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Socket.IO vs Supabase: What are the differences?
What is Socket.IO? Realtime application framework (Node.JS server). It enables real-time bidirectional event-based communication. It works on every platform, browser or device, focusing equally on reliability and speed.
What is Supabase? The open source Firebase alternative. Supabase is currently in early-Alpha .It is an open-source Firebase alternative. It adds realtime and RESTful APIs to your PostgreSQL database without a single line of code.
Socket.IO and Supabase can be primarily classified as "Realtime Backend / API" tools.
Some of the features offered by Socket.IO are:
- Real-time analytics - Push data to clients that gets represented as real-time counters, charts or logs.
- Binary streaming - Starting in 1.0, it's possible to send any blob back and forth: image, audio, video.
- Instant messaging and chat - Socket.IO's "Hello world" is a chat app in just a few lines of code.
On the other hand, Supabase provides the following key features:
- Full Postgres database
- Instant RESTful API
- Realtime notifications via websockets
Socket.IO is an open source tool with 49.8K GitHub stars and 9.07K GitHub forks. Here's a link to Socket.IO's open source repository on GitHub.
We are starting to work on a web-based platform aiming to connect artists (clients) and professional freelancers (service providers). In-app, timeline-based, real-time communication between users (& storing it), file transfers, and push notifications are essential core features. We are considering using Node.js, ExpressJS, React, MongoDB stack with Socket.IO & Apollo, or maybe using Real-Time Database and functionalities of Firebase.
FirebaseI would recommend looking hard into Firebase for this project, especially if you do not have dedicated full-stack or backend members on your team.
The real time database, as you mentioned, is a great option, but I would also look into Firestore. Similar to RTDB, it adds more functions and some cool methods as well. Also, another great thing about Firebase is you have easy access to storage and dead simple auth as well.
Node.js Express MongoDB Socket.IO and Apollo are great technologies as well, and may be the better option if you do not wish to cede as much control to third parties in your application.
Overall, I say if you wish to focus more time developing your React application instead of other parts of your stack, Firebase is a great way to do that.
AblyHello Noam đź‘‹,
I suggest taking a look at Ably, it has all the realtime features you need and the platform is designed to guarantee critical functionality at scale.
Here is an in depth comparison between Ably and Firebase
Pros of Socket.IO
- Real-time214
- Event-based communication141
- Node.js141
- WebSockets102
- Open source101
- Binary streaming26
- No internet dependency21
- Large community10
- Fallback to polling if WebSockets not supported9
- Push notification6
- Ease of access and setup5
Pros of Supabase
- Relational Database3
- Open source1
- Self hosting1
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Cons of Socket.IO
- Bad documentation11
- Githubs that complement it are mostly deprecated4
- Doesn't work on React Native3
- Websocket Errors2
- Small community2
Cons of Supabase
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