Ably
Realtime messaging platform with guaranteed ordering and delivery at global scale.
why this verdict
Keep paying — Anthropic has not replaced it
Anthropic's version overlaps, but does not finish the dev tools job, so this one still earns its $29/mo.
- A named launch, not a vibe named, unlinked
- Supabase Realtime, Durable Objects and PartyKit bundling realtime messaging cheaply. Anthropic, November 4, 2025 — no announcement link recorded yet.
- How much of the job it covers not the job editorial call
- Parts of it. The job still needs the tool to get finished.
- Is there a free way to do it? yes
- 3 of 3 listed replacements have a usable free tier: Pusher, Supabase Realtime and PartyKit.
- What the call is worth $348/yr
- $29/mo at the entry paid tier — $348 a year per seat.
- Threatened by
- Anthropic
- Since
- November 4, 2025
- List price
- $29/mo
- Per year
- $348
The backstory
Ably sells realtime pub/sub with guarantees most implementations skip: exact ordering, exactly-once delivery and connection state recovery after a network drop. Cheaper bundled realtime keeps arriving from platform vendors. Ably's opening is that AI applications stream tokens continuously and agents run for minutes at a time, so a dropped connection is a visibly broken product, and that raises the value of guarantees that were previously easy to dismiss as over-engineering.
Escape hatches
Simpler realtime channels, easy to get started
pusher.com open_in_newIncluded with the Supabase platform
supabase.com open_in_newRealtime on Cloudflare Durable Objects
partykit.io open_in_new3 of 3 replacements have a usable free tier.
