Liveblocks does not bill by monthly active users. It meters collaboration minutes at $0.002 each, and an AI copilot counts as a participant. Here is the 2026 rate card, three worked 30-day bills, and the one lever that takes $480 back to $16.
Ably pricing in 2026 in real numbers: the three-meter model, why a message is counted per delivery, three worked 30-day bills, and the one lever that cut a sample bill 48.8%.
Pusher Channels pricing in 2026 runs from a free Sandbox (100 concurrent connections, 200k messages/day) to $49 Startup, $99 Pro, $299 Business, and up to $1,199, billed on two meters: peak concurrent connections and messages per day. The trap is peak connections, because your plan must cover your highest simultaneous connection count, so a single 25-minute spike can push you from $99 to $499 for the whole month. This teardown works three real monthly bills, shows why the same app costs $99 on Pusher, about $278 on Ably, and about $630 on Liveblocks purely because each bills on a different meter, and does the self-host crossover math with Soketi.