The Most Popular Sendbird Alternatives: A Comprehensive Guide

Sendbird has established itself as a prominent player in the real-time customer engagement market. But is it the best choice for you? In this article, we will look at what Sendbird offers, some reasons why we think Sendbird falls short of the competition and other equally good alternatives of Sendbird.

Sendbird provides real-time messaging services, enabling businesses to integrate chat features into their applications. Sendbird's offerings include:

1. Extensive development time and effort

Sendbird offers significant flexibility, but building a highly polished, production-ready chat experience often requires additional development effort.

While Sendbird provides SDKs and basic UI components for core platforms (iOS, Android, React Native), customization is limited. Developers frequently need to rely on SDK-level work to implement advanced workflows and tailor the UI to real-world product needs.

For example, email and SMS notifications must be implemented manually using webhooks and third-party services. In contrast, platforms like CometChat offer push, email, and SMS notifications out of the box, reducing implementation complexity and time to market.

Sendbird’s SDKs are well-documented, but the overall experience leans more toward infrastructure assembly than turnkey chat delivery.

2. Pricing limitations

Sendbird’s pricing model is a common reason businesses explore alternatives.

Pricing is MAU-based with tiered plans, unlimited messages, and limits on peak concurrent connections (PCC). While competitive with peers at lower scales, costs tend to rise as usage patterns become more demanding.

A. Costs increase with MAU tiers and concurrency

Sendbird pricing typically follows this structure:

Reports suggest that Sendbird remains broadly comparable to other providers up to around 10,000 MAUs. Beyond that, costs increase more noticeably due to higher MAU tiers and concurrency requirements.

Here is a pricing comparison from a Hackernoon post that shows how Sendbird’s price increases after a certain scale.

B. Peak concurrent connection (PCC) overages

Sendbird plans include PCC limits, typically around 5–10% of MAUs. When applications exceed this threshold, overage charges apply.

Industry reports indicate overages of approximately $5 per additional concurrent connection. During high-traffic events or engagement spikes, these charges can accumulate quickly.

By comparison, CometChat charges closer to $1 per concurrent connection and offers a zero overage guarantee for Enterprise customers.

C. Storage limits and feature-based add-ons

Sendbird enforces tiered limits on message retention and file storage. Standard plans include up to six months of message retention, with longer retention available on Enterprise plans.

Advanced capabilities such as thumbnail generation, image moderation, message translation, and enhanced search are available only on Pro or Enterprise plans, or via add-ons. While not hidden, these gated features can significantly increase total cost as product needs grow.

CometChat differentiates itself by offering unlimited storage and including these capabilities directly within its plans.

D. Enterprise-gated enhancements

Certain features—such as extended message retention, very large group sizes, data export, and HIPAA compliance—are enhanced or exclusively available on Sendbird’s Enterprise plan or as paid add-ons.

For example, HIPAA compliance and a signed BAA require additional commercial agreements. In contrast, CometChat offers HIPAA-compliant chat APIs and security controls within its Advanced plans.

E. Paid add-ons for advanced use cases

Advanced moderation tooling, conditional channel rules, translation, and compliance features often require paid upgrades. This layered pricing structure can lead to higher long-term costs as products mature.

In addition to Sendbird’s already high base pricing, users are required to purchase premium add-on packages to unlock critical functionalities needed for a complete chat experience.

For businesses in healthcare and other regulated industries, HIPAA compliance, along with a signed Business Associate Agreement (BAA)—also falls within the paid add-ons.

3. UI kit limitations

Sendbird provides UI kits for core platforms, but they are relatively basic and rigid compared to modern chat experiences.

There are no native UI kits for Flutter, Angular, or Vue. Teams using these frameworks must rely on SDKs and custom UI development, increasing engineering effort.

While Sendbird’s SDKs are powerful, many teams find that achieving feature parity with consumer-grade chat applications requires substantial custom work

CometChat is an in-app chat and calling infrastructure platform designed to help businesses add real-time communication to web and mobile applications quickly and predictably.

