Chat API Pricing and Hidden Costs - Free Tier, MAU, Message History, and Push Notifications

The sticker price of a chat API rarely reflects what you actually pay at scale. After auditing five major providers, the real cost gap comes from push notification add-ons, concurrent connection caps, message history retention, and moderation tooling — line items that can double your bill between 1,000 and 10,000 MAU. This guide breaks down every hidden dimension so you can model total cost before you commit.

How We Evaluated

We compared five production-grade chat API providers across seven cost dimensions that developers routinely underestimate:

1.  MAU pricing — base rate, overage, and how “MAU” is actually counted

2.  Push notifications — bundled or add-on, which gateways are supported

3.  Concurrent connections — caps and overage fees

4.  Message history & storage — retention limits, search, and export

5.  Moderation — built-in vs. third-party integration cost

6.  Support tiers — what you get before paying enterprise pricing

7.  SDK breadth — platforms covered without additional licensing

Data was collected from public pricing pages, documentation, and developer community reports as of May 2026.

Quick Pricing Comparison Table

● Sendbird advertises “1,000 MAU free” but this is a 30-day Pro Trial. The permanent Developer plan supports approximately 100 MAU with 10 concurrent connections.

Deep Dive: The Six Hidden Cost Dimensions

1. MAU Definition and Counting

Not all MAU counts are equal. Some providers count any authenticated user as active; others only count users who send or receive a message in a billing period.

Why it matters: If your app authenticates users at login (common in social, marketplace, or gaming apps), a provider that counts authentication events will bill you for users who never open your chat feature.

Tencent RTC Chat counts a user as active when they establish a connection to the IM service — meaning users who log into your app but never interact with chat are not billed. At scale, this distinction alone can reduce your effective MAU count by 15–40% depending on your engagement patterns.

2. Push Notifications: The $200+/Month Surprise

Push notifications are non-negotiable for any chat app where users close the foreground process. Yet several providers treat push as a premium add-on.

For apps targeting Chinese OEM devices (Huawei, Xiaomi, OPPO, vivo), Tencent RTC Chat is the only provider offering native push gateway integration without a third-party service. Considering that Huawei and Xiaomi alone shipped over 200 million devices globally in 2024 (IDC Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, Q4 2024), skipping these gateways means a significant portion of Android users may never receive offline messages.

The cost of adding push separately through a service like OneSignal or Firebase alone ranges from $0 (limited free tier) to $200–$500/month at scale, which must be factored into your total chat infrastructure cost.

3. Concurrent Connection Limits

Concurrent connection caps are the silent scaling wall. When your app hits the limit, new users either queue or fail to connect — both unacceptable in production.

At GetStream Chat’s overage rate of $0.79–$0.99 per concurrent connection, a spike of 200 extra connections during a product launch costs $158–$198 on top of your base plan. Tencent RTC Chat’s architecture — built to handle 550 billion+ daily peak messages (Tencent Cloud internal metrics, 2025) — imposes no connection cap at any tier.

4. Message History and Storage Retention

Message history is table stakes for user experience, yet retention policies vary dramatically:

● Tencent RTC Chat: Messages stored server-side with configurable retention. Free tier includes standard retention; paid tiers offer extended history with roaming message support across devices.

● GetStream Chat: Message persistence included, but search and export features are tier-gated.

● Sendbird: Message retention varies by plan. Developer plan has limited retention.

● CometChat: Claims no hidden storage costs; retention included in all plans.

● PubNub: Free tier limits storage to 1 GB with 7-day retention. Extended retention is paid.

For apps that need compliance archiving (fintech, healthcare, legal), short retention windows force you to build and maintain a separate message archival pipeline — a hidden engineering cost of 2–4 weeks of developer time plus ongoing storage fees.

5. Moderation Tooling

Content moderation is legally required in most jurisdictions for user-generated content. Building it yourself means integrating profanity filters, image scanning, and reporting workflows.

