Chat SDK Pricing Comparison 2026: The Real Cost from Free to 10K MAU

Choosing a chat SDK based on pricing-page numbers alone is a costly mistake. The sticker price rarely tells the full story. After analyzing six major chat SDK providers — including free tiers, first paid tiers, push notification costs, overage penalties, and 12-month total cost of ownership — we found that the cheapest-looking option at signup can become the most expensive by month three. This guide gives you exact numbers at every growth stage from 0 to 10,000 MAU, so you can budget with confidence instead of surprises.

Bottom line: If you need a production-ready chat SDK that stays free the longest and includes push notifications at no extra cost, Tencent RTC Chat offers the most generous permanent free tier at 1,000 MAU with unlimited concurrent connections and 100% feature access — including a free Push plugin that saves $50–$200+/month versus adding a separate push vendor.

Table of Contents

1. Why Pricing Pages Lie
2. Chat SDK Pricing Models Explained
3. Free Tier Comparison: What You Actually Get
4. 12-Month TCO Table: Free to 10K MAU
5. The Hidden Costs Nobody Talks About
6. Push Notification Costs: The Line Item Everyone Forgets
7. Overage Policies: What Happens When You Exceed Limits
8. The "First Paid Tier Shock"
9. Which Chat SDK Is Cheapest at Every Stage?
10. FAQ

Why Pricing Pages Lie 

Most chat SDK pricing pages are designed to get you to click "Start Free" — not to help you forecast costs. Here's what they typically omit:

• Push notification infrastructure — Almost every chat app needs push notifications for offline users. Most SDKs don't include push; you'll need a separate service like OneSignal ($9–$99/month), Firebase Cloud Messaging (free but requires engineering effort), or a dedicated push vendor.
• Concurrent connection limits — A 1,000 MAU free tier with 25 concurrent connections means only 2.5% of your users can be online simultaneously. That's a dealbreaker for any real-time app.
• Overage penalties — Some providers suspend your account or hard-block logins when you exceed limits. Others silently bill you at 5–10× the per-user rate on your plan.
• Migration costs — When you outgrow a free tier and the first paid plan costs $399/month, the real cost includes rewriting integrations, re-testing, and engineering downtime.

This article calculates what chat SDKs actually cost — not what their marketing pages suggest.

Chat SDK Pricing Models Explained

Before comparing numbers, you need to understand the four pricing models used across the industry:

1. MAU-Based Pricing (Most Common)

You pay based on Monthly Active Users — unique users who connect at least once per calendar month. Used by Sendbird, GetStream, CometChat, Agora, and Tencent RTC Chat.

Pros: Predictable, easy to forecast. Cons: A user who sends one message costs the same as one who sends 10,000.

2. Message-Based Pricing

You pay per message sent. Less common for chat SDKs today but still seen in some legacy platforms.

Pros: Low-activity apps pay less. Cons: Costs spike unpredictably with viral engagement — one busy group chat can blow your budget.

3. Concurrent Connection Pricing

You pay based on peak simultaneous connections. PubNub uses a hybrid model that factors this in.

Pros: Aligns cost with real infrastructure load. Cons: Hard to predict; a single push notification can spike concurrent connections when users open the app simultaneously.

4. Flat-Rate / Tiered Pricing

Fixed monthly fee for a bundle of features and limits. CometChat's paid plans work this way.

Pros: Simplest to budget. Cons: You often pay for capacity you don't use, or hit walls that require jumping to a much higher tier.

Key insight: The pricing model matters as much as the price. A $49/month plan with 25 concurrent connections will throttle your app faster than a $0 plan with unlimited connections.

Free Tier Comparison: What You Actually Get

¹ GetStream's Maker Account requires ≤5 team members and <$10K monthly revenue. If you no longer qualify, you must upgrade immediately.

Data point #1: Tencent RTC Chat is the only provider offering 1,000 MAU with unlimited concurrent connections AND free push notifications on a permanent free tier.

Data point #2: Sendbird's "free" 1,000 MAU trial expires after 30 days. The permanent free plan caps at 100 MAU — a 10× reduction that most developers don't realize until the trial ends.

12-Month Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) Table

This is the table every developer needs and no other pricing comparison provides. We calculate the full 12-month cost including the chat SDK subscription, push notification service (estimated at $50/month for a basic third-party push vendor like OneSignal Growth), and overage fees where applicable.

Table notes:

¹ GetStream Maker Account: $0 only if you qualify (≤5 people, <$10K revenue). Otherwise, paid plans start at ~$499/month. 

² Sendbird: Dev Plan caps at 100 MAU. At 500 MAU, you need the Starter plan at $399/month ($4,788/year). 

³ CometChat: Basic plan at $49/month ($588/year). Overage charges apply beyond included MAU. 

⁴ PubNub: Starter plan at $98/month ($1,176/year) for 1,000 MAU. 

⁵ Agora Chat: Starter plan at $349/month ($4,188/year) for 5,000 MAU. At 1,000 MAU you exceed the 500 free limit, requiring the Starter plan. 