CometChat supports multiple integration paths:

Why CometChat stands out compared to Sendbird

Ease of setup

CometChat prioritizes developer velocity. With clear documentation, guided tutorials, and production-ready UI kits, teams can launch chat significantly faster.

UI components are fully customizable and designed to match modern messaging experiences, eliminating the need to design chat from scratch.

Implementation & customer support

CometChat provides email support, live calls, daily solutioning hours, and a comprehensive help center. White-glove onboarding and one-on-one solutioning are included at no extra cost.

Support is available 24x5. In contrast, Sendbird offers premium support as a paid add-on and operates on an 8x5 model.

Depth of solutioning

CometChat delivers industry-specific capabilities out of the box.

Marketplace platforms can use moderation and data masking to prevent platform leakage. Telehealth platforms benefit from HIPAA-compliant chat APIs, security controls, and advanced webhooks.

Where Sendbird provides flexible infrastructure, CometChat focuses on complete, ready-to-use solutions that reduce development overhead and accelerate time to market.

Migration Options

CometChat offers dedicated Import APIs and white-glove migration support to move users, conversations, and message history from Sendbird with minimal disruption.

Notable migrations from Sendbird to CometChat include Entole, Talkiverse, Launchpad 6, Yes Madam, Medsnow, and Starlight.

Direct Comparison of Sendbird and CometChat

2. Ably

Ably is a real-time data delivery platform and messaging service that provides a range of APIs and developer tools to enable real-time communication and data synchronisation in applications.

Relying on Ably's infrastructure can create a degree of vendor lock-in. Migrating away from Ably or transitioning to an alternative service may require substantial effort and adjustments to the application's codebase since it is deeply integrated with your core.

Depending on the nature of the data being transmitted through Ably, developers may need to implement additional security measures to ensure data privacy and compliance with regulatory requirements, such as GDPR or HIPAA.

Additional reading

3. Twilio

Twilio, a CPaaS (Communications Platform as a Service) provider, offers a versatile suite of communication services that empower developers to integrate real-time communication features seamlessly into their applications. .

A repeating problem with Twilio's real-time communications is their latency issues, particularly when users are spread across diverse geographic locations. It's worth noting that ensuring stringent data privacy and security compliance falls within the purview of the application developer, adding an extra layer of responsibility.

4. Agora

Agora, Inc. is a company renowned for its cloud-based real-time communication platform, which serves as its primary offering. At the heart of their service is a Software Development Kit (SDK) that empowers developers to seamlessly integrate audio, video, and interactive live streaming capabilities into their applications.

Their video chat SDK is designed with a "Mobile-First" approach, making it particularly well-suited for both iOS and Android platforms, ensuring compatibility with a wide array of mobile devices and operating system versions.

However, it is essential to consider some potential drawbacks, notably Agora’s React SDK for video calls is still in its beta stage. This means that its features are not fully complete and developers may encounter limitations while implementing it. Additionally, integrating real-time communication features can be complex, requiring developers to invest time in learning and implementing the SDK.

5. PubNub

PubNub specialises in real-time communication, allowing developers to build applications that can deliver messages, notifications, and data updates instantly to users or devices.

PubNub uses a publish-subscribe (pub/sub) messaging model, where data is published to specific channels and subscribers receive updates from those channels in real-time. This decouples senders and receivers, making it efficient for broadcasting messages to multiple subscribers.

Additional reading

6. StreamChat

StreamChat provides SDKs and client libraries for various programming languages and platforms, including JavaScript, Python, iOS, Android, and more. These SDKs streamline the integration of chat and messaging capabilities into applications.

StreamChat is versatile and can be used in various applications, including social networking apps, customer support chat, in-app messaging for on-demand services, and more. However, they are currently testing and refining audio and video calling features as they are in the beta phase of development.

Additional reading

Final Thoughts

Sendbird is a robust, enterprise-ready platform that excels when teams need flexible infrastructure and are prepared to manage tiered pricing, concurrency limits, and feature gating.

However, for businesses prioritizing faster time to market, predictable costs, and comprehensive out-of-the-box functionality, CometChat offers a more inclusive and unified alternative—without the operational and financial overhead that often accompanies Sendbird at scale.