What Centrifugal Labs does

Centrifugal Labs LTD is a Cyprus-registered (Limassol) software company founded in 2023 by the original creators of the Centrifugo open-source project. The company develops and maintains Centrifugo, a self-hosted real-time messaging server written in Go that handles persistent client connections over WebSocket, HTTP-streaming, Server-Sent Events (SSE), WebTransport, and gRPC. The platform exposes two primary primitives: PUB/SUB messaging for ordered event delivery and state synchronization for key-value consistency across clients, with a documented benchmark of one million concurrent WebSocket connections and 30 million delivered messages per minute on single-server hardware.

The product is offered in two tiers: a free open-source edition that includes the core transports, channel history, presence, recovery, and integrations with Redis-compatible brokers (AWS ElastiCache, Google Memorystore, DragonflyDB, Valkey, KeyDB), PostgreSQL, and NATS for multi-node scaling; and Centrifugo PRO, a commercial subscription that adds ClickHouse analytics, real-time tracing, performance optimizations, a push notification API, SSO integrations, and a user-status feature. The v6.8.0 release in May 2026 added Map subscriptions (paginated key-value state with Fossil delta compression and TTL modes), Shared Poll subscriptions, PostgreSQL stream and map brokers enabling transactional publishing inside SQL transactions, and a PostgreSQL-only multi-node mode that removes the Redis/NATS dependency.

The go-to-market is product-led growth via open-source distribution (GitHub, Docker Hub, Telegram, Discord, technical blog, documentation) with direct enterprise sales for the PRO tier. The product targets engineering teams building real-time features such as chat, live dashboards, multiplayer games, collaborative applications, financial market data, IoT/tracking, and AI response streaming. Named users include VK, Badoo, ManyChat, OpenWeb, Grafana Labs, Luma, RabbitX, Skin.Club, and AzuraCast, with the company claiming "thousands of real installations" worldwide. Revenue figures and external funding have not been publicly disclosed, and the team is described as a small, focused unit (1-10 employees).

Name

Centrifugal Labs

Legal name

Centrifugal Labs LTD

Website

https://centrifugal.dev

Company type

Private

Founded year

2023

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

1–10 employees

Short description

Centrifugal Labs is a Cyprus-based software company that develops Centrifugo, a self-hosted Go-based real-time messaging server supporting WebSocket, SSE, WebTransport, and gRPC transports. It serves engineering teams building chat, live dashboards, multiplayer, financial, IoT, and AI streaming applications via a free open-source tier and a commercial PRO edition.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Product category

Real-Time Messaging Infrastructure

NAICS

Computing Infrastructure Providers, Data Processing, Web Hosting, and Related Services (51821)

SIC

Services-Prepackaged Software (7372)

akta.pro primary industry

GraphQL, gRPC & Modern API Protocols (BPAMAOAK)

Keywords

• Real-time messaging
• WebSocket server
• Pub/sub messaging
• State synchronization
• Self-hosted infrastructure

Headquarters

HQ city

Limassol

HQ country

Cyprus

HQ region

Europe

Offices1 record

Markets served

GTM type

B2B

Offering type

Software

Cost components

Personnel, Technology or R&D, Infrastructure, Marketing or Sales, Operations

Revenue model

1. Centrifugo Open Source: Free open source version with core real-time messaging capabilities including WebSocket, HTTP-streaming, SSE, WebTransport support, Redis/PostgreSQL/NATS engine integrations, and basic subscription features.
2. Centrifugo PRO: Commercial enterprise version offering additional features on top of OSS: ClickHouse analytics, real-time tracing, performance optimizations, push notification API, SSO integrations for web UI, user status feature, and server-side publication tags filter.

Pricing tiers

Go-to-market motion2 records

Distribution channels4 records

Marketing channels7 records

Core offering

Centrifugal Labs develops and distributes Centrifugo, a self-hosted real-time messaging server written in Go that handles persistent connections over WebSocket, HTTP-streaming, SSE, WebTransport, and gRPC transports, providing PUB/SUB messaging and state synchronization primitives for real-time applications. The platform is offered as a free open-source product (Centrifugo) and a commercial enterprise upgrade (Centrifugo PRO) that adds ClickHouse analytics, real-time tracing, push notification API, SSO integrations, and performance optimizations.

