Staxly

Pusher vs GitHub Actions

Realtime pub/sub WebSocket Channels + programmatic push (Beams)
vs. CI/CD native to GitHub — workflows + marketplace + hosted runners

Pusher websiteGitHub Actions

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
Pusher website

GitHub Actions

Public Repos
$0. Free unlimited minutes on hosted runners (Linux). No private runners.
$0 base (usage-based)
Free (Personal)
$0. 2,000 minutes/mo private repos (Linux). 500MB Packages storage.
Free
Per-minute Overage
$0.008/min Linux ($0.08 macOS, $0.016 Windows) after included minutes.
$0/mo
Team
$4/user/mo. 3,000 minutes/mo. 2GB storage. Org management.
$4/mo
Enterprise
$21/user/mo. 50,000 minutes/mo. 50GB storage. SAML SSO, audit.
$21/mo
GitHub Actions

Free-tier quotas head-to-head

Comparing be-sandbox on Pusher vs free on GitHub Actions.

MetricPusherGitHub Actions
subscribers1000 subscribers

Features

Pusher · 11 features

  • BeamsPush notifications for iOS/Android/Web with device interest groups.
  • Beams Authenticated UsersTarget users by auth user ID across devices.
  • ChannelsWebSocket pub/sub — realtime events, live updates, notifications.
  • Channels WebhooksReceive server-side notifications of channel activity.
  • Client EventsPublish events from clients directly (triggered from browser).
  • Debug ConsoleLive channel debugging dashboard.
  • Encrypted ChannelsEnd-to-end encrypted messages.
  • Global ClustersUS, EU, AP-Southeast, etc. Pick nearest region.
  • Presence ChannelsTrack who is online in a channel.
  • Private ChannelsAuth-required channels with server-signed tokens.
  • StatsConnection / message dashboards.

GitHub Actions · 18 features

  • Actions CachePersistent cache across runs.
  • Actions Marketplace20K+ reusable actions.
  • ARC (K8s Controller)Autoscale self-hosted on K8s.
  • ArtifactsUpload/download job outputs.
  • Composite ActionsActions made of other actions.
  • Concurrency GroupsCancel / queue overlapping runs.
  • Container JobsRun a whole job in a Docker image.
  • Environments + ApprovalsGate deploys with manual approval.
  • Job SummariesMarkdown summaries in UI.
  • Larger Runners4-64 vCPU, ARM, GPU.
  • Matrix StrategyFan out over axes.
  • OIDC Cloud AuthExchange JWT for cloud credentials.
  • Reusable Workflowsworkflow_call.
  • Secrets + VariablesEncrypted org/repo/env secrets.
  • Self-Hosted RunnersYour own runners.
  • Service ContainersSidecar containers (DBs, Redis) per job.
  • Triggerspush, pull_request, schedule, workflow_dispatch, etc.
  • WorkflowsEvent-driven YAML workflows.

Developer interfaces

KindPusherGitHub Actions
CLIgh run CLI
SDKPusher 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)@actions/* toolkit
RESTBeams Publish API, Pusher HTTP APIGitHub Actions REST API
GRAPHQLGitHub GraphQL (Actions)
OTHERChannels Webhooks, Pusher WebSocketActions Marketplace, Actions Tab (Web), workflow_* webhooks, Workflow YAML
Staxly is an independent catalog of developer platforms. Some links to Pusher and GitHub Actions 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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