Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Pusher VS Google Cloud Functions

Compare Pusher VS Google Cloud Functions and see what are their differences

Note: These products don't have any matching categories. If you think this is a mistake, please edit the details of one of the products and suggest appropriate categories.

Pusher logo Pusher

Pusher is a hosted API for quickly, easily and securely adding scalable realtime functionality via WebSockets to web and mobile apps.

Google Cloud Functions logo Google Cloud Functions

A serverless platform for building event-based microservices.
  • Pusher Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-05
  • Google Cloud Functions Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-09-25

Pusher features and specs

  • Real-Time Capabilities
    Pusher offers real-time data transfer, enabling instant updates and live feeds without the need for page refreshes. Its WebSockets-based architecture ensures low latency communication.
  • Ease of Use
    The API is straightforward to integrate, with comprehensive documentation and SDKs for various programming languages and platforms, making implementation quick and painless.
  • Scalability
    Pusher can handle a large number of concurrent connections, making it suitable for applications that need to scale seamlessly as user demand grows.
  • Security
    Pusher provides built-in authentication and authorization options, ensuring that data is secure and accessible only to authorized users.
  • Managed Service
    As a managed service, it eliminates the need for maintaining the infrastructure for real-time functionality, freeing up resources and reducing operational complexity.

Possible disadvantages of Pusher

  • Cost
    Pusher can become expensive, especially for applications with high traffic or requiring a large number of concurrent connections, making it less suitable for startups or small-scale projects on a tight budget.
  • Vendor Lock-In
    Relying heavily on Pusher's services can lead to vendor lock-in, making it challenging to migrate to another service or in-house solution in the future.
  • Limited Offline Functionality
    Pusher is designed for real-time online communication, and it does not inherently support offline capabilities, which can be a limitation for applications that need to function without a constant internet connection.
  • Complexity for Advanced Use Cases
    While it's easy to set up for basic use cases, implementing more complex scenarios may require additional configuration and a deeper understanding of the architecture.
  • Latency
    Even though Pusher boasts low-latency communication, network conditions and geographical distances can still introduce lag, which might not be acceptable for ultra-low-latency requirements like high-frequency trading.

Google Cloud Functions features and specs

  • Scalability
    Google Cloud Functions automatically scale up or down as per demand, allowing you to handle varying workloads efficiently without manual intervention.
  • Cost-effectiveness
    You only pay for the actual compute time your functions use, rather than for pre-allocated resources, making it a cost-effective solution for many use cases.
  • Easy Integration
    Seamless integration with other Google Cloud services like Cloud Storage, Pub/Sub, and Firestore simplifies building complex, event-driven architectures.
  • Simplified Deployment
    Deploying functions is straightforward and does not require managing underlying infrastructure, reducing the operational overhead for developers.
  • Supports Multiple Languages
    Supports various programming languages including Node.js, Python, Go, and Java, offering flexibility to developers to use the language they are most comfortable with.

Possible disadvantages of Google Cloud Functions

  • Cold Start Latency
    Functions may experience cold start latency when they have not been invoked for a while, leading to higher initial response times.
  • Limited Execution Time
    Cloud Functions have a maximum execution timeout (typically 9 minutes), making them unsuitable for long-running tasks or processes.
  • Vendor Lock-In
    Heavily relying on Google Cloud Services can make it difficult to migrate to other cloud providers, leading to potential vendor lock-in.
  • Complexity in Local Testing
    Testing cloud functions locally can be challenging and may not fully replicate the cloud environment, complicating the development and debugging process.
  • Limited Customization
    Less control over the underlying infrastructure might pose challenges if you require specific customizations that are not supported by Cloud Functions.

Pusher videos

Mark Kermode reviews Pusher

More videos:

  • Review - Pusher (1996) - Movie Review
  • Review - Film Recommendations: The Pusher Trilogy

Google Cloud Functions videos

Google Cloud Functions: introduction to event-driven serverless compute on GCP

More videos:

  • Review - Building Serverless Applications with Google Cloud Functions (Next '17 Rewind)

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Pusher and Google Cloud Functions)
Mobile Push Messaging
100 100%
0% 0
Cloud Computing
0 0%
100% 100
Developer Tools
83 83%
17% 17
Cloud Hosting
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Pusher and Google Cloud Functions

Pusher Reviews

SignalR Alternatives
Pusher as a signal Alternative comes into the picture when it is simple and has free plans for the fallback of SSE to make the frame and log polling also available to the developers for troubleshooting as well.
Source: www.educba.com

