Pusher pricing explained: plans, limits and how messages are counted
Every Pusher Channels plan with its connections and daily messages, why one event to 50 subscribers counts as 51, and what happens when you reach a limit.
Pusher Channels sells fixed monthly plans, each with two limits: how many connections can be open at once, and how many messages can be sent a day. The price you pay depends mostly on how Pusher counts a message, so that is where this page spends its time.
Every Pusher Channels plan
| Plan | Price a month | Concurrent connections | Messages a day |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sandbox | Free | 100 | 200,000 |
| Startup | $49 | 500 | 1 million |
| Pro | $99 | 2,000 | 4 million |
| Business | $299 | 5,000 | 10 million |
| Premium | $499 | 10,000 | 20 million |
| Growth | $699 | 15,000 | 40 million |
| Plus | $899 | 20,000 | 60 million |
| Growth Plus | $1,199 | 30,000 | 90 million |
| Enterprise | Custom | Custom | Custom |
Figures are from pusher.com/channels/pricing, checked on 2026-10-26. The plans up to Premium have no annual discount; for Growth and above, Pusher asks you to contact sales about annual pricing. Upgrades are prorated by the day.
How Pusher counts a message
Pusher's pricing FAQ counts the messages its API receives and the messages it delivers to connected users. Publishing one event to a channel with 50 subscribers is therefore 51 messages: one in, 50 out.
That makes the daily message limit a limit on fan-out, not on how often your server publishes. A few examples, each for one event:
- A chat room of 20 people where each sends 100 messages a day: 2,000 events × 21 = 42,000 messages a day.
- A live score feed with 2,000 viewers and one update every 10 seconds for a two-hour match: 720 events × 2,001 = about 1.44 million messages, more than the Startup plan's daily limit on its own.
- A dashboard on 50 screens that updates once a second, all day: 86,400 × 51 = about 4.4 million messages a day, past the Pro plan.
What happens at a limit
The limits are per day and per moment, not per month. Pusher says it emails you when you approach your plan's limits and that the plans include headroom for spikes. Its quotas page separates hard limits, which the service enforces automatically, from soft limits you agree not to exceed, and says Pusher may disable applications that do not upgrade when asked.
In practice, size a Pusher plan for your busiest day, not your average one: a sale, a match or a launch decides the plan.
Estimating your own bill
Work out three numbers: peak concurrent connections, events published a day, and the average number of subscribers who receive each event. Then:
messages a day = events × (1 + subscribers per event)
Pick the first plan whose connection and message limits are both above your numbers. The cost calculator does this for Pusher, Ably and Hibira side by side.
How Hibira prices the same traffic
Hibira uses the same protocol and SDKs, but counts a publish once. Deliveries to subscribers come from a separate monthly data allowance instead of the daily message limit. For the dashboard above, that is 86,400 messages a day rather than 4.4 million.
| Hibira plan | Price a month | Peak connections | Published messages a day |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | 100 | 200,000 |
| Hobby | $19 | 500 | 1 million |
| Starter | $39 | 1,000 | 2 million |
| Pro | $89 | 3,000 | 6 million |
| Advanced | $169 | 6,000 | 12 million |
| Business | $279 | 10,000 | 20 million |
| Scale | $699 | 30,000 | 90 million |
Yearly billing is 10 times the monthly price. The pricing page has every limit, and the Pusher comparison converts each plan into Pusher's way of counting.
Common questions
Is Pusher free?
Pusher's Sandbox plan is free with 100 concurrent connections and 200,000 messages a day, counting each delivery to a subscriber as a message. It suits development and small apps; production traffic with many subscribers usually needs a paid plan.
Why is my Pusher message count much higher than the events I send?
Because Pusher counts each delivery as well as each publish. An event sent to a channel with 100 subscribers counts as 101 messages.
How much does Pusher cost for 1,000 concurrent users?
At least the Pro plan at $99 a month, because the Startup plan allows 500 connections. Whether Pro is enough depends on the daily message count, events × (1 + subscribers per event), which must stay under 4 million.
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