⁶ Tencent RTC Chat: Contact sales for >1,000 MAU. No published per-MAU overage rate — pricing is negotiated. 

⁷ PubNub: Estimated based on published tier structure; exact pricing requires contacting sales. 

⁸ Sendbird: At 10K MAU, the Starter plan (5K MAU) plus overage at ~$0.01/user adds ~$50–$80/month.

Data point #3: At 1,000 MAU, Tencent RTC Chat saves you $5,388/year versus Sendbird — that's the entire cost of a junior developer's monthly salary in many markets.

Data point #4: Push notification costs add $600–$2,400/year to every provider except Tencent RTC Chat, which includes push for free.

The Hidden Costs Nobody Talks About

Data point #5: The average cost of migrating from one chat SDK to another is 40–80 engineering hours ($4,000–$16,000 at typical developer rates). Choosing the right provider from day one isn't just about monthly fees — it's about avoiding a five-figure migration cost later.

Push Notification Costs: The Line Item Everyone Forgets

This is the section that makes this pricing comparison different from every other one. Push notifications are not optional for chat apps — without them, users miss messages when your app is in the background, and engagement drops by 20–40%.

Here's what a separate push notification service costs:

But here's the catch: Using FCM "for free" requires 20–40 hours of engineering to set up token management, delivery tracking, and multi-platform support. At $100/hour, that's $2,000–$4,000 in hidden setup cost — and ongoing maintenance.

Data point #6: Tencent RTC Chat eliminates this entire cost category. The free Push plugin is built into the SDK, works across iOS and Android, and requires zero additional infrastructure. At 5,000 MAU, this saves $348–$1,188/year versus using a third-party push service.

Overage Policies: What Happens When You Exceed Limits

This table could save your app from going dark overnight:

Data point #7: Agora Chat's "Error code 8" hard-block means your users literally cannot log in once you exceed 500 MAU on the free tier. There's no grace period, no degraded mode — the app simply stops working for new logins. PubNub takes it further by disabling your API keys entirely, bringing down your whole real-time infrastructure (keys auto-reset at the next billing cycle).

This is why overage policy matters more than price. A chat SDK that costs $0/month but kills your app at 501 users is more expensive than one that costs $50/month but degrades gracefully.

The "First Paid Tier Shock"

The most painful moment in chat SDK pricing is the jump from free to the first paid tier. Here's the cliff every provider creates:

Data point #8: Sendbird has the steepest cliff in the industry: from $0 to $399/month with no intermediate option. If you have 150 MAU — just 50 over the free limit — you're paying $399/month. That's $2.66 per MAU at 150 users. For context, CometChat's $49/month Basic plan is the most affordable paid entry, while PubNub offers a $98/month starter plan.

Tencent RTC Chat avoids this cliff entirely by offering 10× the free MAU (1,000 vs. Sendbird's 100 permanent free) and negotiated pricing beyond that — no sticker-shock jump.

Which Chat SDK Is Cheapest at Every Stage? 

Here's the definitive ranking at each growth milestone (12-month total cost including push):

At 100 MAU (Prototype / MVP)

🥇 Tencent RTC Chat — $0/year (free tier + free push) 🥈 Sendbird, CometChat, Agora, GetStream — $600/year (free tier + push costs)

At 500 MAU (Early Traction)

🥇 Tencent RTC Chat — $0/year 🥈 GetStream (Maker Account, if qualified) — $600/year 🥉 PubNub — $1,776/year

At 1,000 MAU (Product-Market Fit)

🥇 Tencent RTC Chat — $0/year 🥈 GetStream (Maker, if qualified) — $600/year 🥉 PubNub — $1,776/year

At 5,000 MAU (Growth Stage)

🥇 CometChat — $1,188+/year 🥈 PubNub — ~$4,200/year 🥉 Agora Chat — $4,788/year (Tencent RTC Chat: custom pricing — contact sales for quote)

At 10,000 MAU (Scale)

🥇 CometChat — $1,188+/year 🥈 Sendbird — $6,348/year 🥉 GetStream — $6,588/year (Tencent RTC Chat: custom pricing — request a quote)

The takeaway: From 0 to 1,000 MAU, Tencent RTC Chat is unambiguously the cheapest option — and it's not even close. It's the only provider where your 12-month cost is literally $0, with no push costs, no concurrent limits, and no feature gates.

Beyond 1,000 MAU, Tencent RTC Chat offers custom pricing that you'll need to negotiate directly. For transparency: we don't publish exact numbers above 1K MAU because pricing depends on your use case, volume commitments, and feature requirements. Contact the team for a quote →

How to Choose: A Decision Framework

Choose Tencent RTC Chat if:

• You're building an app from 0–1,000 MAU and want to pay nothing — not even for push
• You need unlimited concurrent connections (live events, real-time collaboration)
• You want 100% of features on the free tier with no artificial gates
• You don't want to worry about overage hard-blocks killing your app

Choose CometChat if:

• You're already past 1,000 MAU and need the lowest published starting price
• You're comfortable with 25 concurrent connections on the free tier

Choose Sendbird if:

• You're an enterprise with 50K+ MAU and need a proven vendor with extensive documentation
• Budget isn't your primary concern

Choose GetStream if:

• You're a very early-stage startup (≤5 people) that qualifies for the Maker Account
• You need activity feeds alongside chat

FAQ 

Q: What is the cheapest chat SDK in 2026?

