Dev tools · alternatives · 2026
24 alternatives to Vask – Pusher-compatible WebSockets on Cloudflare, no fan-out fees
Howdy HN, Ashley here. Most of my projects use realtime, but the jump from 'free' to 'paid' on existing platforms stressed me out, and I didn’t want to self-host soketi or sockudo. So I built Vask, a websocket platform built on top of Cloudflare Workers, Durable Objects, KV storage, and analytics engine, so I can get sort-of infinitely scalable, low latency, and low-cost websockets. I noticed that ‘fan-out’ is pretty cheap with Cloudflare, so Vask can bill per message sent rather than message received (no fan-out cost), which is great for certain workloads, and quite different to existing…
Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes.
- 1DA
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…
2023 · driftdb.com · its alternatives →
- 2
I've built this to make it easy to host your own infra for lightweight VMs at large scale. Intended for exec of AI-generated code, for CICD runners, or for off-chain AI DApps. Mainly to avoid Docker-in-Docker dangers and mess. Super easy to use with CLI / Python SDK, friendly to AI engs who usually don't like to mess with VM orchestration and networking too much. Defense-in-depth philosophy. Would love to get feedback (and contributors: clear & exciting roadmap!), thx
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 3
We’ve been working on Vaev, a minimal web browser engine built from scratch. It supports HTML/XHTML, the CSS cascade, @page rules for pagination, and print-to-PDF rendering. It even handles calc(), var(), and percentage units—and yes, it renders Google.com (mostly). This is an experimental project focused on learning and exploration. Networking is basic (http:// and file:// only), and grid layouts aren’t supported yet, but we’re making progress fast. We’d love your thoughts and feedback.
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 4FR
Deliver real-time data and low-latency WebSockets & pub/sub at the edge with Fastly. Scale chat, IoT, live apps and messaging with a self-managed infrastructure.
2017 · fanout.io · its alternatives →
- 5
- 6Relayze▲7
Debug webhooks in real-time with instant observability
Feb 2026 · relayze.app · its alternatives →
- 7
Hi HN, I built Verani, an experimental realtime SDK for Cloudflare Actors (Durable Objects). The goal is to bring a familiar, event-based DX (rooms, emit, channels, lifecycle hooks) to Cloudflare Durable Objects, while handling hibernation correctly. It focuses on - Socket.io-like semantics on top of Durable Objects - Proper Actor hibernation handling (WebSockets survive, state is restored) - Typed API with explicit tradeoffs. It’s early and experimental, but functional. I built it mainly to explore DX and state management patterns on Cloudflare Actors, and I’d love feedback from people…
Dec 2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 8
- 9
Socketo▲2Pusher-compatible, serverless WebSockets for developers.
May 2026 · socketo.dev · its alternatives →
- 10
301 Moved to http://github.com/daraosn/mustekala. Contribute to daraosn/node-puller development by creating an account on GitHub.
2012 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 11
2017 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 12
Inspired by the recent justfuckingusetailwind.com, I built a similar "love letter" to the Cloudflare ecosystem. I find myself reaching for Workers, R2, D1, and KV for almost every project lately, so I wanted to capture that sentiment in a single, slightly over-the-top page. It’s a simple side project, but the stack is: - Vite + TypeScript - Biome + Ultracite - Deployed (obviously) on Cloudflare First draft in Claude, the copy was drafted with Grok to get that specific tone, then I used Google's AI Studio to accelerate the build with touch up's in Cursor. Link:…
Dec 2025 · justfuckingusecloudflare.com · its alternatives →
- 13
FaaS GRIP library for Python. Contribute to fanout/python-faas-grip development by creating an account on GitHub.
