What is Centrifugo?
Centrifugo is a self-hosted realtime messaging and data synchronization server designed to integrate seamlessly with any application stack. It handles persistent connections via WebSocket, HTTP-streaming, SSE, WebTransport, and gRPC, providing both PUB/SUB messaging and state synchronization primitives. Built in Go, Centrifugo offers great performance, out-of-the-box scalability through integrations with Redis and NATS, and a feature-rich set including flexible authentication, channel history, online presence, delta updates, and connection event proxying. Proven in production by companies like VK, Badoo, and Grafana, it is ideal for building realtime applications such as chat systems, live dashboards, multiplayer games, AI streaming, and IoT tracking.
Features
- Multi-Transport Support: WebSocket, HTTP-streaming, SSE, WebTransport, and gRPC
- Scalable PUB/SUB Messaging: Efficient message broadcast to millions of subscribers
- State Synchronization: Keep key-value state synchronized across clients with transactional consistency
- Flexible Authentication: JWT-based auth and connection event proxying to backend
- Channel History & Online Presence: Retrieve past messages and see who is subscribed
- Delta Updates: Send incremental updates to reduce bandwidth
- High Performance: Written in Go, handles millions of connections and high throughput
- Out-of-the-Box Scalability: Integrates with Redis, Redis Cluster, and NATS for horizontal scaling
- Official SDK Libraries: Client libraries for web and mobile development
Use Cases
- Real-time chat and instant messaging
- Live dashboards and real-time analytics visualization
- Multiplayer game state synchronization
- AI token streaming and live generation results
- Financial data streaming (stock prices, trading updates)
- IoT and real-time device tracking
- Live data feeds and broadcasting to large audiences
- Collaborative editing and data sync
FAQs
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What is Centrifugo?
Centrifugo is a self-hosted, scalable realtime messaging and data synchronization server. It handles persistent connections over various transports like WebSocket and HTTP-streaming, providing PUB/SUB messaging and state sync features. -
How do I install Centrifugo?
You can run Centrifugo quickly using Docker: 'docker run -p 8000:8000 centrifugo/centrifugo:v6 centrifugo'. Other installation methods are also available on the official website. -
Is Centrifugo free to use?
Centrifugo offers an open-source version that is free to use. Additionally, there is a Centrifugo PRO version with advanced features for corporate and enterprise environments. -
What transports does Centrifugo support?
Centrifugo supports WebSocket, HTTP-streaming, Server-Sent Events (SSE), WebTransport, and gRPC for persistent connections. -
Can Centrifugo scale horizontally?
Yes, Centrifugo supports out-of-the-box scalability by integrating with Redis (including Redis Cluster and compatible storages) and NATS for efficient message brokering across multiple nodes.
