Open-source alternatives to Engine.io

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

Socket.io is a real-time communication engine that enables bidirectional, event-based data exchange between clients and servers. It provides a robust transport-agnostic protocol layer that automatically manages connection lifecycles, including heartbeat signals, automatic reconnection, and seamless fallback between WebSockets and HTTP long-polling. By maintaining persistent links, it ensures reliable messaging across diverse network environments. The project distinguishes itself through a scalable, distributed architecture that supports multi-node synchronization and room-based message routin

Primus is a real-time communication abstraction layer and middleware framework. It provides a standardized interface for messaging that allows developers to switch between different transport engines without rewriting application logic, while also serving as a wrapper for managing socket lifecycles. The project distinguishes itself by functioning as a real-time client library generator, producing compatible client-side code based on server configurations. It further organizes data flow through virtual stream multiplexing and the ability to group connections into named communication rooms for

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

This project provides a technical specification and reference manual for the MQTT 3.1.1 standard, serving as a translated Chinese guide for implementing this lightweight IoT messaging protocol in resource-constrained device networks. The documentation covers the fundamental mechanisms of the publish-subscribe model, including topic-based routing with wildcard filtering, retained message storage, and the configuration of last will and testament messages. It details the protocol's approach to reliability through various quality of service levels, ranging from single-level acknowledgments to exa

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

Beszel is a self-hosted server monitoring platform designed to track real-time performance metrics across multiple host systems and containerized environments. It functions as a centralized dashboard that aggregates data on processor, memory, disk, and network usage, providing visibility into both host-level infrastructure and individual container workloads. The system utilizes lightweight agents to collect performance data, which is then streamed to a central hub and stored in a local relational database. It distinguishes itself through a real-time analytics engine that uses persistent bidir

Gotify is a self-hosted notification server designed to centralize the receipt and dispatch of real-time messages. It provides a RESTful API and a WebSocket gateway, allowing users to programmatically send alerts and push notifications to connected clients. By maintaining a private infrastructure, the platform ensures full control over message history, data retention, and access management. The system distinguishes itself through a modular, plugin-based architecture that allows for the extension of core functionality, including custom HTTP endpoints and webhook event processing. It supports g

This project is an asynchronous library for the Python programming language designed to facilitate the development of automated agents and interactive applications on the Discord platform. It provides a comprehensive framework for building event-driven software that manages real-time communication, server resources, and user interactions through a structured interface. The library utilizes a non-blocking event loop to handle concurrent network operations, allowing developers to maintain persistent bidirectional connections via WebSockets. It features a declarative system for routing text-base

Xray-core is a high-performance, cross-platform networking engine designed to manage secure data transmission and traffic routing. At its core, the project utilizes an asynchronous, event-driven runtime model capable of handling thousands of concurrent connections through non-blocking input and output. It functions as a central traffic controller, employing a sophisticated routing engine that dynamically matches incoming network requests to specific outbound proxies based on user-defined criteria. The project distinguishes itself through a modular architecture that decouples proxy and transpo

OpenSpeedy is a network acceleration utility designed to optimize data transmission between applications and remote servers. It functions as a congestion control middleware and traffic processing engine, operating within the kernel space to minimize latency and reduce CPU overhead during packet delivery. The project distinguishes itself through its ability to aggregate multiple network interfaces into a single logical stream, enhancing bandwidth and link reliability. It employs custom transport protocols that bypass head-of-line blocking and utilizes forward error correction to reconstruct lo

libp2p is a modular peer-to-peer networking stack designed for building decentralized applications. It provides the core infrastructure necessary for nodes to discover and connect with other participants across a network without relying on central servers. The project distinguishes itself through a flexible transport layer that abstracts multiple protocols, including TCP, QUIC, WebSockets, and WebTransport, into a single interface. It features specialized tools for NAT and firewall traversal, such as hole punching and relay nodes, to establish direct connections between peers and web browsers

