Centrifugo API
An open-source, self-hosted real-time messaging server that provides publish/subscribe channels over WebSocket, SSE, and HTTP streaming, with an HTTP and gRPC server API for publishing messages and managing channels from backend agents.
Score Breakdown
⚙ Agent Friendliness
🔒 Security
Security posture is entirely operator-controlled in self-hosted deployments. TLS configuration is the operator's responsibility. HMAC secret and JWT signing key must be carefully managed. No third-party compliance certifications apply — the operator's own certification covers the deployment.
⚡ Reliability
Best When
Best when an organization requires full data sovereignty and self-hosted real-time messaging, has the infrastructure capability to operate it, and wants to avoid per-message cloud billing.
Avoid When
Avoid when the team lacks DevOps capacity to operate, scale, and monitor a self-hosted real-time server, or when a managed SLA is required.
Use Cases
- • Publish real-time events from agent workflows to connected browser or mobile clients without relying on a third-party cloud service
- • Build private-cloud or air-gapped real-time communication infrastructure where data cannot leave self-hosted environments
- • Implement live dashboard updates by having agents publish processed metrics directly to subscriber channels
- • Create scalable notification delivery systems where agent-generated alerts are broadcast to thousands of WebSocket subscribers
- • Use the gRPC API for high-throughput, low-latency inter-service publishing in microservice architectures
Not For
- • Teams without infrastructure expertise to operate and maintain a self-hosted server — Centrifugo has no managed cloud offering with SLA guarantees
- • Applications requiring built-in chat features like message history, reactions, or threading without substantial custom development
- • Startups wanting a fully managed service with zero operational overhead — self-hosting carries ongoing ops burden
Interface
Authentication
Server API calls use a shared HMAC secret or API key in the Authorization header. Client connections use JWTs signed with the server secret, containing claims for channel subscription permissions. Namespace-level permission scoping is supported.
Pricing
Self-hosting means infrastructure costs fall on the operator. There is no per-message or per-connection billing from Centrifugo itself.
Agent Metadata
Known Gotchas
- ⚠ No built-in message persistence by default — messages published when no subscribers are connected are lost unless history is explicitly configured per-channel
- ⚠ JWT token generation must be implemented correctly server-side; incorrect claims cause silent subscription failures on the client without clear server-side logging
- ⚠ Scaling beyond a single server requires Redis or Tarantool for the broker backend — this architectural requirement is easy to miss in initial deployment
- ⚠ The HTTP API and gRPC API have slightly different request structures for the same operations, causing confusion when switching between them
- ⚠ Centrifugo PRO features are not clearly delineated from open-source features in all documentation pages, leading to implementing features that require a paid license
Alternatives
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Scores are editorial opinions as of 2026-03-07.