Open-source alternatives to Websockets

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

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

This project is a Node.js WebSocket library that provides a high-performance client and server implementation for the WebSocket protocol. It functions as a transport layer for real-time bidirectional communication, supporting both UTF-8 strings and binary data transport through the use of TCP socket wrappers. The library enables the creation of WebSocket servers that manage full-duplex connections and broadcast messages to multiple clients, as well as WebSocket clients that establish persistent links to remote servers. It handles the protocol upgrade process via TCP-based handshake negotiatio

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

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

Soketi is a high-performance WebSocket server and real-time event broker that implements the Pusher protocol. It functions as a multi-tenant WebSocket gateway, allowing multiple isolated applications to manage persistent client connections and broadcast events across public, private, and presence channels. The project is distinguished by its distributed architecture, using pub-sub state synchronization via Redis or NATS to scale horizontally across multiple server instances. It features symmetric payload encryption for private channels, ensuring the server acts as a relay without accessing pl

Channels is an extension for the Django web framework that adds native support for WebSockets, background tasks, and long-running connections alongside standard HTTP requests. It provides a channel layer abstraction for passing messages between different parts of a Django application across processes, along with a protocol router that inspects incoming connections and dispatches them to the correct handler for HTTP, WebSocket, or custom protocols. The project introduces an async consumer abstraction that wraps protocol-specific handling into a single callable, and a background worker pool tha

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

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

This is a Java library for establishing real-time bidirectional communication with servers using the Socket.IO protocol. It functions as an event-driven communication client that allows Java applications to exchange named events and binary data with a remote server. The library implements both WebSocket and HTTP long-polling transports, providing a fallback mechanism when WebSocket connections are unavailable. It supports namespace-based multiplexing to divide a single physical network connection into multiple logical channels for separating data streams. The project covers a broad range of

RoadRunner is a high-performance application server and process manager designed to serve PHP applications using a persistent worker model. It eliminates bootload overhead and initialization time by keeping application processes alive between requests, acting as a protocol-agnostic proxy that routes traffic to a pool of supervised workers. The server is built with a plugin-based modular architecture, allowing it to be extended with custom Go plugins and compiled into tailored binaries. It distinguishes itself by providing a unified execution model for a wide array of communication protocols,

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

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

Socket.IO Client is a real-time WebSocket client library that establishes persistent bidirectional connections to a server, with automatic fallback to HTTP long-polling when WebSocket connections are unavailable. It provides an event-based bidirectional messaging framework where clients and servers exchange named events with serializable data, supporting acknowledgements and timeouts for reliable communication. The client distinguishes itself through automatic reconnection with exponential backoff, maintaining connection reliability by monitoring health and reconnecting with increasing delays

This is a Socket.IO client library for Swift, providing an event-driven networking framework for establishing real-time, bidirectional communication between iOS applications and Socket.IO servers. It functions as a tool for maintaining persistent connections and exchanging named data events and binary payloads. The library implements a WebSocket-based transport with an HTTP long-polling fallback to ensure connectivity. It manages a callback-based architecture to handle server notifications and utilizes encrypted communication channels to secure network traffic. The framework covers the excha

This is a non-blocking network client for Java applications that provides asynchronous HTTP request capabilities and bidirectional WebSocket connectivity. It leverages a Netty-based architecture to handle high volumes of network input and output. The library utilizes native transport abstractions such as Epoll, KQueue, and io_uring to reduce system latency. It supports HTTP/2 multiplexing to run multiple concurrent request-response streams over a single connection and provides automatic response body decompression for various formats. Core capabilities cover the management of complex network

This is a header-only C++ library that provides implementations for HTTP clients, HTTP servers, and a WebSocket framework. It allows for the creation of network services and the consumption of remote APIs without requiring a separate compilation step or external binary linking. The project features backend-agnostic TLS integration for secure HTTPS and WSS communication and employs a thread-pool model to process concurrent requests. It distinguishes itself with a full-duplex WebSocket state-machine and a middleware-based request pipeline that supports regular-expression path routing. The libr

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

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

Laf is a serverless backend platform that provides an integrated environment for cloud functions, a document database, and file storage. It serves as a complete infrastructure for developing and deploying backend logic, data persistence, and real-time communication without the need for manual server management. The platform features a browser-based IDE that allows developers to write, test, and deploy serverless functions directly within a web editor, removing the requirement for local environment setup. It also includes a WebSocket communication platform for maintaining persistent bidirectio

This is a Backend-as-a-Service SDK for React Native, providing a library to integrate mobile applications with backend services. It serves as a client for managing user authentication, cloud databases, and remote file storage within a mobile environment. The SDK enables mobile developers to implement secure login flows using OAuth, email, and phone verification. It includes a database client for performing CRUD operations on structured data and a storage client for uploading and retrieving binary assets from remote cloud buckets. Additionally, it features a WebSocket-based interface to receiv

Baileys is a TypeScript API client library used to interact with the WhatsApp Web API via WebSockets without requiring a browser. It functions as a real-time communication tool that handles bidirectional data exchange and event-based socket connections. The project includes a dedicated toolkit for managing WhatsApp Business profiles and product catalogs, alongside a session manager that authenticates accounts using QR codes or pairing codes and persists session state to disk. Its capabilities cover a wide range of messaging functions, including multi-type message transmission, chat history s

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

This project is a comprehensive library of reference implementations and patterns for building web applications using the Go Fiber framework. It provides curated templates and implementation guides for creating REST APIs, web servers, and structured backend services. The repository serves as a practical resource for applying architectural patterns, including Clean and Hexagonal architectures, as well as port-and-adapter decoupling. It offers detailed examples for integrating common web features such as OAuth2 authentication, JWT verification, WebSockets for real-time communication, and server

Quart is an asynchronous Python web framework that implements the ASGI specification. It is used to build high-performance HTTP and WebSocket services, JSON REST APIs, and web applications using async and await syntax for non-blocking request handling. The framework supports persistent bidirectional communication via WebSocket API servers and enables the proactive delivery of assets through HTTP server push. It also includes a template engine for rendering dynamic HTML web pages and supports incremental request and response streaming to manage large payloads. General capabilities cover reque

This project is a browser-based, real-time multiplayer action game where players control a character on a 2D canvas to absorb objects and grow in size. It utilizes a Node.js game server and WebSockets to synchronize game state, player movement, and chat across all connected participants. The application is delivered as a dockerized game application, ensuring consistent hosting and deployment across different cloud environments through containerized server environments. The system implements an authoritative server model that processes all game logic and physics to prevent cheating and mainta

Rivet is a distributed infrastructure for managing the lifecycle, addressing, and persistence of stateful actors and durable execution engines. It provides a distributed process sandbox that executes application logic within lightweight isolates, ensuring resource isolation and fast cold starts. The system is designed to coordinate multi-step operations using persistent queues and timers to guarantee reliable task completion across distributed environments. The platform specifically enables the orchestration of stateful AI agents that maintain persistent memory and state across long-running i