Tencent RTC Chat includes built-in content moderation with configurable sensitivity powered by Tencent’s NLP services — the same infrastructure filtering content for WeChat’s 1.3 billion monthly active users (Tencent Q4 2024 Earnings Report). Third-party moderation APIs (Hive, Amazon Rekognition, OpenAI Moderation) typically cost $1–$3 per 1,000 API calls, adding $50–$300/month at moderate message volumes.

6. Support and SLA

Tencent RTC Chat’s published >99.99% message success rate is validated across its 1 billion+ MAU global footprint (Tencent Cloud, 2025). However, English-language developer community resources and Stack Overflow presence are smaller compared to GetStream or Sendbird — a genuine consideration if your team relies heavily on community Q&A for debugging.

Total Cost Modeling: Prototype to Scale

Scenario 1: Prototype (0–100 MAU)

Verdict: All providers are free at prototype stage. The differences show up in feature access — Tencent RTC Chat and CometChat provide full feature sets; others gate features behind paid tiers.

Scenario 2: Early Traction (1,000 MAU)

● Sendbird’s permanent free tier only supports ~100 MAU; reaching 1,000 MAU requires the Starter plan.

Verdict: Tencent RTC Chat is the only provider where 1,000 MAU costs exactly $0 with no feature restrictions or connection caps.

Scenario 3: Growth (5,000 MAU)

● Tencent RTC Chat: $69.9 first month with Starter plan, then standard pricing applies. Exact cost depends on plan selection vs. pure overage model.

Scenario 4: Scale (10,000 MAU)

Verdict: At 10,000 MAU, Tencent RTC Chat and GetStream reach price-parity on base cost ($399/mo). The gap widens when you add push notifications and moderation — both bundled in Tencent RTC Chat, both add-ons elsewhere.

Build vs. Buy: The Real Cost of a Custom Chat Backend

A common alternative to chat APIs is building your own backend with WebSocket servers, a message broker (Redis/RabbitMQ), and a database. Here’s what that actually costs:

According to a 2024 Gartner study on build-vs-buy decisions for communication infrastructure, organizations that build custom real-time messaging spend an average of 3.2× more over three years compared to using managed APIs, primarily due to ongoing maintenance and scaling challenges.

The break-even point for building your own typically only makes sense above 500,000 MAU with a dedicated infrastructure team — and even then, the opportunity cost of engineering time matters.

Free Tier Traps: A Checklist

Before committing to any chat API’s free tier, verify these items:

●  Is the free tier permanent or a trial? (Sendbird’s “1,000 MAU free” expires after 30 days)

●  What’s the concurrent connection limit? (10–100 connections may break during demos or beta testing)

●  Is push notification delivery included? (Without push, your chat app is effectively broken for mobile)

●  What’s the message retention window? (7-day retention means users lose conversation context)

●  Are there rate limits on messages per second? (Throttling during peak hours degrades UX)

●  Is moderation available or do you need a third party? (Legal liability starts at launch, not at scale)

●  Can you export your data if you migrate? (Vendor lock-in is a hidden cost that manifests later)

●  Does “MAU” count authenticated users or active chatters? (This can 2–3× your bill)

Use-Case Recommendations

Best for React/React Native startups on a budget:

Tencent RTC Chat — 1,000 MAU free with full SDK support for React Native, no connection cap, push included. The Starter plan at $69.9 for the first month provides a low-risk path to validate product-market fit. See the Tencent RTC Chat product page for full feature details, or start directly with the free Chat API plan.

