Realtime WebSockets in Asia: latency, regions and where data is processed
Measured round trips from Asian cities to Hong Kong, which realtime services have servers in Asia, and what to check when your users are in Taiwan, Japan, Korea or Southeast Asia.
For a chat message, a live score or a typing indicator, the time it takes depends less on the service than on the distance between your users and its servers. Most realtime services were built in the US or Europe, and their Asian presence varies from a single region to none. This page sets out what to check when your users are in Asia, with round trips we measured to our own servers.
Round trips to Hong Kong
Hibira's servers are in Hong Kong (AWS ap-east-1). We measured TCP round trips to that region from data centres across Asia on 2026-10-25:
These are the network's round trips between data centres. A phone on a mobile network adds its own last-mile delay on top, the same for every service. A WebSocket stays open, so each event costs one trip from the server to the user, not a new connection.
Where realtime services run in Asia
| Service | Servers in Asia | How an app is placed |
|---|---|---|
| Pusher Channels | Singapore, Mumbai, Tokyo, Sydney | You pick one cluster per app |
| Firebase Realtime Database | Singapore (asia-southeast1) | You pick one location per database |
| Ably | Part of its global network | Routed to the nearest point |
| Laravel Reverb, Soketi | Wherever you run them | Your choice |
| Hibira | Hong Kong (hkg); Tokyo (tyo) and Singapore (sin) planned | One cluster per app |
From Pusher's cluster list and Firebase's locations page, checked on 2026-10-26.
With one cluster per app, the cluster is a choice you make once. Pick it for where most of your users are, not where your company or your web server is. Your server publishes to the cluster over HTTPS, so a server in another region adds time only to the publish, which happens once per event, not to each delivery.
Choosing by where your users are
- Taiwan, Hong Kong, southern China, the Philippines, Vietnam: Hong Kong is the closest major cloud region; round trips from Taipei, Manila and Hanoi were 25 to 30 ms.
- Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia: Hong Kong and Singapore are both reasonable. Our measurements were 35 ms from Singapore and 45 to 50 ms from Kuala Lumpur and Jakarta.
- Japan and Korea: a Tokyo region is closer. From Hong Kong we measured about 55 ms to Tokyo and Osaka and 60 ms to Seoul, which is fine for chat and notifications; for fast-paced games, choose a Tokyo cluster.
- Spread across Asia: pick the region in the middle of your biggest markets; Hong Kong sits within 60 ms of most of East and Southeast Asia in our measurements.
Where your data goes
A realtime service passes your events through its servers on the way to your users, so the region also decides where they are processed. Hibira processes events in Hong Kong and does not store message content, except briefly in memory while delivering it; the services that hold account data, and where, are on the sub-processors page. If your contracts name a country, check each provider's sub-processor list before you choose. For apps on Pro and higher plans that use edge delivery, Cloudflare also relays connections and messages at its own locations, which may be in Japan or Singapore; see the Data Processing Addendum.
Support in your language
Hibira's site and dashboard are in English, Traditional and Simplified Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Thai and Vietnamese, and support answers in English, Chinese, Japanese and Korean. Pricing is in US dollars on fixed monthly plans, and the free plan needs no card.
Common questions
Which realtime WebSocket service has servers in Hong Kong?
Hibira's cluster hkg runs in AWS Hong Kong (ap-east-1). Pusher's nearest clusters are Singapore and Tokyo.
What latency can I expect from Taiwan to a Hong Kong WebSocket server?
We measured network round trips of about 30 ms from data centres in Taipei on 2026-10-25. Mobile networks add their own delay on top.
Should I choose a Tokyo or a Hong Kong cluster?
If most of your users are in Japan or Korea, Tokyo. If they are in Taiwan, Hong Kong, southern China or Southeast Asia, or spread across the region, Hong Kong is closer to more of them.
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