# Ably vs Centrifugo (slim)

> Ably scores 75 (BB) to Centrifugo's 63.1 (B) for realtime events. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ably-vs-centrifugo.md (~2,200 tokens) · this version ~730 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ably-vs-centrifugo.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ably-vs-centrifugo
- Index: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt · API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json · Updated: 2026-10-09

Ably scores 75 (BB) on agent readiness against Centrifugo's 63.1 (B), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Centrifugo leads on payments & pricing. Both do realtime events.

- Ably: BB 75, rank #59 of 950 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/ably.min.md
- Centrifugo: B 63.1, rank #407 of 950 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/centrifugo.min.md
- Ably, good for Fan-out of live messages to many connected clients, presence and resumable streams, with webhooks and queues as ways to get channel events to a backend. Ahead on Agent ergonomics, 87 against 76; Security & auth, 64 against 37; Transparency & trust, 78 against 56. Also Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better; A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install; Free to start without a card; No incidents deducted, where Centrifugo loses 6 points for them.
- Centrifugo, good for A team that wants to run its own realtime channel server and publish to browsers and apps from any backend, with history, recovery and presence. Ahead on Payments & pricing, 60 against 40. Also Open source.

| Category | Ably | Centrifugo |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 87 | 86 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 80 | 81 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 87 | 76 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 64 | 37 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 40 | 60 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 85 | 86 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 78 | 56 |

| Fact (where they differ) | Ably | Centrifugo |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Vendor | Ably Realtime Ltd | Centrifugal Labs LTD |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://main.realtime.ably.net` | no (local only) |
| Transports | HTTP, SSE (legacy) | HTTP |
| Pricing | Freemium | Free |
| Licence | Proprietary service under Ably's terms of service. The SDKs and the Ably CLI on GitHub are Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 for the open-source server. Centrifugo PRO is a closed commercial build under the Centrifugo PRO Licence Agreement |
| Last release | 2026-09-30 | 2026-09-28 |
| Terms last updated | no date given | no document linked |
| Privacy policy last updated | no date given | no document linked |
| Customer content may train models | not found in the text |  |
| Terms restrict automated access | yes |  |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | not found in the text |  |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not found in the text |  |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | yes |  |
| Popularity | 1.5M npm/wk, 407k PyPI/wk | 11k stars |