Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

SockJS VS SocketCluster

Compare SockJS VS SocketCluster and see what are their differences

SockJS logo SockJS

SockJS is a browser JavaScript library that provides a WebSocket-like object.

SocketCluster logo SocketCluster

An open, scalable realtime engine for Node.js
  • SockJS Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-07-24
  • SocketCluster Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-05-07

SockJS features and specs

  • Cross-browser Compatibility
    SockJS provides a consistent WebSocket-like API that works across all modern browsers, including fallback options for older browsers that don't support WebSockets.
  • Fallback Options
    SockJS automatically uses the best-available transport method, such as JSONP, XHR streaming, or XHR polling, ensuring connectivity even in challenging network environments.
  • Reliability
    By offering multiple transport methods, SockJS provides reliable real-time communication even when WebSocket connections might be unstable or unsupported.
  • Ease of Use
    SockJS abstracts the complexity of managing various transport protocols, allowing developers to focus on implementing application logic rather than handling connection details.
  • Server Support
    SockJS is supported by several server-side implementations in different programming languages, enabling flexibility in choosing backend technologies.

Possible disadvantages of SockJS

  • Overhead
    The additional abstraction layer and fallback mechanisms may introduce some overhead compared to using native WebSockets directly, impacting performance to some extent.
  • Configuration Complexity
    Setting up SockJS with proper fallback handling and configuring the server-side components might be more complex than using native WebSockets, especially for simple use cases.
  • Less Control
    Developers have less control over the specific transport protocols being used, which might be a disadvantage in scenarios where such control is necessary for optimization or monitoring purposes.
  • Potential Latency
    Using fallback transports like polling can introduce higher latency compared to native WebSocket connections, which might not be suitable for highly time-sensitive applications.
  • Project Maintenance
    As an open-source project, SockJS relies on community support for maintenance and updates. This could pose a risk if development and support decline over time.

SocketCluster features and specs

  • Scalability
    SocketCluster is designed to be highly scalable, allowing the creation of distributed systems that can handle massive real-time workloads by leveraging multi-core servers and multiple machines.
  • Real-time Performance
    SocketCluster provides low-latency, real-time two-way communication between clients and servers, which is ideal for applications requiring instant data exchange.
  • Flexibility
    It supports a wide range of protocols and languages, which allows developers to create versatile and powerful WebSocket-based applications. It also allows for custom authentication and middleware.
  • Resilience
    Offers automatic reconnections and failover mechanisms, which enhance system reliability and uptime by managing connection interruptions gracefully.
  • Pub/Sub Model
    The built-in publish/subscribe model simplifies message broadcasting to multiple clients and is useful for applications like chat or collaborative tools.
  • Community and Support
    SocketCluster has an active community and good documentation, which helps developers find resources, tutorials, and support through discourse and GitHub.

Possible disadvantages of SocketCluster

  • Complexity
    Setting up and managing a SocketCluster deployment can be complex, especially when dealing with distributed clusters and scaling out, which may require significant effort and expertise.
  • Resource Intensive
    SocketCluster applications can be resource-intensive depending on the scale, requiring careful planning of infrastructure to ensure performance and cost-effectiveness.
  • Maintenance Overhead
    Managing a SocketCluster environment could introduce additional maintenance tasks, such as monitoring and upgrading clusters and handling failover scenarios.
  • Client Support
    Not all environments may support WebSockets natively, which may require polyfills or fallbacks for compatibility, potentially increasing complexity and development time.

SockJS videos

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SocketCluster videos

013 Client side Logins Authentication with Socketcluster with the client

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to SockJS and SocketCluster)
Developer Tools
33 33%
67% 67
Mobile Push Messaging
40 40%
60% 60
App Development
42 42%
58% 58
Cloud Infrastructure
29 29%
71% 71

User comments

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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, SocketCluster should be more popular than SockJS. It has been mentiond 11 times since March 2021. 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.

SockJS mentions (2)

  • WebSockets and Node.js - testing WS and SockJS by building a web app
    SockJS is a library that mimics the native WebSockets API. Additionally, it will fall back to HTTP whenever a WebSocket fails to connect, or if the browser being used doesn’t support WebSockets. Like WS, SockJS requires a server counterpart; its maintainers provide both a JavaScript client library and a Node.js server library. - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
  • Top WebSocket libraries for Node.js in 2022
    SockJS is a JavaScript library that provides communication between the client and the server in a way similar to the native WebSockets API. SockJS functions with a server counterpart in the form of sockjs-node and SockJS-client, a JavaScript client library. - Source: dev.to / over 3 years ago

SocketCluster mentions (11)

  • You might not need WebSockets
    The problem with HTTP2 is that the server-push aspect was tacked on top of an existing protocol as an afterthought. Also, because HTTP is a resource transfer protocol, it adds a whole bunch of overheads like request and response headings which aren't always necessary but add to processing time. The primary purpose of HTTP2 was to allow servers to preemptively push files/resources to clients to avoid round-trip... - Source: Hacker News / 20 days ago
  • Exponential Rate Limiting
    For WebSockets, using SocketCluster (https://socketcluster.io), it's possible to queue up all requests from the same client and then detect and respond to high backpressure spikes (e.g. By disconnecting the client and/or recording the incident). You can combine different approaches like limiting the number of connections from a single IP within a certain timeframe and also limiting the backpressure. The ability to... - Source: Hacker News / 8 months ago
  • Ask HN: Why do message queue-based architectures seem less popular now?
    I never fully understood the need for back end message queues TBH. You can just poll the database or data store every few seconds and process tasks in batches... IMO, the 'real time' aspect was only ever useful for front end use cases for performance reasons since short polling every second with HTTP (with all its headers/overheads) is prohibitively expensive. Also, HTTP long polling introduces some architectural... - Source: Hacker News / 11 months ago
  • The Sound of Software
    Recently, I added an AI-generated soundtrack to my open source project's home page https://socketcluster.io/ It seems unconventional at first but I distinctly remember about a decade ago when Adobe Flash was still broadly supported, many Flash websites had soundtracks. I think the reason why regular HTML websites didn't have them was because it was difficult to implement and internet was much slower so they had to... - Source: Hacker News / about 1 year ago
  • Backpressure explained – the resisted flow of data through software
    I wrote an async/await stream library for JavaScript/Node.js which supports backpressure management. It's heavily tested and used as part of SocketCluster (pub/sub SDK) https://socketcluster.io/. - Source: Hacker News / about 1 year ago
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What are some alternatives?

When comparing SockJS and SocketCluster, you can also consider the following products

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

UbSub - Quickly and easily distribute your events between services. See a log stream and debug events before they even get to your services.

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.

Faye - Simple pub/sub messaging for the web

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

Primus - Primus, the creator god of the transformers & an abstraction layer for real-time to prevent...