Centrifugo

Centrifugo is a powerful open-source real-time messaging server designed to handle the complexities of instant message delivery at scale. Unlike application-specific solutions like socket.io or SignalR, Centrifugo operates as a dedicated microservice that integrates with any backend language or framework through simple HTTP/GRPC APIs. This architecture allows you to add sophisticated real-time capabilities to existing applications without rewriting your backend. With support for WebSocket, HTTP-streaming, Server-Sent Events, WebTransport, and GRPC, Centrifugo ensures clients can connect using the most appropriate transport for their environment. The platform has been battle-tested to handle millions of concurrent connections and can deliver 500k messages per second on modest hardware, making it suitable for applications of any scale.

Common Use Cases

Development teams use Centrifugo to add real-time features to web and mobile applications without building custom WebSocket infrastructure, integrating pub/sub messaging through simple API calls from their existing backend. SaaS platforms deploy Centrifugo to power live dashboards, real-time analytics, and notification systems that update instantly for thousands of simultaneous users. Chat application developers leverage Centrifugo's presence tracking and message history features to build reliable messaging systems with automatic reconnection and message recovery. Gaming companies use it for multiplayer game state synchronization, lobby systems, and in-game notifications with predictable low latency. IoT platforms implement Centrifugo to stream sensor data, device telemetry, and location updates to web dashboards with minimal infrastructure overhead.

Key Features

• Multiple real-time transports: WebSocket, HTTP-streaming, SSE, WebTransport, GRPC
• Language-agnostic HTTP and GRPC server API for backend integration
• Horizontal scalability using Redis engine for multi-node deployments
• Channel presence tracking with join/leave notifications
• Message history with automatic recovery upon client reconnection
• Delta compression using Fossil algorithm for bandwidth efficiency
• Built-in admin panel for monitoring connections, channels, and messages
• JWT and custom authentication support for secure client connections
• RPC calls from clients to backend over real-time connection
• Prometheus metrics and Grafana dashboard integration
• Supports millions of concurrent connections on standard hardware
• Message broadcasting to thousands of clients with minimal latency

Why deploy Centrifugo on Hostinger VPS

Deploying Centrifugo on a Hostinger VPS provides dedicated resources essential for real-time messaging performance, eliminating the noisy neighbor effects and resource contention that plague shared hosting environments. With full control over network configuration and firewall rules, you can optimize WebSocket connections and implement security policies specific to your real-time infrastructure. Hostinger VPS offers the consistent low latency required for delivering messages instantly to users, with predictable network performance that commercial real-time services charge premium rates to provide. The Redis-backed scaling architecture means you can start with a single VPS and expand horizontally as your user base grows, maintaining complete infrastructure control without vendor lock-in or per-message pricing that makes commercial alternatives expensive at scale.