Centrifugo vs ntfy
| Tagline | Language-agnostic real-time messaging server over WebSocket and SSE | Simple HTTP-based push notifications to phone and desktop, no account needed |
| Category | Team Chat & Collaboration | Team Chat & Collaboration |
| Replaces | Slack, Microsoft Teams | Slack, Microsoft Teams |
| GitHub stars | 10k | 31k |
| Language | Go | Go |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Self-host difficulty | 3/5 Moderate | 2/5 Easy |
| Deploy options | Docker Docker Compose Kubernetes Manual | Docker Docker Compose Manual |
| Managed hosting | ||
| Last updated | 2 days ago | yesterday |
| View repo | View repo |
Where each falls short
The honest trade-offs — what you give up with each, versus the proprietary tools they replace.
Centrifugo
- Developer-facing infrastructure component, not an end-user chat application; requires custom UI.
- Managed hosting (Centrifugal Cloud) is still early and not yet a full Pusher replacement in pricing.
- Persistent message storage requires an external database; Centrifugo only provides a short-term history buffer.
- No built-in admin UI for channel management or user monitoring beyond basic metrics.
ntfy
- No team chat, threading, or message history browsing; designed for one-way push alerts only.
- No rich message formatting, file sharing, or reactions.
- Rate limiting and attachment storage on the free public server are intentionally restrictive.
- iOS push requires routing through ntfy's own APNs proxy unless you self-compile the app.
Bottom line
Choose ntfy if you want the lower-effort setup; choose ntfy for the larger community and ecosystem. ntfy has seen more recent development. Open each guide below for deploy steps and the full feature gap.