2017 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 14
Last week Cloudflare released Cap'n Web [1], a schema-free capability-based RPC protocol. I built capn-rs this week - a Rust implementation with full wire protocol compatibility. Links: GitHub: https://github.com/currentspace/capn-rs Crates: https://crates.io/crates/capnweb-server API docs: https://docs.rs/capnweb-server What's working: Wire compatibility verified via integration tests against TypeScript reference Multi-transport: HTTP batch, WebSocket, WebTransport (HTTP/3) Complete IL (intermediate language) expression evaluator…
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 15
For the last month or so I've been working on bewCloud, and today I'm making its source code public and open! Right now, the Dashboard (URLs + freeform notes), News (RSS/Atom/JSON feeds), and Contacts (CardDav) are working. If you have any suggestions, comments, or recommendations, I'd love to hear it. Thank you for your attention and kindness. I really appreciate it!
2024 · bewcloud.com · its alternatives →
- 16AU
I run 3mins.news (https://3mins.news), an AI news aggregator built entirely on Cloudflare Workers. The backend has 10+ cron triggers running every few minutes: RSS fetching, article clustering, LLM calls, email delivery. The problem: Workers Paid Plan has hard monthly limits (10M requests, 1M KV writes, 1M queue ops, etc.). There's no built-in "pause when you hit the limit", CF just starts billing overages. KV writes cost $5/M over the cap, so a retry loop bug can get expensive fast. AWS has Budget Alerts, but those are passive notifications, by the time you read the email,…
Mar 2026 · its alternatives →
- 17
Creating Real Time chat with Laravel, Vue and Pusher - ahmedkhan847/chatwithlaravelandvue
2017 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 18
Launch ready-to-use websockets with a click of a button!
2025 · its alternatives →
- 19
- 20
Nov 2025 · iggy.apache.org · its alternatives →
- 21
Since there’s a few discussions recently on $4 VPSes we thought you might be interested in Symbiosis, a cheaper and simpler managed k8s provider. Supported features include external LBs, encrypted+replicated storage and autoscaler. Infrastructure can be managed with UI, CLI, Terraform or Pulumi. Control planes are free of charge and a 1vCPU/2GB node goes for $6 per month. We’re live in Germany right now and we’re expanding into US during 2023. Feel free to try it out and leave a comment.
2023 · symbiosis.host · its alternatives →
- 22
Hi hackers! I'm a self-taught solo teenage dev ever wanted to show what you're doing right now on the internet? well I've been wanting to for a while, so I built Lynk, a lightweight macOS app that tracks your active apps, window titles, and daily usage in real time, and broadcasts that data over WebSockets. Oh and it also updates whenever you switch apps to connected clients! No SDKs, no APIs — just local tracking + a websocket endpoint you can ping from any language. GitHub: https://github.com/shaileshsaravanan/lynk
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 23
wsgrok▲7I built it for myself because ngrok didn't let me add one more domain unless I paid $12 more. I probably should've looked for alternatives before building my own, but my grudge got in the way . Once I started, I wanted to make it better than the other options. Silly, I know. No one probably cares. I plan to open source it sometime next year because I’ve got other projects to finish first. It's free until I deplete my cloud credits, then it will switch to a tier-based model with a free option.
Jan 2026 · wsgrok.com · its alternatives →
- 24AR
You might have heard that scaling WebSocket infrastructure is not an easy task. It was true–until recently. We built the open source real-time server, AnyCable, that deploys to Fly.io in one command (and configures itself), and the SDK for serverless JS/TS that allows you to build real-time features without any 3d-party PaaS. We call it a real-time server, because it has WebSockets and more, and it’s easy to run and scale. Here’s all you need to add real-time to your Next.js/Vercel app: – Deploy AnyCable to Fly.io with one command (see the docs) – In your Vercel app add one…
2023 · docs.anycable.io · its alternatives →
Also compare
- DriftDB – an open source WebSocket backend for real-time apps alternatives
- Katakate – Dozens of VMs per node for safe code exec alternatives
- Vaev – A browser engine built from scratch (It renders google.com) alternatives
- Fanout – Reverse proxy to push real-time data to connected devices alternatives
- Slaask V2 alternatives
- Relayze alternatives
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 →