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Dev tools · alternatives · 2026

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24 alternatives to DriftDB – an open source WebSocket backend for real-time apps

Hey HN! I’ve written a bunch of WebSocket servers over the years to do simple things like state synchronization, WebRTC signaling, and notifying a client when a backend job was run. I realized that if I had a simple way to create a private, temporary, mini-redis that the client could talk to directly, it would save a lot of time. So we created DriftDB. In addition to the open source server that you can run yourself, we also provide https://jamsocket.live where you can use an instance we host on Cloudflare’s edge (~13ms round trip latency from my home in NY). You may have seen my…

DriftDB is an open-source WebSocket backend designed for building real-time applications. It functions as a private, temporary data store that clients can connect to directly via WebSocket, eliminating the need to… Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes. DriftDB – an open source WebSocket backend for real-time apps launched in 2023; newer entries below may have overtaken it.

  1. 1

    Hey there HN! We’re Joe and Stopa, and today we’re open sourcing InstantDB, a client-side database that makes it easy to build real-time and collaborative apps like Notion and Figma. Building modern apps these days involves a lot of schleps. For a basic CRUD app you need to spin up servers, wire up endpoints, integrate auth, add permissions, and then marshal data from the backend to the frontend and back again. If you want to deliver a buttery smooth user experience, you’ll need to add optimistic updates and rollbacks. We do these steps over and over for every feature we build, which can…

    2024 · github.com · its alternatives →

  2. 2

    Open-source live-chat, email support, omni-channel desk. An alternative to Intercom, Zendesk, Salesforce Service Cloud etc. 🔥💬 - chatwoot/chatwoot

    2019 · github.com · its alternatives →

  3. 3
    clientdb▲295

    Build lightning fast apps with instantaneous interactions

    2022 · its alternatives →

  4. 4
    Drift 2.0▲569

    A scalable way to talk to your customers

    2016 · drift.com · its alternatives →

  5. 5

    DriftDB - An experimental append-only database with built-in time travel. Query any point in history, guaranteed data integrity, and immutable audit trails. Written in Rust. - DavidLiedle/DriftDB

    2025 · github.com · its alternatives →

  6. 6
    superlog▲497

    Hey HN, we’re Nico and Arseniy, co-founders of Superlog (https://superlog.sh). We're building a self-installing, self healing observability tool meant not to be opened. It has a wizard that daily sets up proper logging and an agent that investigates errors and opens PRs. Super short demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFhU9Mk247M. In our earlier startups, we tried Sentry, Datadog, Grafana, Dash0, and nothing was good enough. Proper telemetry and alerting still requires a ton of manual setup. We struggled with adding good logs, so debugging was tough, especially as…

    Jun 2026 · superlog.sh · its alternatives →

  7. 7

    Hey HN! We’re Max and Thibault building OpenStatus.dev an OpenSource synthetic monitoring platform with incident managements 1 min demo: https://twitter.com/mxkaske/status/1685666982786404352 We have just reached 2000 stars on GitHub https://github.com/openstatusHQ/openstatus We are really excited to hear your feedback/questions and connect further: our emails are [email protected] and [email protected]. Thank you!

    2025 · openstatus.dev · its alternatives →

  8. 8
    Drift▲144

    An open-source Gist and pastebin alternative

    2022 · drift.maxleiter.com · its alternatives →

  9. 9

    A 100% free knowledge base for your startup

    2018 · drift.com · its alternatives →

  10. 10

    Broadcast, Presence, and Postgres Changes via WebSockets - supabase/realtime

    2020 · github.com · its alternatives →

  11. 11

    Embeddable session replay infrastructure on rrweb, the open source standard. Unbranded SDK, ingest on your domain, replay through your API. Free tier included.

    2018 · rrweb.io · its alternatives →

  12. 12

    One year ago I open-sourced my very first 'real' project and shared it here. I was a college student in my senior year and desperately looking for a job. At the time of sharing it i couldn't even afford a domain and naively let someone buy the one i had my eyes on lol. It's been a hell of a year with this blowing up, me moving to another country, and switching 2 jobs. In a year we somehow managed to hit 26k stars, grow a 1000+ person discord community, and support 37 languages. I couldn't be more grateful for the community that helped this grow, but now i don't know what direction to take…

    2025 · drawdb.app · its alternatives →

  13. 13MD

    Hey HN, I’m an engineer at Supabase [0] and one of the creators of this demo. My team and I have been working hard to bring developers the next version of Supabase Realtime. The current version of Realtime [1] is a Change Data Capture (CDC) server for a PostgreSQL database that broadcasts changes via WebSockets to authorized subscribers. It’s written in Elixir/Phoenix. The server utilizes PostgreSQL’s logical replication functionality, which writes database changes to Write-Ahead Logging (WAL) segment files, and a replication slot, responsible for managing and retaining WAL files.…

    2022 · multiplayer.dev · its alternatives →

  14. 14

    Scalable open source pub/sub SDK with support for RPC, JWT authentication and Kubernetes — optimized for async/await

    2016 · socketcluster.io · its alternatives →

  15. 15

    An demo app for lattice-core. Contribute to jasonl99/card_game development by creating an account on GitHub.

    2017 · github.com · its alternatives →

  16. 16
    InstantDB▲320

    Complete backend with auth and storage in one prompt

    Apr 2026 · instantdb.com · its alternatives →

  17. 17

    A self-hostable clone of GitHub Gist

    2022 · drift.maxleiter.com · its alternatives →

  18. 18

    The local-first database that runs on every JS runtime and replicates with your existing backend - no vendor, no lock-in - https://rxdb.info/ - pubkey/rxdb

    2017 · github.com · its alternatives →

  19. 19PS

    Hello HN, I am Sai Srirampur, one of the Co-founders of PeerDB. (https://github.com/PeerDB-io/peerdb). We spent the past 7 months building a solid experience to replicate data from Postgres to data warehouses. Now we're expanding to queues. PeerDB Streams provides a simple and native way to replicate changes as they happen in Postgres to Queues (Kafka, Redpanda, Google PubSub, etc). We use Postgres logical decoding to enable Change Data Capture (CDC). Blog post here: https://blog.peerdb.io/peerdb-streams-simple-native-postgres.... 10-min quickstart here:…

    2024 · its alternatives →

  20. 20

    Hey HN, We've been experimenting with a real-time, version-controlled NoDB for Deno & React called GoatDB. The idea is to remove backend complexity while keeping apps fast, offline-resilient, and easy to self-host. Runs on the client – No backend required, incremental queries keep things efficient. Self-hosted & lightweight – Deploy a single executable, no server stack needed. Offline-first & resilient – Clients work independently & can restore state after server outages. Edge-native & fast – Real-time sync happens locally with minimal overhead. Why We Built It: We needed something that’s…

    2025 · github.com · its alternatives →

  21. 21
    PeerDB▲110

    Fast, native ETL for Postgres

    2023 · peerdb.io · its alternatives →

  22. 22

    Start Meaningful Conversations On Your Website in Real-Time

    2018 · drift.com · its alternatives →

  23. 23
    Pulse▲90

    Lightweight real-time polls - open source & self-hosted

    Mar 2026 · demo.pulse.kartikeybhardwaj.com · its alternatives →

  24. 24
    Hubsync▲78

    Hubspot data at your fingertips in real-time

    2023 · its alternatives →

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Ranked by how close each launch is in meaning, then by votes. Prices were read from each product’s own site when checked and can change. Refine with your own description →