentions each for support and ease of use, 13 for easy integrations and 11 for reliability.
+A G2 reviewer describing NASCAR's apps said Ably delivers live race data every weekend and scaled to hundreds of thousands of users on race weekends. They also called the SDKs and documentation easy to work with.
+A G2 reviewer who sends millions of messages through Ably said they have never hit a problem that was Ably's fault, and that the web console helps them see which messages were sent.
+A G2 reviewer building a communication app for non-verbal users said they developed the whole app and tested it with users in production before agreeing to a paid contract, which they valued as a small open-source provider.
+An r/node commenter in a 2022 thread preferred Ably to Pusher and cited docs that are easier to read and the way auth works. That is one commenter's opinion from an older thread.
+Support gets specific praise. One G2 reviewer said the team chats with you in real time when you submit a question, and that the Ably community on Discord helped outside office hours.
+A G2 reviewer got a chat client proof of concept running quickly inside existing native apps and used Ably's React hooks in the web client.
+The pricing page publishes plan limits and per-unit rates, and gives a worked example: an AI support chatbot with 35,000 chats comes to $109.50 a month.
👎 Watch out
−Cost at scale is the top complaint. G2's summary counts 6 mentions of expensive pricing, especially for startups, and 4 more of pricing issues. One reviewer wrote that scaling up usage needs a lot of attention to the pricing model.
−Usage limits are hard to plan around according to a G2 reviewer, who said that hitting one limit can force an upgrade of the whole plan. G2's summary has 2 mentions of this.
−Monitoring drew complaints. A G2 reviewer from 2022 wanted an enterprise dashboard for monitoring and troubleshooting and noted an extra cost for history queries, and another reviewer said the Datadog integration is not on every plan. The pricing page lists Datadog (lite) on Pro.
−There is a learning curve. The NASCAR reviewer said Ably has so many features that choosing which to use takes upfront planning, and that socket-based design and message sizes were tricky. Another reviewer said duplicate messages were hard to fix at first.
−A G2 reviewer from March 2025 said newer features arrive for web clients months before iOS and Android clients.
−The Free plan has a service level objective and no SLA, keeps messages for 1 day and gives best-effort community and email support. Standard adds a 1 business day email response and Pro a 4-hour one.
−The review base is positive and fairly small. G2 has 67 reviews, and one older review on its first page carries an incentivized label, so weigh the 4.8 with that in mind.
The catch
The Free plan is permanent and costs $0. It gives you 6 million messages a month, 200 concurrent connections, 200 concurrent channels and 500 messages a second, with message history kept for 1 day and messages up to 64 KiB. Support is community and email on a best-effort basis, and the reliability commitment is a service level objective instead of an SLA.
The limits to watch are concurrency and message count. If each user holds one connection, 200 connections is about 200 people online at the same time. The page text I read does not say what happens on Free when you pass the monthly message limit, so read the terms before you rely on it for production traffic.
Paid plans add usage on top of the base fee: messages cost $2.50 per million, and connection minutes and channel minutes cost $1.00 per million each, with lower rates at volume. The vendor's example, an AI support chatbot with 35,000 chats, comes to $109.50 a month.
G2 reviewers repeat two cautions. Pricing needs attention as usage grows, and the usage limits are hard to plan around. One reviewer said that hitting a single limit can force an upgrade of the whole plan. I did not find a statement about a credit card at sign-up or about commercial use on Free, so both are left as unknown.
What’s included
✓Pub/Sub channels
✓Chat
✓LiveObjects for shared state
✓Spaces for collaborative features such as live cursors
✓LiveSync for database changes
✓AI Transport for streaming AI responses
✓Presence
✓Message history and storage
✓SDKs for web, mobile and server languages
✓Web console for debugging
✓Datadog integration (lite on Pro)
✓11+ regions and 700+ points of presence
Free tier value
Generosity
B
Estimated value
6 million messages a month on Free; paid plans start at $29 a month plus usage
Feature parity
Free caps connections and channels at 200 and 500 messages a second. Standard raises caps.
Screenshots
Ably homepageAbly pricing page
Paid plans
Standard, $29 a month plus usage
Raises the limits to 10k concurrent connections and channels and 2.5k messages a second, keeps messages for 30 days and adds email support with a 1 business day response.
Pro, $399 a month plus usage
Lists 50k concurrent connections and channels, 10k messages a second, 365-day message storage, 256 KiB messages, a 4-hour email response and Datadog (lite).
Enterprise, custom
Limits listed as unlimited, a 99.999% SLA with rebates, 24/7 support, SOC 2, HIPAA BAA, SAML and SCIM.
Usage rates on paid plans
Messages cost $2.50 per million, going down to $0.50 at volume. Connection minutes and channel minutes cost $1.00 per million each, going down to $0.20. Extra data transfer costs $0.25 per GiB.
Common questions
Is Ably free?
Yes, there is a permanent Free plan at $0 with 6 million messages a month, 200 concurrent connections and 200 concurrent channels. Paid plans start at $29 a month plus usage.
How long does the Free plan keep messages?
One day. Standard keeps messages for 30 days and Pro for 365 days.
Does the Free plan have an SLA?
No. It has a service level objective only. Standard lists a 1 business day email response, Pro a 4-hour one, and Enterprise a 99.999% SLA.
How is usage billed on paid plans?
On top of the base fee, messages are $2.50 per million and connection minutes and channel minutes are $1.00 per million each, with lower rates at higher volume.
What do G2 reviewers dislike?
Cost as usage grows and usage limits that are hard to plan around. A few also mention monitoring tools and a learning curve for socket-based apps.
How does Ably compare with Pusher and PubNub?
Reddit threads that compare them are mostly from 2021 to 2023, including one where a commenter preferred Ably's docs and auth to Pusher. Check current pricing for each before you decide.
Change history
Checked October 22, 2026
Pricing page lists a Free plan with 6M messages a month, Standard at $29 and Pro at $399 plus usage. G2 shows 4.8 from 67 reviews.
