Pusher vs Cloudflare Developer Platform
Realtime pub/sub WebSocket Channels + programmatic push (Beams)
vs. Workers, Pages, D1, R2, KV — edge-native serverless
Pricing tiers
Pusher
Beams: Sandbox
Free. 1K subscribers.
$0 base (usage-based)
Channels: Sandbox
Free. 100 concurrent conns, 200K msg/day.
$0 base (usage-based)
Beams: Startup
$29/mo. 10K subscribers.
$29/mo
Channels: Startup
$49/mo. 500 concurrent conns, 1M msg/day.
$49/mo
Channels: Pro
$99/mo. 2K concurrent conns, 4M msg/day.
$99/mo
Beams: Pro
$99/mo. 50K subscribers.
$99/mo
Beams: Business
$199/mo. 115K subscribers.
$199/mo
Channels: Business
$299/mo. 5K concurrent, 10M msg/day.
$299/mo
Beams: Premium
$399/mo. 250K subscribers.
$399/mo
Channels: Premium
$499/mo. 10K concurrent, 20M msg/day.
$499/mo
Channels: Growth
$699/mo. 15K concurrent, 40M msg/day.
$699/mo
Channels: Plus
$899/mo. 20K concurrent, 60M msg/day.
$899/mo
Channels: Growth Plus
$1,199/mo. 30K concurrent, 90M msg/day.
$1199/mo
Channels: Enterprise
Custom. 10M+ concurrent, 100B+ msg/day. SLA, dedicated support.
Custom
Cloudflare Developer Platform
Free
Workers: 100k req/day, 10ms CPU/req. D1: 5M reads/day. KV: 100k reads/day. R2: 10 GB/mo. Durable Objects: 100k req/day.
Free
Workers Paid
$5/month minimum. 10M Workers req/mo + overages. Generous D1, KV, R2 allowances. All services unlocked.
$5/mo
Enterprise
Custom. Higher SLAs, dedicated support, account managers.
Custom
Free-tier quotas head-to-head
Comparing be-sandbox on Pusher vs free on Cloudflare Developer Platform.
| Metric | Pusher | Cloudflare Developer Platform |
|---|---|---|
| d1 reads day | — | 5000000 rows/day |
| d1 storage gb | — | 5 GB |
| d1 writes day | — | 100000 rows/day |
| durable objects gb sec | — | 13000 GB-sec/day |
| durable objects requests | — | 100000 req/day |
| kv reads day | — | 100000 reads/day |
| kv storage gb | — | 1 GB |
| kv writes day | — | 1000 writes/day |
| r2 class a ops | — | 1000000 ops/month |
| r2 class b ops | — | 10000000 ops/month |
| r2 egress | — | free (unlimited) egress |
| r2 storage gb | — | 10 GB/month |
| subscribers | 1000 subscribers | — |
| workers cpu ms | — | 10 ms/invocation |
| workers logs events | — | 200000 events/day |
| workers requests day | — | 100000 req/day |
Features
Pusher · 11 features
- Beams — Push notifications for iOS/Android/Web with device interest groups.
- Beams Authenticated Users — Target users by auth user ID across devices.
- Channels — WebSocket pub/sub — realtime events, live updates, notifications.
- Channels Webhooks — Receive server-side notifications of channel activity.
- Client Events — Publish events from clients directly (triggered from browser).
- Debug Console — Live channel debugging dashboard.
- Encrypted Channels — End-to-end encrypted messages.
- Global Clusters — US, EU, AP-Southeast, etc. Pick nearest region.
- Presence Channels — Track who is online in a channel.
- Private Channels — Auth-required channels with server-signed tokens.
- Stats — Connection / message dashboards.
Cloudflare Developer Platform · 18 features
- AI Gateway — Proxy for OpenAI/Anthropic/Gemini with caching, analytics, retries, rate limitin…
- D1 — Managed serverless SQLite via sqlite-wasm. Read replicas via replicas keyword.
- Durable Objects — Strongly-consistent objects with storage, pinned to a region. Good for sync/stat…
- Email Routing — Catchall email routing + Email Workers for programmatic handling.
- Hyperdrive — Connection pooler + cache for Postgres. Makes your DB edge-fast.
- Images — Store, resize, transform images. Polish on-the-fly.
- KV — Eventually-consistent key-value at every POP. Good for config, caching.
- Pages — Static + SSR framework hosting (Next.js via OpenNext, Remix, Nuxt, SvelteKit).
- Pages Functions — Workers integrated into Pages for backend logic.
- Queues — Persistent message queues with batched consumers. Exactly-once per consumer grou…
- R2 — S3-compatible object storage with **zero egress fees**.
- Stream — Video upload, encoding, adaptive streaming.
- Vectorize — Vector DB at the edge. For RAG + semantic search.
- Workers — V8-isolate serverless at 300+ POPs. Sub-ms cold starts. JS/TS/Rust/Python (beta)…
- Workers AI — Run LLMs (Llama, Mistral) + image, speech, embedding models at edge via @cf/... …
- Workers Logs — Structured logs with 3-day retention on paid.
- Workflows — Durable step-functions for long-running tasks.
- Zaraz — Third-party script management at edge (analytics, marketing tags).
Developer interfaces
| Kind | Pusher | Cloudflare Developer Platform |
|---|---|---|
| CLI | — | Wrangler CLI |
| SDK | Pusher Beams Android, Pusher Beams iOS, Pusher Beams Web SDK, pusher-http-go, pusher-http-java, pusher-http-php, pusher-js (client), pusher (Node), pusher (Python), pusher (Ruby), PusherSwift, pusher-websocket-java (Android) | — |
| REST | Beams Publish API, Pusher HTTP API | Cloudflare REST API, D1 HTTP (via Worker), R2 S3-compatible API |
| MCP | — | Cloudflare MCP |
| OTHER | Channels Webhooks, Pusher WebSocket | Workers Runtime (V8) |
Staxly is an independent catalog of developer platforms. Some links to Pusher and Cloudflare Developer Platform may be affiliate links — Staxly may earn a commission if you sign up through them, at no extra cost to you. Pricing is verified against vendor pages at publication time — reconfirm before buying.
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