Open-source alternatives to PHP Websockets

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pomelo is a distributed Node.js game server framework designed for building scalable multiplayer game backends and real-time web applications. It employs a multi-process architecture to distribute application logic horizontally across a cluster of machines, enabling high concurrency and balanced network traffic. The framework utilizes a WebSocket communication layer to manage bidirectional data exchange between diverse web clients and server clusters. It incorporates a remote procedure call system for triggering functions across remote server processes and uses Protocol Buffers for binary ser

Flask-SocketIO is a Flask extension that integrates the Socket.IO real-time communication protocol into Flask applications, enabling persistent bidirectional connections between servers and clients. It transparently switches between WebSocket and HTTP long-polling while maintaining a persistent session identity, and provides a full event-driven framework for real-time web application communication. The library distinguishes itself with support for namespace multiplexing, allowing event handlers to be isolated into separate namespaces with independent lifecycle and routing. It also offers room

SpacetimeDB is a stateful, real-time database platform that executes application logic directly within the database engine. By unifying data storage and business logic, it allows developers to build applications where state transitions are processed through atomic, server-side functions. The platform maintains persistent connections to stream incremental updates to clients, ensuring that local caches remain synchronized with the server state at all times. The platform distinguishes itself by generating type-safe client interfaces directly from server-side schema definitions, ensuring consiste

Phoenix is a server-side web framework built for the Elixir programming language and the Erlang virtual machine. It provides a structured environment for developing applications using the model-view-controller pattern, enabling developers to manage data, render user interfaces, and handle incoming requests within a scalable, process-based architecture. The framework distinguishes itself as a platform for real-time web communication, utilizing persistent bidirectional connections to broadcast live updates to clients. It incorporates a dedicated abstraction layer for relational database integra

Message Bus is a messaging library for Ruby and Rack applications designed to facilitate real-time data broadcasting and inter-process communication. It provides a framework for pushing live updates to connected clients and synchronizing state across multiple application instances, ensuring consistent data delivery in scaled environments. The library distinguishes itself through a flexible architecture that supports multiple storage backends, including Redis, PostgreSQL, and in-memory options. It functions as a persistent connection framework that serves as an alternative to traditional web s

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

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 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

netty-socketio is a Java implementation of a Socket.IO server designed for real-time bidirectional communication between clients and servers. It functions as a real-time event engine and WebSocket communication server, utilizing the Netty network framework to manage high-performance socket connections. The project enables distributed socket server scaling by acting as a distributed message broker. It synchronizes client states and broadcasts messages across multiple server nodes through the use of an external data store. The system manages traffic via namespace-based connection routing and r

rustdesk-server is a self-hosted remote desktop server infrastructure designed to manage ID signaling and relay traffic for remote connections between peers. It provides the necessary backend environment to coordinate remote access sessions through rendezvous-based signaling and relay-based traffic forwarding. The system distinguishes itself with a remote access management console for organizing devices and enforcing security policies, as well as an identity integrator for OIDC-based federation and LDAP directory synchronization. It utilizes geolocation-aware routing to distribute traffic acr

Crow is a C++ web framework for building HTTP servers, providing routing, a middleware pipeline, JSON serialization, and WebSocket support. It enables developers to define typed route handlers that extract URL parameters at compile time, return structured JSON responses, and manage real-time bidirectional communication. The framework distinguishes itself with compile-time route pattern parsing and typed argument binding, which eliminate runtime parsing overhead for URL parameters. Its event loop runs on Boost.Asio, and handler execution can be offloaded to a configurable thread pool to keep I