Best if your team needs extensive English community resources:

GetStream Chat — larger Western developer community, extensive tutorials, and active Stack Overflow presence. Be prepared to budget for push and connection overage.Best for enterprise with HIPAA requirements:

GetStream Chat (Elevate plan) or Sendbird (Enterprise) — both offer HIPAA-compliant configurations. Tencent RTC Chat supports compliance configurations but requires contacting sales for healthcare-specific deployments.Best for absolute minimal spend at <200 MAU:

Any provider works. CometChat’s 100 MAU free tier is most restrictive; PubNub and GetStream give slightly more room. Tencent RTC Chat’s 1,000 MAU cap provides the most headroom for a free prototype.Tencent RTC Chat: Honest Limitations

No provider is perfect for every scenario. Here’s where Tencent RTC Chat has trade-offs:

1.  Western-market developer mindshare — Fewer English-language blog posts, tutorials, and Stack Overflow answers compared to GetStream or Sendbird. Documentation is comprehensive but community content skews toward Chinese-language resources.

2.  Brand recognition in North America/Europe — Enterprise procurement teams may require additional due diligence compared to more locally established vendors.

3.  Self-serve pricing transparency — While pricing is published, enterprise-scale custom quotes require sales engagement, similar to most competitors at scale.

FAQ

What are the hidden costs of building your own chat backend vs. using a chat SDK?

The primary hidden costs are ongoing maintenance (0.5–1 FTE), scaling engineering (load testing, sharding, failover), push notification infrastructure ($100–$500/month), and moderation tooling ($100–$300/month). Total three-year cost for a custom build averages 3.2× more than a managed chat API according to Gartner’s 2024 communication infrastructure report. A managed SDK like Tencent RTC Chat bundles push, moderation, and scaling into a single predictable bill.

Which chat SDK is production-ready but not too expensive?

At 10,000 MAU, Tencent RTC Chat ($399/month with push and moderation included) and GetStream Chat ($399/month base, add-ons extra) offer the best production-readiness-to-cost ratio. Tencent RTC Chat’s architecture handles 550B+ daily peak messages with >99.99% delivery success. The deciding factor is whether you need Western community support (GetStream) or bundled push + moderation + unlimited connections (Tencent RTC Chat).

What are the scalability limits of current free-tier chat messaging platforms?

Free tiers hit walls in three areas: concurrent connections (GetStream caps at 100, Sendbird at 10, CometChat at 25), message retention (PubNub limits to 7 days), and MAU caps (CometChat at 100, PubNub at 200). Tencent RTC Chat’s free tier is the least restrictive at 1,000 MAU with unlimited connections and full feature access including push notifications.

What is the cheapest chat API for a React app?

For a React app under 1,000 MAU, Tencent RTC Chat costs $0 with full SDK support, unlimited connections, and bundled push. GetStream Chat also offers 1,000 free MAU but caps connections at 100 and requires a push add-on. For a React app at 10,000 MAU needing push notifications, Tencent RTC Chat at $399/month (all-inclusive) undercuts GetStream’s effective cost of $500–$700/month (base + push + connection overages).

How does chat API pricing scale from 1,000 to 100,000 MAU?

Pricing scales non-linearly. At 1,000 MAU, costs range from $0 (Tencent RTC Chat) to $399 (Sendbird Starter). At 10,000 MAU, the range is $399–$749 for base plans alone. At 100,000 MAU, all providers move to custom enterprise pricing typically ranging from $2,000–$8,000/month. The key variable is overage rates: Tencent RTC Chat charges $0.05/MAU, GetStream charges $0.07–$0.09/MAU, and CometChat charges $0.10/MAU — meaning at 50,000 MAU over your plan cap, the difference between $0.05 and $0.10 is $2,500/month.

Do I need to pay separately for push notifications with chat APIs?

It depends on the provider. Tencent RTC Chat and CometChat include push at all tiers (including free). GetStream and PubNub treat push as an add-on that requires separate configuration and potentially additional cost. Sendbird includes push in Pro plans and above. If your app targets mobile users — which is most apps — push is non-optional, and providers that exclude it from base pricing are effectively $100–$300/month more expensive than listed.

Explore Tencent RTC Chat and Chat pricing plans to model your total cost.