Product overview

Centrifugal Labs offers Centrifugo as a self-hosted scalable real-time messaging server, available in open-source (OSS) and PRO (enterprise) versions. The core platform handles persistent connections over WebSocket, HTTP-streaming, SSE, WebTransport, and gRPC, providing PUB/SUB messaging and state synchronization. Centrifugo OSS includes three subscription types: stream subscriptions for ordered event sequences, map subscriptions for synchronized key-value state, and shared poll subscriptions for selective polling. Centrifugo PRO adds enterprise features including ClickHouse analytics, real-time tracing, push notification API, and SSO integrations. The platform is built on the Centrifuge Go library and integrates with Redis-compatible storages, PostgreSQL, and NATS for multi-node scaling.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Brands

• Centrifugo PRO: Commercial enterprise version of Centrifugo offering unique features including analytics with ClickHouse, realtime tracing, performance optimizations, push notification API, and SSO integrations.

Products and services

• Centrifugo (Open Source) Scalable self-hosted real-time messaging server that handles persistent connections over WebSocket, HTTP-streaming, SSE, WebTransport, and gRPC transports, providing PUB/SUB messaging and state synchronization primitives for real-time applications such as chat, live dashboards, multiplayer games, AI streaming, IoT, and collaborative tools. Available free under open source for developers and engineering teams.
• Centrifugo PRO

Quantifiable outcome

• Handles 1 million concurrent WebSocket connections on single-server hardware
• +6 more outcomes

Named customers9 records

Segments6 records

Ideal customer profiles5 records

Technology focussed Yes

API detail

Has API

Yes

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

Integration7 records

AI capability2 records

Feature9 records

Scale indicators10 records

Recent moves4 records

Expansion highlights5 records

Direct peers

• Sendbird: API-driven chat, voice, and video platform for in-app messaging. Direct peer for real-time chat and messaging infrastructure, with a more productized/managed offering than Centrifugo's self-hosted approach.
• Socket.IO: Open-source JavaScript library for real-time bidirectional event-based communication over WebSocket. Direct technical peer to Centrifugo for self-hosted WebSocket messaging, with a different protocol and language ecosystem focus.
• Ably: Realtime data delivery platform offering pub/sub, presence, and push notifications over WebSockets. Directly comparable to Centrifugo across messaging primitives, with a managed-SaaS go-to-market versus Centrifugal Labs' self-hosted OSS model.
• Stream: API platform for chat, activity feeds, and real-time messaging with SDKs for web and mobile. Competes in the same developer-facing real-time messaging category, with verticalized chat/feed solutions overlapping Centrifugo's stream subscription use cases.
• PubNub: Real-time communication APIs for chat, IoT, and live updates with global edge infrastructure. Competes in the same developer-facing real-time messaging market as Centrifugo, though as a fully managed service.
• Pusher: Cloud-hosted real-time messaging service (WebSocket, pub/sub) targeting developers building chat, dashboards, and live updates. Direct overlap with Centrifugo's real-time pub/sub use cases, though Pusher is managed SaaS where Centrifugo is self-hosted.

Emerging players

• Supabase Realtime: Open-source Firebase alternative providing managed Postgres with built-in real-time subscriptions over WebSockets. Overlaps with Centrifugo's PostgreSQL-backed real-time messaging and increasingly competes for the same developer mindshare.
• Knock: Notification infrastructure platform offering multi-channel delivery including in-app real-time feeds. Overlaps with Centrifugo's push notification and real-time feed use cases at the developer-tools layer.

Broad incumbents

• Amazon AppSync: AWS managed GraphQL service with real-time subscriptions over WebSockets. Broad incumbent that provides real-time messaging as part of the AWS data/API stack, competing for the same serverless real-time workload segment.
• Firebase Realtime Database: Google's managed real-time NoSQL database with WebSocket-based sync for client apps. Broad incumbent that bundles real-time messaging into a larger application development platform, often displacing standalone solutions like Centrifugo.

Market position

Strengths5 records

Weaknesses5 records

Competitive moat4 records

Key risks5 records

Key highlights6 records

Customer concentration

• Xx.com/centrifugalabs
• GitHubgithub.com/centrifugal/centrifugo

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Funding overview

Funding rounds

Investors

Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

M&A

Investments

M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

Frequently asked questions about Centrifugal Labs