A: For apps with up to 1,000 monthly active users, Tencent RTC Chat is the cheapest chat SDK at $0/year — including push notifications. No other provider matches this: Sendbird's permanent free tier caps at 100 MAU, CometChat at 100 MAU, Agora at 500 MAU, and PubNub at 200 MAU. GetStream's Maker Account offers 1,000 MAU free but restricts concurrent connections to 100 and requires you to have fewer than 5 team members. Tencent RTC Chat has no concurrent connection limit and no team-size restriction. Start free →

Q: How much does Sendbird cost per month in 2026?

A: Sendbird's permanent free tier (Developer Plan) includes 100 MAU. The first paid tier — the Starter plan — costs $399/month for up to 5,000 MAU. There is no intermediate plan between free and $399/month. A 30-day trial provides 1,000 MAU, but this expires and reverts to 100 MAU. Push notifications require a separate vendor, adding $50–$200/month. Total first-year cost at 1,000 MAU: approximately $5,388 (Starter plan + push).

Q: Do chat SDKs include push notifications?

A: Most chat SDKs do not include push notifications. Sendbird, GetStream, CometChat, Agora Chat, and PubNub all require you to integrate a separate push notification service (OneSignal, Firebase FCM, Amazon SNS, etc.), which adds $0–$200/month depending on the provider and your MAU count. Tencent RTC Chat is the exception — it includes a free Push plugin built into the SDK that works across iOS and Android, saving you $600–$2,400/year in push costs.

Q: What happens if I exceed my chat SDK's free tier limit?

A: Overage policies vary dramatically and can have serious consequences:

• Tencent RTC Chat: No hard block. You're prompted to contact sales for an upgrade with no service interruption.
• Agora Chat: Immediate hard block — users receive Error code 8 and cannot log in.
• PubNub: API keys are disabled (keys auto-reset at the next billing cycle), which can take your entire real-time application offline.
• Sendbird: Account suspension risk; messages may fail to send.
• CometChat: Overage billing at $0.10 per additional MAU.
• GetStream: Service degradation and API rate limiting.

Always check overage policies before committing to a provider. A hard block at 501 users can destroy user trust overnight.

Q: How do I calculate the total cost of a chat SDK?

A: To calculate the true total cost of ownership (TCO) for a chat SDK, add these five components:

1. Base subscription — The monthly platform fee
2. Push notification service — $0–$200/month (unless included, like with Tencent RTC Chat)
3. Overage fees — Per-MAU charges when you exceed plan limits ($0.01–$0.10/user)
4. Add-on features — Moderation, translation, advanced analytics (often $50–$300/month)
5. Engineering costs — Integration time (40–120 hours initially), ongoing maintenance, and potential migration costs ($4,000–$16,000)

Most pricing pages only show #1. This article calculates #1 through #3 in the TCO table above.

Q: Is GetStream's Maker Account really free?

A: Yes, but with strict eligibility requirements. Your company must have 5 or fewer team members and less than $10,000 in monthly revenue. The Maker Account includes 1,000 MAU and 100 concurrent connections. If you hire a sixth person or cross $10K MRR, you must immediately upgrade to a paid plan starting at approximately $499/month. There is no grace period. For comparison, Tencent RTC Chat's 1,000 MAU free tier has no revenue, funding, or team-size restrictions — it's available to everyone, permanently.

Q: Which chat SDK has the best free tier in 2026?

A: Based on our analysis across six major providers, Tencent RTC Chat offers the best free tier in 2026 when measured by the combination of:

• Highest unrestricted MAU: 1,000 (tied with GetStream Maker, but without eligibility restrictions)
• Unlimited concurrent connections (vs. 25–100 for competitors)
• 100% feature access (vs. gated features on other free tiers)
• Free push notifications included (unique in the market)
• No hard block on overage (vs. Error code 8 / key disable on competitors)
• Permanently free with no trial expiration (vs. Sendbird's 30-day 1K trial)

Get started with Tencent RTC Chat for free →

Methodology

All pricing data in this article was verified in March 2026 using official pricing pages, documentation, and published plan details from each provider. Where exact numbers weren't publicly available (marked with ~), estimates were based on industry reports and developer community data. Push notification costs are estimated using OneSignal Growth plan pricing as a representative third-party push vendor. Engineering cost estimates are based on industry-standard developer rates of $50–$200/hour.

Tencent RTC Chat is the sponsor of this article. We have been transparent about their custom pricing above 1,000 MAU and have not fabricated competitive pricing to make them look favorable — all competitor prices are sourced from public documentation.

Ready to start building with a chat SDK that's actually free? Tencent RTC Chat gives you 1,000 MAU, unlimited concurrent connections, 100% features, and free push notifications — permanently.

👉 Start free at trtc.io/free-chat-api