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…
In plain words
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 build custom servers for state synchronization, WebRTC signaling, and job notifications. The tool is available as self-hosted open-source software or as a managed service hosted on Cloudflare's edge network, offering low-latency connections for developers building real-time collaborative features.
written from the facts on this page · September 2026
From the sources
In the maker’s words, at launch
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 blog post a couple months back, “You might not need a CRDT”[1]. Some of those ideas (especially the emphasis on state machine synchronization) are implemented in DriftDB. Here’s an IRL talk I gave on DriftDB last week at Browsertech SF[2] and a 4-minute tutorial of building a cross-client synchronized slider component in React[3] [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33865672 [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPRv3MImcqM [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktb6HUZlyJs
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