Google Cloud Functions Reviews

Top 7 Firebase Alternatives for App Development in 2024
Google Cloud Functions is a natural choice for those looking to migrate from Firebase while staying within the Google Cloud ecosystem.
Source: signoz.io

Social recommendations and mentions

Pusher might be a bit more popular than Google Cloud Functions. We know about 55 links to it since March 2021 and only 47 links to Google Cloud Functions. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Pusher mentions (55)

  • 5 Must-Watch Tutorials to Build Your SaaS App in 2025
    In this tutorial, you’ll create a Next.js project with TailwindCSS and build custom authentication pages for Clerk without the watermark. This means you’ll create a custom Clerk authentication component, allowing you to have a UI without the Clerk branding in the authentication component. You’ll then set up file uploads using Uploadcare and create custom theming with Shadcn UI for light and dark modes. A real-time... - Source: dev.to / 2 months ago
  • PubNub vs Pusher creating a realtime messaging app in React
    When talking about general IM applications, having the ability to speak to someone in real-time opens up the door to so many unique possibilities. Our world has become ever more connected as a result of these newfound capabilities. In todays article we will learn all about messaging as we build a real-time messaging application. The application will be able to connect to two different real-time application... - Source: dev.to / 8 months ago
  • 10 Must-Use APIs for Your Next SaaS Project
    For real-time notifications, Pusher’s APIs allow you to implement in-app notifications, chat features, and collaboration tools easily. You can find it here. - Source: dev.to / 8 months ago
  • How to Build a Real-time Chat App with Laravel, Vue.js, and Pusher
    Pusher is a cloud-hosted service that makes adding real-time functionality to applications easy. It acts as a real-time communication layer between servers and clients. This allows your backend server to instantly broadcast new data via Pusher to your Vue.js client. - Source: dev.to / 9 months ago
  • Show HN: Webhooked.email (2023)
    Feature request received! Pusher as in this thing -- https://pusher.com/ right? Any other places you want to push to? Slack? - Source: Hacker News / 9 months ago
View more

Google Cloud Functions mentions (47)

  • Exploring Serverless APIs: A Guide for Developers
    Google Cloud Functions bases pricing on Invocations, runtime, and memory with competitive free tier options. - Source: dev.to / 27 days ago
  • Get Started with Serverless Architectures: Top Tools You Need to Know
    Google Cloud Functions Google Cloud Functions is a scalable serverless execution environment for building and connecting cloud services. It provides triggers automatically, with out-of-the-box support for HTTP and event-driven triggers from GCP services. There are two types of Google Cloud Functions: API cloud functions and event-driven cloud functions. The API cloud functions are invoked from standard HTTP... - Source: dev.to / about 1 month ago
  • Stay Compliant, Mitigate Risks: Understanding AML/KYC as a technologist
    Ensure that the processing and throughput requirements of your AML/KYC solutions can handle appropriately sized volumes of data and transactions for your organization’s needs efficiently. A microservices architecture using tools like Docker or Kubernetes for proprietary systems can help to ensure scalability, allowing you to scale individual components as needed. Exploit load balancing and caching mechanisms to... - Source: dev.to / 10 months ago
  • Next.js Deployment: Vercel's Charm vs. GCP's Muscle
    Data-Driven Projects: Seamless integration with Google's data and AI/ML services (like Cloud Functions and Cloud SQL) streamlines development workflows for data-driven applications. - Source: dev.to / 10 months ago
  • Is Serverless Architecture Right For You?
    The first reason is that serverless architectures are inherently scalable and elastic. They automatically scale up or down based on the incoming workload without requiring manual intervention through serverless compute services like AWS Lambda, Azure Functions, or Google Cloud Functions. - Source: dev.to / 12 months ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Pusher and Google Cloud Functions, you can also consider the following products

Socket.io - Realtime application framework (Node.JS server)

Google App Engine - A powerful platform to build web and mobile apps that scale automatically.

Firebase - Firebase is a cloud service designed to power real-time, collaborative applications for mobile and web.

Salesforce Platform - Salesforce Platform is a comprehensive PaaS solution that paves the way for the developers to test, build, and mitigate the issues in the cloud application before the final deployment.

PubNub - PubNub is a real-time messaging system for web and mobile apps that can handle API for all platforms and push messages to any device anywhere in the world in a fraction of a second without having to worry about proxies, firewalls or mobile drop-offs.

AWS Lambda - Automatic, event-driven compute service