My take
Four managed services, all genuinely good, and the AI knows all of them. Pusher is the name every model reaches for first. Ably is my personal preference - not sure why - I just like it. Whichever you go with, check first what's up with their WebRTC "SDK" - for the most part, you're likely to need to write your own, which is fine.
Picking infrastructure to bet on?
This page tells you what AI sees. I can help you fit it to your scale, your latency target, and your budget.
| Tool ▲ | AI Visibility iHow often AI recommends this tool - the average of three model scores from 0 to 10: Claude Sonnet 4.6, Gemini 2.5 Flash and GPT-4o. The top of this category is saturated: every model recommends all four.▲ | Quality iA measured score from 0 to 100, blending documentation depth (docs) and feature coverage (feat).▲ | Agent-ready iWhether the vendor ships something that lets an AI agent operate it: an MCP server or a hand-authored llms.txt. This is the first category in the guide where the field is not empty - though none of it is signaling-specific.▲ | Release cadence iHow actively the product ships, measured June 2026: releases in the last 12 months and the latest release. Raw figures from each vendor's release notes and changelog, never composited into a score.▲ | Pricing iIndicative entry pricing gathered June 2026 from public pages. A quiet context column, not a score, and not verified for your contract or volume.▲ | Tsahi's note ▲ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Pusher | 10.0avg  10 10 10 | 84 92%80% | None | ~10rel/yr latest v8.5.0, Apr 2025 | From $49/moStartup plan | AI Darling |
 Ably | 8.9avg 10106.7 | 97 100%95% | ✓Hand-authored llms.txt | ~22rel/yr latest v2.22.1, Jun 2026 | From $29/moStandard + usage | Earns the Hype |
 Firebase | 8.9avg 8.3108.3 | 89 96%85% | ✓MCP (generic) | 12rel/yr latest v12.14.0, May 2026 | Free / Blazepay-as-you-go | No call here - measured, not judged |
 PubNub | 7.2avg 5106.7 | 89 92%88% | ✓MCP + llms.txt | 24rel/yr latest v11.0.2, Jun 2026 | From $98/moStarter plan | No call here - measured, not judged |
Documentation depth
Feature coverage
Claude Sonnet 4.6
Gemini 2.5 Flash
GPT-4o
Claude Sonnet 4.6
Gemini 2.5 Flash
GPT-4o
MEASURED
- Release cadence was pulled from each vendor's release notes, changelog and GitHub in June 2026
- AI Visibility and Quality come from my evaluation runs in the same window
- None of these is composited into a single score
VERIFY
- Pricing is indicative, gathered from public pages in June 2026, and is not a scored column. Confirm current rates and limits with each vendor for your volume
- Agent-ready reflects each vendor's own tooling: Ably ships a hand-authored llms.txt, PubNub a maintained MCP server, Firebase a generic project MCP, Pusher nothing
None of that is a score. It's a recommendation. The grades on this page measure the machines, not my opinion of the vendors.