Open-source alternatives to Websockets Ws

Starscream is a Swift WebSocket client library that provides a concrete implementation of the WebSocket protocol for iOS and macOS applications. It functions as an event-driven wrapper for establishing and managing bidirectional connections to send and receive text and binary frames over TCP. The library includes a secure WebSocket client capable of encrypting traffic and validating server identities. It manages the full connection lifecycle, from the initial handshake and header exchange to session termination with custom close codes. The project covers a broad range of networking capabilit

WebSocket-Node is a server-side implementation of the WebSocket protocol for Node.js environments. It serves as a framework for establishing persistent, bidirectional communication channels and low-latency data exchange between clients and servers. The project provides a secure socket implementation using transport layer security and includes an integrated client for establishing outbound encrypted connections. It utilizes a formal protocol-state machine and an event-driven connection framework to manage high-concurrency network streams. The framework covers server-side infrastructure includ

Melody is a WebSocket server framework designed to upgrade HTTP connections into bidirectional streams. It functions as a session manager and binary streaming library that facilitates real-time data exchange between a server and multiple remote clients. The project features a broadcast engine that optimizes multi-client transmissions through wire-representation caching. It includes a dedicated session management system for attaching custom state to persistent network connections and an upgrade handler that validates handshake headers. The framework covers broad capability areas including eve

This is a Python WebSocket client library designed to establish full-duplex, persistent network connections for real-time exchange of text and binary data. It functions as an asynchronous network client and a TCP socket wrapper, managing the complete lifecycle of a connection from the initial handshake to graceful closure. The implementation includes a secure WebSocket client that handles SSL/TLS encryption, certificate verification, and secure handshake protocols. It further distinguishes itself by supporting advanced connectivity options, including proxy routing via HTTP or SOCKS proxies an

NATS Server is a high-performance, lightweight messaging system designed for cloud-native applications, edge computing, and distributed microservices. It functions as a distributed publish-subscribe broker that routes messages using hierarchical, dot-separated subject strings, enabling decoupled communication between services without requiring centralized broker lookups. The system supports core messaging patterns including asynchronous publish-subscribe, request-reply, and load-balanced queue processing. The platform distinguishes itself through a decentralized architecture that eliminates t

websocket-sharp is a C# library implementation of the WebSocket protocol used for building bidirectional client and server applications. It enables real-time data exchange between endpoints via persistent connections. The library provides specialized networking capabilities, including SSL encrypted networking for secure transport and certificate validation. It also features HTTP proxy tunneling to route traffic through intermediary servers using basic or digest authentication. The project covers a broad range of capabilities, including the implementation of both WebSocket clients and servers

websockets is a Python library that provides both client and server implementations for the WebSocket protocol, enabling real-time, bidirectional communication between applications. At its core, it offers the fundamental primitives for establishing persistent connections, managing their lifecycles, and exchanging text or binary messages asynchronously using coroutines. The library distinguishes itself through comprehensive support for various messaging patterns, including broadcast messaging to all connected clients, targeted messaging to specific clients, and shared application state synchro

Beast is a C++ library for implementing low-level HTTP and WebSocket clients and servers. It functions as an asynchronous networking framework designed to compose non-blocking I/O operations and layered stream stacks for managing concurrent network traffic, specifically utilizing the Boost.Asio asynchronous model. The library provides a comprehensive implementation of the HTTP/1.1 and WebSocket protocols. For HTTP, it includes primitives for parsing and serializing messages with support for chunked transfer encoding, incremental body reading, and request pipelining. Its WebSocket implementati

