Best 12 Real Time Chat SDKs and Messaging APIs (2023) [USA, UK, India & UAE]

Real-time Chat SDKs are highly popular among enterprises that have an interactive user base. If you are looking to build or enhance your app with in-app chats, you are at the right place! 

This article is focused on giving you the following outcomes: 

• The finest list of real-time Chat API and SDK providers
• Impact of instant messaging solutions on your brand value
• Key ways to increase user engagement using chat solutions

To begin with, almost 3.21 billion users across the globe are actively using over-the-top messaging apps (infamously known as OTTs) to communicate on a daily basis. This usage rate is expected to increase to over 3.51 billion users in 2025 (Source: Statista Research Report). This is a solid reason why enterprises are quickly switching from traditional email communication to chat solutions in this information era.

What is a Real-time Messaging Chat App?

A real time chat application is an impressive communication medium used in all scales of enterprises. Individuals in your organization can conveniently interact with each other using private and group chat features. This effectively reduces communication gaps at a high rate, leveraging revenue growth and valuable business alliances. Instant messaging can be a game-changer if you’re aimed at endorsing engagement among your stakeholders.

What is a Chat SDK?

A chat SDK or software development kit facilitates real-time chat functionalities in your web, desktop, android, and iOS. Chat SDKs can be easily integrated with your existing or new apps.

12 Best Chat SDK Providers For Web and Mobile Apps

The first step in building a dynamic chat infrastructure for your business is to identify the best chat API or SDK provider. To curb the burden out, we have curated a list of the top 10 best chat SDKs are MirrorFly, Twilio, Apphitect, PubNub, Cometchat, Sendbird, Quickblox, etc…

1. MirrorFly

#1 Free Chat APIs and SDK Providers for Businesses

Mirrorfly is the world’s leading in-app chat SDK preferred by developers for its easy-to-use features like video, voice & messaging features, and simple integration capabilities. It offers a cloud solution to build feature-rich free chat apps. Here are quick details about the platform’s features.

MirrorFly Cloud-based SDKs

As a leading in-app communication provider, MirrorFly offers a wide range of messaging features for a monthly subscription. It includes several benefits such as:

• Free chat SDK for web & mobile apps
• Dedicated cloud hosting
• Multi-tenancy support
• 21-day FREE trial of voice and video call SDKs

MirrorFly Self-Hosted Solution

MirrorFly’s self-hosting solution is an ideal choice for building white-label chat apps for web & mobile. It offers more than 150+ customizable features

Pros

• 99.99% uptime SLA 
• Multichannel communication
• Hire a dedicated development team
• Easy Sharing of Files and Screen
• Push Notifications
• Live Broadcasting & Streaming
• Online Presence Indicators
• Instant and real-time notification
• Read receipts
• Twin pricing model: SaaS and SaaP

Cons

• Limited participants in Video Conferencing

Key Specs:

2. Rocket.Chat

The Customizable Chat Service Built For Teams

Rocket.Chat is a highly customizable chat interface designed to match criteria of organizations in highly-regulated industries like Government, Defense, and Healthcare. It includes advanced Data Loss Prevention controls and over 180 custom roles to efficiently and securely manage conversations.

Features

• Private messaging and group messaging
• Easy Sharing of Files
• Presence Indicators
• Read receipts

Pros

• Compliant with GDPR, HIPAA, and CCPA
• High scalability and flexibility
• Deploy on-premise or to a secure cloud
• Open-source code
• 150+ apps on marketplace

Cons

• Custom pricing for enterprise features

Key Specs:

3. Twilio

The Best Messaging API Provider

Twilio is a programmable instant chat API suitable most likely for high-volume messaging environments. It is capable of facilitating over 795B interactions with message delivery across multi-channels. Twilio holds its position up with a 99.999% API uptime apparently adhering to the compliances.

Features

• Voice & Video Calls
• Cross-Channel Messaging
• Two-factor Authentication
• Multimedia Support
• Proactive Notifications
• Mass Alerts

Pros

• Conversations in High-volume
• Low latency
• Message and user scalability 
• Trial package allows free access for 50 users

Cons

• Customizable pricing based on users and the number of messages.

Key Specs:

4. Apphitect

100% Customizable Chat API Provider

Apphitect IM gives its users unique experiences with personal-chats, social interaction and offline messaging. Adaptation of cutting-edge technologies like Erlang, Apache Cassandra, and AWS makes the platform stand out as a leading instant messaging API and chat SDK provider for Android, iOS and Web apps in the industry.

Features

• In-app chat
• Push notifications
• Social integrations
• Location tracking
• Video & Voice Calling
• Offline messages
• Presence Indicator 
• Sharing features: Screen and Multimedia

Pros

• Unlimited Storage and self cloud hosting.
• Possibility of zero downtime
• Reliable and Scalable
• Easy Integration and 24×7 customer support

Cons

• It takes ten business days to integrate Chat API into a Website.