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

Liveblocks is a realtime collaboration infrastructure platform that synchronizes application state, documents, and user presence across multiple participants using conflict-free replicated data types. It provides a managed backend for collaborative text editors, threaded commenting and annotation systems, in-app notifications, and AI copilot deployment, all built on a WebSocket transport layer with server-side room management APIs. The platform distinguishes itself through a headless component primitive system that exposes unstyled React hooks and composable building blocks, allowing develope

This is a Yeoman generator that produces complete full-stack web application project skeletons, combining an AngularJS frontend with an Express.js backend. It scaffolds a MEAN stack project structure with MongoDB, including optional OAuth authentication and real-time WebSocket communication capabilities. The generator produces a complete project skeleton with a live-reload development server, preconfigured build and testing tools, and environment-specific configuration files. It includes role-based authentication with local and social login strategies, route protection, and admin user managem

This is a self-hosted WebSocket server for Laravel applications designed to provide real-time communication and replace third-party managed messaging services. It provides a server-side PHP implementation of the WebSocket standard, enabling full-duplex communication between clients and servers. The project implements a Pusher-compatible protocol to integrate with existing frontend client libraries. It includes a dedicated debug dashboard for monitoring active connections, tracking network traffic, and analyzing real-time server performance. The system supports Laravel event broadcasting and

Feathers is a database-agnostic Node.js application framework designed for building scalable backend systems. It functions as a real-time API framework that provides a server implementation for both REST endpoints and WebSocket connections. The framework decouples application logic from the underlying database technology and communication protocols. This allows a single service to handle both HTTP and Socket requests while separating business logic from the specific data persistence layer. The system organizes data operations through a standardized service-based interface and utilizes hook-b

go-socket.io is a Go implementation of the Socket.IO protocol used to build real-time, bidirectional, and event-driven communication between servers and clients. It functions as a communication framework that manages persistent connections and maps incoming network packets to specific handler functions to execute application logic. The library enables horizontal scaling of real-time connections through a distributed pub/sub adapter, which synchronizes events across multiple server instances using an external data store. It ensures reliability across different network environments by automatic

This project is a multi-vendor marketplace platform designed for food, grocery, and courier delivery services. It provides a comprehensive system for managing the entire lifecycle of a delivery request, including customer ordering, vendor menu management, and logistics coordination between customers, vendors, and delivery agents. The platform distinguishes itself through a cross-platform architecture that bridges web-based application code into native mobile environments for deployment on standard app stores. It utilizes real-time socket communication to synchronize location updates and order

This project is a self-hosted note-taking platform and collaborative markdown wiki. It functions as a real-time markdown collaborative editor, allowing multiple users to create, organize, and share documents simultaneously. The platform is designed for self-hosted knowledge management and collaborative markdown documentation, providing a private environment for teams to maintain shared technical notes.

Starlette is an asynchronous web framework and toolkit for building high-performance web services based on the ASGI specification. It serves as a lightweight foundation for creating web applications with a focus on asynchronous request and response handling. The framework provides specialized toolkits for managing persistent bidirectional WebSocket communication and an asynchronous HTTP server toolkit for routing and middleware. It distinguishes itself by offering a non-blocking background task queue that executes functions after a response has been sent to the client. The project covers a b

ihp is a type-safe web framework and full-stack application orchestrator designed for PostgreSQL. It functions as a server-side rendering framework and a type-safe ORM that automatically generates record types from SQL schemas to ensure compile-time query validation. The platform distinguishes itself by verifying routing, database queries, and templates at compile time to prevent runtime crashes. It implements real-time web interfaces using WebSockets for instant data synchronization and employs server-driven hypermedia for partial DOM patching. The framework covers a broad range of integrat

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

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 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

FastHTML is a full-stack Python web framework designed for building interactive web applications using pure Python. It functions as an HTMX integration framework and a Python HTML domain-specific language, allowing developers to generate HTML structures using native objects and functions instead of external templating files. The framework is distinguished by its native support for real-time bidirectional communication via WebSockets and Server-Sent Events, enabling server-side updates to be pushed to the browser without full page reloads. It further integrates identity management through OAut

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