Elysia is a high-performance TypeScript web framework designed for building type-safe backend services. It provides a modular, plugin-based architecture that allows developers to compose server logic, middleware, and validation schemas into scalable application instances. By leveraging native web standards, the framework ensures portability across diverse JavaScript runtimes, including Node.js, Deno, and various edge computing environments. The framework distinguishes itself through its focus on end-to-end type safety, automatically synchronizing request and response definitions between the s

libhv is a high-performance C/C++ network library and event-driven I/O framework used to build TCP, UDP, SSL, HTTP, WebSocket, and MQTT clients and servers. It provides a non-blocking event loop for managing network sockets, timers, and system signals across multiple threads. The project is distinguished by its integrated support for specialized network roles, including a full HTTP web server with RESTful routing and middleware, an MQTT messaging client for IoT communication, and the ability to implement SOCKS5 and HTTP proxies. It also features a reliable UDP implementation to ensure ordered

Websocat is a specialized set of command-line tools for WebSocket communication, acting as a client, server, and stream processor. It provides a terminal-based interface for connecting to WebSocket servers, hosting secure WebSocket servers, and bridging data between WebSockets and other network transports. The project distinguishes itself by functioning as a bidirectional network relay, allowing the routing of data between WebSocket streams, TCP sockets, UNIX sockets, and standard system input and output. It includes specialized implementations for SOCKS5 and HTTP proxying, as well as a strea

NanoHTTPD is a lightweight, embeddable HTTP server for Java applications. It allows developers to integrate web server capabilities directly into a Java project to handle incoming requests without requiring a standalone installation. The project provides specialized implementations for an HTTPS web server, a WebSocket server for bidirectional real-time communication, and a static file web server. These capabilities enable secure network traffic through SSL certificates and the delivery of local files with automatic MIME type detection. The server includes systems for request routing and hand

PartyKit is a serverless WebSocket backend platform for building real-time multiplayer applications. It provides a globally distributed edge computing runtime that runs stateful server code close to users, with automatic scaling and hibernation for idle rooms. The platform handles WebSocket connections, HTTP requests, and durable storage without requiring infrastructure management, and includes a client and server SDK with hooks, storage, and Yjs integration for building collaborative features. The platform distinguishes itself through per-room isolation using Durable Objects, where each uniq

This project is a comprehensive sample library and implementation guide for ASP.NET Core. It provides a collection of practical examples and projects that demonstrate how to build web applications, RESTful APIs, and high-performance services. The repository focuses on a variety of architectural patterns, including the development of Minimal APIs, contract-first gRPC services, and real-time communication using WebSockets and Server-Sent Events. It includes detailed implementations for user identity and security, such as token-based authentication and CSRF protection. The codebase covers a bro

This project is a PHP library designed for establishing persistent, bidirectional communication channels using the WebSocket protocol. It functions as both a client and a server implementation, providing the necessary tools to initiate connections with remote endpoints or host custom messaging services. The library manages the full lifecycle of network connections, including the initial HTTP handshake negotiation required to upgrade standard web traffic to a persistent stream. It utilizes low-level stream resources to handle data flow and incorporates automated heartbeat signals to monitor co

Vibora is an asynchronous Python web framework and built-in HTTP server designed for building high-performance web applications. It utilizes an asynchronous event loop and coroutines to process network requests and serve responses without requiring external server wrappers. The project features a high-performance asynchronous schema validator for request integrity, a non-blocking template engine with support for hot-reloading, and a WebSocket communication server for bidirectional real-time data exchange. The framework covers a broad range of capabilities, including modular route management

The C++ REST SDK is a library for asynchronous HTTP and RESTful communication in native C++ applications. It provides a non-blocking network client for sending requests and receiving responses, a JSON parser for serializing and deserializing data, and a WebSocket client library for real-time, full-duplex communication. The project includes a dedicated OAuth2 authentication client to manage access tokens and authorization flows for secure communication with protected cloud resources. It utilizes a task-based asynchronous model to coordinate background operations and keep application interfaces

Quarkus is a Kubernetes-native Java framework designed for building high-performance, memory-efficient applications. It utilizes ahead-of-time native compilation to transform Java code into standalone, optimized binaries that eliminate the need for a virtual machine, enabling rapid startup and reduced memory consumption. By performing code augmentation during the build phase, it shifts heavy processing tasks away from runtime, ensuring that applications are optimized for cloud-native environments. The framework distinguishes itself through a unified approach to reactive and imperative program

