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Pusher limits: message size, presence members and client events

Pusher Channels’ fixed limits, from the 10 KB event size and 100 presence members to 10 client events a second, why they exist and how to work within them.

Besides its plan limits on connections and daily messages, Pusher Channels has fixed limits on what a single event, channel or presence member can hold. These are the ones that show up as errors in production: a 413 for a large payload, a rejected client event, a presence channel that stops accepting members at 100.

Pusher Channels limits at a glance

Pusher's figures are from its HTTP API reference, channels, presence channels and events pages, checked on 2026-10-30. Connections and daily messages per plan are on the Pusher pricing page.

Event size: the 10 KB limit

Pusher rejects an event whose data is larger than 10 KB with HTTP 413, for single events and for batches. The limit is on the data field after JSON encoding, so escaped quotes and Unicode text take more room than they look.

Common ways to stay under it:

• Send an ID and let the client fetch the record over your own API.
• Send only the fields that changed, not the whole object.
• Split a long list into several events, or page it.

On Hibira the limit depends on the plan, so a payload that needs 20 or 50 KB, such as a document diff or an AI response chunk with metadata, fits on Pro or Business without changing the client.

Presence channels: the 100-member limit

A Pusher presence channel accepts at most 100 members. Every member receives the full member list on subscribe and an event for every join and leave, which is why the limit exists: at 1,000 members each join would be sent 1,000 times.

Hibira keeps the same 100-member limit for presence- channels, so existing code behaves the same. For live audiences, such as a stream, a webinar or a game lobby, a presence-large- channel holds up to 100,000 members and sends the count and batched changes instead of the whole list. The large presence guide shows the client side.

Client events

Client events let a browser send to other subscribers without your server, for typing indicators or cursor positions. On Pusher they must be enabled per app, work only on private- and presence- channels, need the client- prefix, are not sent back to the sender, and are limited to 10 a second per connection. Hibira follows the same rules, so a client that respects Pusher's limit works unchanged.

For cursors and other high-rate input, send at most every 100 ms and drop intermediate positions, rather than queueing them.

Channel and request limits

Channel names can be up to 164 characters, including the private- or presence- prefix, using letters, numbers and _ - = @ , . ; only. One publish can target up to 100 channels, and a batch request can hold up to 10 events. Signed requests must carry a timestamp within 600 seconds of the server's clock, so a server with a drifting clock gets 401 errors.

Common questions

What is the maximum message size on Pusher?

10 KB of event data. Larger events are rejected with HTTP 413. Hibira allows 4 KB on Free, 10 KB on Hobby and Starter, 32 KB on Pro and Advanced and 64 KB on Business and Scale.

How many users can join a Pusher presence channel?

1. Hibira keeps 100 for presence- channels and offers presence-large- channels for up to 100,000 members, with the member count and batched changes instead of the full list.

Do I have to change my code to move to Hibira?

No. The protocol, the client and server libraries and these limits are the same, apart from the larger payloads and presence channels you can opt into. The migration guide has the steps.

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