Key Specs:

5. PubNub

Leading real-time communication platform

Pubnub solves the biggest challenge of concurrency control during heavy traffic while balancing its uptime SLA at ease with the help of a powerful chat system design. This Chat API is also well known for keeping pace of its user engagement and retention. The moderation tools availed by this API conserves the standards and civility of its user platforms.

Features

• Private messaging and group messaging
• Multi Channel communication
• Chat Bot Device Chat
• Tailor-made UI/UX designs
• Instant and Real-time Notifications
• Chats for communities and social groups
• Messaging during live events

Pros

• Caters real-time use cases alongside chats
• Scalable and reliable
• Facilitates over 2 trillion message delivery per month
• Offers over 75 SDKs

Cons

• The standard plan neither grants access to PubNub functions nor complies with HIPAA and GDPR.

Key Specs:

6. Cometchat

Most Secure and Scalable Messaging API Provider

Cometchat is a Colorado-based in-app messaging solutions platform and is a leading chat API and SDK provider in the industry since 2009. Its noteworthy voice and WebRTC-enabled video calling features are preferred by small to large-scale enterprises. As a backing to individual users and small-scale enterprises, Comechat exclusively composed a Sandbox package.

Features

• One-on-One text chat
• Group chat
• Voice calling
• Voice and Video conference
• Video calling

Pros

• Owns CometChat Go, a chat plugin with no-codes.
•  White-label UI solutions
• Customizable Auto-scaling
• Well suited for marketplaces, on-demand services, Edu-tech, Live Stream.

Cons

• The price is significantly higher

Key Specs:

7. Sendbird

Highly Scalable Messaging API Provider

Sendbird is a trusted Chat API and in-app messaging SDK provider based in the US, offering AES 256 End-to-End Encryption data protection to its user platforms. This reliable source of chat infrastructure supports over 1,000,000 concurrent connections per application and 500,000,000 messages every day. With its users spread across 250 countries, Sendbird establishes reliable features like global language translation.

Features

• User muting
• Image filtration
• Smart throttling
• Protection against Spam flooding
• Moderation tools
• Managing moderator roles & permissions
• Profanity filters
• Announcements

Pros

• Private group channels that include 1-on-1 messaging and WhatsApp-style closed group chat.
• Channel freeze 
• Scalable Infrastructure on AWS
• Availability of free trial on all Pro Features

Cons

• The starter plan poses limitations on trying essential chat features like announcements and delivery receipts.

Key Specs:

8. Quickblox

Best in Providing Chat Apps for Healthcare

Quickblox is a leading whitelabel chat solution provider for sectors like banking and finance. The quality of WebRTC-enabled voice and video calling exclaims the reason why users choose this provider. The simple and clean UI/UX designs with flexible data storage are other remarkable advantages its users cannot miss to experience.

Recommended Reading: Conversational Banking | How To Build A Fintech App?

Features

• Integration in active user-management platform
• Compatible across different platforms 
• Video & Voice Calling
• Sharing features: Files, Screen and Multimedia

Pros

• No license restriction and reliable customer support
• Scalable dedicated servers
• Offers a ready-made messaging app called Q-Municate for its users
• End-to-end encryption with adherence to compliances

Cons

• Does not suit platforms other than healthcare, E-commerce, Marketplace and finance

Key Specs:

9. Stream Chat

The Best Chat App with Easy Integration

Stream Chat provides in-app chat APIs and SDKs essential to build chats and new feed infrastructure. The reliability, maintenance and overall accessibility makes Stream’s APIs an user-friendly platform. The UI kits offered by Stream includes live chat, live streams, team chat, and gaming interfaces. 

Free chat app for beginners:
StreamChat offers free SDKs for a certain limit of team members. If your team has less than 5 members and not more than $10k revenue, then you can grab stream chat as complimentary.

Features

• Chat Messaging
• Activity feeds
• Virtual Events
• Live Streams

Pros

• Low latency
• End-to-end encrypted chat infrastructure
• High-end performance & reliability
• Customizable chat features
• Easy Integration

Cons

• Limited integration

Key Specs:

10. Agora

Fully Customizable Real-time Chat SDK

Agora is a popular Chat SDK provider that delivers real-time voice and video calls to over 40,000,000,000 minutes of real-time connection per month. With complete network monitoring in place, Agora enroute the path for sub-second latency across 250+ data centers.

Features

• Voice and Video calling
• Live Interactive Audio and Video streaming
• Recording capability
• Instant real-time Messaging

Pros

• Customizable UI and third-party Extensions.
• Tailor-made UI 
• Minimal energy consumption in mobile-batteries
• Availability of 24×7 development and operational support.
• Maintains a 400ms average global latency with 99.99% uptime.

Cons

• Not suitable for small and medium business

Key Specs:

11. Mesibo

Highly Secure Chat SDK Provider

Mesibo is a developer-friendly platform that adorns itself with the best-in-class message-switching technology and codecs. It administers the best calling experience at low latencies. Compatible across Android, iOS, and web apps, the chat API supports multiple languages at the same time. With Mesibo, users can get everything that makes a realtime chat app.

