Welcome to the Future of Real-time Communication

We're excited to announce the launch of LatteStream, a revolutionary WebSocket infrastructure platform designed to simplify real-time application development without wallet pain. After months of development and testing, we're ready to help developers build the next generation of interactive applications. Below we'll layout why we built it, what we built, performance details and metrics, and pricing details and why we don't have a free tier.

Why We Built LatteStream

In today's engineering landscape, end users expect real-time interactions. Many applications need these real-time interactions and scaling these systems on existing solutions is expensive. Way more than a latte. We took a deep analysis before code reached the editor to discover why WebSockets are expensive, and how we can help bring instantaneous data transfers to both new startups and scaled businesses in the most fair way possible. And so, our adventure started over the price of a coffee and has grown to the appropriately named LatteStream.

Setting LatteStream Apart

LatteStream is a Rust-powered WebSocket infrastructure which uses several techniques to keep internal latency as low as possible while keeping data safely isolated. We have worked very diligently to put those two important factors at the forefront of every feature we've built. Is it fast? Is it secure? LatteStream answers "yes" to both of these questions. Here are the key features that set us apart.

Scalability

Our infrastructure is currently in Europe, but our WebSocket infrastructure has been built to scale from the ground up. Multiple layer scaling allows us to scale in regional areas and inter-regional locations independently. We don't simply "put a load balancer in front of it". We have a specialized solution that follows our two focal points of fast and secure. We are ready for 10 connections and we are ready for hundreds of thousands of connections. We can handle connections indefinitely but for now we limited accounts to 100,000 connections for obvious cost reasons that we'll detail below.

Security

Security was perhaps one of the most challenging aspects of our system where performance is critical. How do we ensure security when every microsecond counts. We use multiple mechanisms that work with each other instead of cascading on one another to ensure that:

1. Connects establish quickly.
2. Authentication responses are optimal.
3. Data is NEVER leaked.

LatteStream also features API key region bounds which can restrict connections to regions. For the moment, this is automatically set to the EU region. Any non-EU server (as we expand) will reject connections outright when requests come in from outside the server's region. The signup flow will even ask if you're storing EU residential data to help you stay in the clear on GDPR compliance.

Performance

Our performance insights have allowed us to push LatteStream onto another level. For each connection, we allow 15 messages per second and a fair share of network bandwidth. Messages and bandwidth is measured in 10-second windows and is shared across your connections whether they are active or not. This means that if you had 2 websockets connected on a 100 concurrent connection plan (our Ristretto plan), you can achieve well over 5000 messages in single second assuming no other socket sends a message in that 10-second window. Just be careful, going over these limits will trigger a fair use warning and messages will fail when you exceed these limits. On the positive side, since these limits are shared across all connections, you can always purchase more concurrent connections (our Espresso or Lungo plans). We strongly discourage sending this volume of messages from one location or in a distributed way where all messages are too similar, you'll likely be caught by a data scrubbing center.

Channel Types

Our first usable feature target was private channels. We felt this was the feature that 80% needed. We realized towards that end of our development that we needed more. We currently don't support public channels. However, we do fully support both private and presence channels. Our SDKs (currently Node.JS but others are also in the works) provide the means for authenticating to both types of channels.

Webhooks

With the recent addition of our presence, we've also added webhooks that are configurable per API key. These webhooks have a specific secret that need to be used to make the request. Just note that concurrent connections are not per API key, but we've accommodated for those looking to setup multiple webhooks in a single account.

SDKs with DX (Developer Experience)

We currently have two SDKs that can be used to build any real-time application. These are specifically designed to be a drop-in replacement for Pusher*'s SDK. These are both fully typed SDKs that allow you to connect using your LatteStream credentials.

• Client side JS/TS SDK - https://www.npmjs.com/package/@lattestream/client
• Server side Node/Deno/Bun SDK - https://www.npmjs.com/package/@lattestream/server

We'll have more SDK's coming soon!

* We are not affiliated with or endorse Pusher in any way.

Pricing

We began LatteStream with pricing as the main blocker for most interactive applications. This was the problem we wanted to solve. The reality is that WebSockets cost money at scale. That's not news to anyone (I hope). We've engineered with focuses on security and performance as well as deep research on how we can bring the bar down on pricing and we believe we have succeeded.

You Succeed? Yet, You Don't Have a Free Tier?

One of the issues we have come across is where the free tier doesn't allow you to make real applications. Once applications start getting a little bit real, message limits become a major cost factor that makes adoption a show-stopper. Our research shows that free tiers on services occupy a large number of the accounts on services. The paid tier customers are subsidizing the free tier costs. We find this very unfair, so instead we made the entry minimal. Can you spot us a half of a cup of caffeinated, bold, robust coffee? That's all we need to keep providing powerful WebSockets. So this basically comes down to:

• We don't want higher tier customers paying for lower tier customers.

What's With The Pricing Tiers?

We are glad you noticed! They're all the same! Our pricing scales linearly and we don't have per message rates or connection time rates. We charge exactly what you see when you sign up or change plans. We also couldn't pass up the opportunity to make a few more carefully placed coffee puns (that may or may not be randomly generated on page load).

Use Cases

LatteStream powers a wide variety of applications:

• Collaborative Tools: Real-time document editing, whiteboarding, and project management
• Live Gaming: Multiplayer games with low-latency state synchronization
• Financial Services: Live trading platforms and real-time market data feeds
• IoT Applications: Device monitoring and control systems
• Social Platforms: Chat applications, live streaming, and social feeds

What's Next?

This is just the beginning. Our roadmap includes exciting features like:

• Global communications - This has been a large discussion topic for us internally while we decide how to roll out our infrastructure while remaining fast and secure.
• Advanced messaging and routing - We'll we already have great data isolation, we're open to improving in any way we can.
• WebRTC integration for video/audio streaming - targeting mid-late 2026

Join Our Community

We're building LatteStream with and for developers. Join our community to:

• Get support from our team and other developers
• Share your use cases and success stories
• Influence our product roadmap
• Access exclusive resources and tutorials

Start Building Today

Ready to revolutionize your real-time applications? Sign up for 3$/month and join developers who are already building with LatteStream.

Thank you for being part of this journey. We can't wait to see what you'll build!

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Have questions? Reach out to us at info@lattestream.com.