Ratchet is a PHP library for building asynchronous WebSocket servers that handle persistent, bidirectional communication between clients and the server. It provides a complete server-side WebSocket implementation, including protocol handshake negotiation, message framing over TCP, and an event-loop-based concurrency model that manages thousands of simultaneous connections without blocking. The library implements a connection registry pattern for tracking all active WebSocket sessions, enabling the server to broadcast or unicast messages to any connected client on demand. It relies on non-bloc

Crow is a minimalist C++ micro web framework designed for building fast web servers and REST APIs. It provides a lightweight toolkit for web development in C++, offering core routing and request handling capabilities. The framework includes a built-in JSON parser for converting strings into structured data and an HTML template engine for generating dynamic web pages on the server. It also functions as a WebSocket server library to enable bidirectional, real-time communication between servers and web clients. Additional capabilities include a middleware-based request pipeline for executing sh

Starlette is a lightweight ASGI web framework and asynchronous HTTP toolkit used to build high-performance HTTP and WebSocket services. It functions as a WebSocket server framework and a collection of ASGI middleware components for managing network requests through non-blocking asynchronous logic. The framework provides tools for real-time communication via persistent bidirectional channels and infrastructure for high-performance APIs. It includes specialized capabilities for response compression, incremental data streaming, and the execution of non-blocking background tasks after a response

Robyn is a high-performance asynchronous web framework and server for Python that utilizes a Rust-powered runtime to execute code. It functions as an asynchronous Python web server designed to handle many concurrent requests efficiently through a multithreaded execution model. The project includes specialized capabilities for AI agent request routing, managing communication between agents and external tools. It also serves as a WebSocket communication server, maintaining persistent bidirectional channels for real-time data exchange. The framework covers a broad range of web infrastructure, i

uWebSockets.js is a high-performance tool for building WebSocket and HTTP servers within Node.js. It focuses on high-throughput web servers and real-time data streaming, enabling the creation of network applications that handle a large number of concurrent connections with low memory and CPU overhead. The project distinguishes itself through a native C++ implementation that integrates directly with the Node.js event loop. It utilizes native-layer route matching and a shared memory architecture to minimize allocation overhead and avoid data duplication during message transmission. The impleme

This is a header-only C++ library and asynchronous network framework used to implement WebSocket clients and servers. It provides a full implementation of the WebSocket protocol, including handshakes, subprotocol negotiation, and frame parsing. The framework is distinguished by a policy-based transport layer and template-driven protocol negotiation, allowing the underlying network implementation to be swapped between raw buffers, streams, or custom policies. It supports per-message deflate compression to reduce data transmission volume and integrates Transport Layer Security for encrypted bid

SignalR is a .NET real-time web framework designed to push content from a server to connected browser and non-browser clients. It provides a server-to-client push framework and a remote procedure call system that enables bidirectional communication over persistent connections. The library utilizes WebSockets to establish full-duplex connections and includes a transport-layer abstraction to manage different network protocols. It employs client-side connection negotiation to determine the best available communication protocol during the initial handshake. The system manages persistent connecti

Java-WebSocket is a collection of classes for implementing WebSocket clients and servers using pure Java. It provides a framework for hosting servers that manage connections via event-driven subclasses and tools for establishing client connections to remote servers. The library includes a secure communication tool for encrypting traffic using the WSS protocol and a compression library that uses per-message deflate extensions to reduce transmitted data size. It supports the configuration of cipher suites to limit encryption protocols and ensure compatible communication. The project enables bi

This is a minimal WebSocket library for Go designed for bidirectional real-time communication. It serves as a network protocol implementation for managing handshakes, frame masking, and control signals to enable the exchange of text and binary messages over persistent connections. The library distinguishes itself by providing a connectivity layer that wraps browser WebSocket APIs for applications compiled to WebAssembly. It also functions as data compression middleware, utilizing deflate compression to reduce bandwidth usage for transmitted messages. The project covers a broad range of netwo