Features

• One-on-one messaging
• High-end Video and Voice calls
• Clean White-label UI
• Group Messaging
• End-to-end encryption
• Push Notifications

Pros

• On cloud and own-premise hosting
• Customizable moderation and Filters 
• Permits addition of own encryption and key exchange mechanism.
• Demo availability

Cons

• Unavailability of Real-time storage and bandwidth in the on-premise Deployment.

Key Specs:

12. Weavy

fully featured in-app chat experience in minutes

Weavy is a complete toolkit for developers, offering in-app chat experiences and team collaboration tools. It’s been around since 2014 and has kept evolving all these years to give developers a developer-friendly solution for communication and collaboration.

And Weavy also succeeded in its mission of offering developer-friendly, easy-to-use APIs. They are mostly trusted by developers across various industries like IT projects, transportation, and engineering.

Features

• UI Kits
• One-to-one chat
• Group chat
• Push notifications

Pros

• Third-party integrations
• Customizable
• Robust security
• Scalability

Cons

• Data privacy and compliance

Develop Powerful Mobile Apps with Essential Chat Features

1. In-App communication

Chat platform are getting popular among several businesses for their instant messaging facilities without affecting the ongoing activities. Even while you are busy performing a task, you may respond to chats without any impact on the former.

For example, if you are a Financial Consultant and in the middle of an appointment, when you receive any queries from your other clients through the Chat App, you can instantly send them a response without disturbing the ongoing work.

Let’s assume that you are a busy financial consultant preoccupied with an important appointment. On the other hand,  your other clients wait for a reply to their queries that need your minimal or short term attention. Using chat apps, you may respond to them simultaneously without upsetting your primary appointment.

2. Productive Interactions

In every organization, several teams come together to work on the same task. They exercise varied functionalities and require unique discussion spaces. At this instance, Project managers coordinate with the teams and distinct work groups in the chat applications. This allows an assorted project flow with increased productivity and minimal communication gaps.

3. Collaborative Endeavor

The world has efficiently adapted to ‘Remote Working’ in recent years. Be it because of a pandemic or a demanding need, communication mediums have made everything possible! Employees can chat live, share files and screens, make video calls and enjoy several other resources available in the Enterprise chat apps. The technology of instant messaging SDKs has proved to help people achieve great feats together even if spread across the globe.

4. Authenticity and Confidentiality

When an Enterprise chooses to build a custom build chat app, it must ensure security features like multi-layered access and role-based control. This validates the safety and privacy of information shared across different channels. Similarly, chat apps with end-to-end encryption are highly preferred to moderate internal user access and limit third-party activities. 

For instance, let’s take a case of how an unprecedented situation was handled by Enterprises across the world during the Covid-19 outbreak. Managements chose to guide and create interaction pools for their employees, without affecting their well-being. At the same time, they ensured security of their know-hows by choosing the right Chat API providers suitable for their business pursuits

Fundamentals of Choosing a Chat SDK Provider for Pre-built Apps

As the first few steps of building a compelling chat infrastructure, narrow down the details of your communication requirements. Define whether you are building an android chat app from scratch or buying a pre-built chat API for Android, iOS, and web apps. Dive deep into the crucial factors and create a list of essential elements that can satisfy your business needs. Match them with vendors who you find as the best fit and ensure customization availability. Check on the pricing and brace yourself to level up your game!

Benefits of a Subscription-based Chat Solution

The biggest challenge that comes after choosing a mobile chat SDK provider is to select the best pricing option that well suits you. Here we discuss a list of factors that support the subscription model of chat SDKs:

1. Storage Limitation

Be informed of the storage limit set by the providers, beyond which a small amount of fee may be applicable.

2. UI Customization

Choose the vendors who provide simple and user-friendly UIs. The User Interface (UI) is the first element your customers will come across to understand your product and engage with.

3. User Limit

You may choose to broadcast a chat until the user limit set by the providers. You can raise the bar by choosing to pay for it. Meanwhile, this results in limiting the number of concurrent users and maintains legitimacy.

4. Storage & Access

Real-time Chat SDK tools provide you with features like chat message retention by which you can keep your important conversations safe. On the contrary, subscription-based chat solutions have limitations over saving your data.

5. Scalability

Chat SDKs give you an opportunity to enjoy limitless scalability. However, chat solutions with subscriptions do not offer this.

6. Monetization

Try out sponsorship and in-chat payment options and convert your chat apps into a monetizing resource.

7. Pricing

Choosing a provider that offers both SaaS and SaaP pricing models would be the wisest option if you consider both budget and scalability. This way, you can start with a SaaS plan and pay only for the features you use. And when your user base expands, you can switch easily to a more customizable and scalable SaaP option.

Conclusion

To summarize, each Chat SDK provider mentioned in this article has their own unique selling proposition. It is now your complete obligation to keep a clear account of your requirements and make the wisest choice. Gear up to amplify your business’ user engagement through smart instant messaging chat app features and boost your success rate.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)