New in v1.12: channel storage and live user metadata updates!New in v1.12: persistent channel storage with real-time sync and live user metadata updates without reconnecting!

Now available · v1.12 channel storage & live user metadata

Real-time WebSockets, fully private, infinitely scalable, installed in minutes.

Hotsock is a production-ready WebSocket messaging service that runs entirely in your AWS account. Ship chat, presence, live dashboards, notifications, and collaboration without managing servers, paying per-connection, or handing your data to a third party.

Launch your free installation See a live demo

Scales to millions of connections

Available in 22 AWS regions

✓1M messages/month, free forever

✓No per-connection fees

1. Install

Install to your account in just 2 AWS CLI commands from AWS CloudShell.

View full installation docs

aws cloudformation create-stack \
  --stack-name HotsockInstallerPermissions \
  --template-url https://hotsock-stack-templates-us-west-2.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/installer-permissions.yml \
  --capabilities CAPABILITY_NAMED_IAM \
  --tags Key=hotsock:service,Value=Hotsock

aws cloudformation create-stack \
  --stack-name Hotsock \
  --template-url https://hotsock-stack-templates-${AWS_REGION}.s3.${AWS_REGION}.amazonaws.com/hotsock-v1.x.yml \
  --capabilities CAPABILITY_NAMED_IAM CAPABILITY_AUTO_EXPAND \
  --role-arn arn:aws:iam::$(aws sts get-caller-identity --query "Account" --output text):role/hotsock/HotsockInstallerRole \
  --tags Key=hotsock:service,Value=Hotsock

lambdaClient.send(
  new InvokeCommand({
    FunctionName: "Hotsock-PublishFunction-AAABBBCCCDDD",
    Payload: JSON.stringify({
      channel: "my-channel",
      event: "my-event",
      data: "👋",
    }),
  }),
)

lambdaClient.Invoke(context.TODO(), &lambda.InvokeInput{
  FunctionName: aws.String("Hotsock-PublishFunction-AAABBBCCCDDD"),
  Payload:      []byte(`{"channel": "my-channel", "event": "my-event", "data": "👋"}`),
})

const hotsock = new HotsockClient("wss://real-time.example.com", {
  connectTokenFn: () => "eyJhbGciOiJFUzI1NiIsIm...",
})
hotsock.channels("my-channel").bind("my-event", (message) => {
  console.log("Received message:", message)
})

2. Publish

Publish messages from your backend in any language with the AWS SDK you already use. Or allow connected WebSocket clients to publish to channels directly.

View publish docs

PythonJSGoJavaRubyPHPC#

aws cloudformation create-stack \
  --stack-name HotsockInstallerPermissions \
  --template-url https://hotsock-stack-templates-us-west-2.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/installer-permissions.yml \
  --capabilities CAPABILITY_NAMED_IAM \
  --tags Key=hotsock:service,Value=Hotsock

aws cloudformation create-stack \
  --stack-name Hotsock \
  --template-url https://hotsock-stack-templates-${AWS_REGION}.s3.${AWS_REGION}.amazonaws.com/hotsock-v1.x.yml \
  --capabilities CAPABILITY_NAMED_IAM CAPABILITY_AUTO_EXPAND \
  --role-arn arn:aws:iam::$(aws sts get-caller-identity --query "Account" --output text):role/hotsock/HotsockInstallerRole \
  --tags Key=hotsock:service,Value=Hotsock

lambda_client.invoke(
  FunctionName='Hotsock-PublishFunction-AAABBBCCCDDD',
  Payload=json.dumps({
    'channel': 'my-channel',
    'event': 'my-event',
    'data': '👋'
  })
)

lambdaClient.send(
  new InvokeCommand({
    FunctionName: "Hotsock-PublishFunction-AAABBBCCCDDD",
    Payload: JSON.stringify({
      channel: "my-channel",
      event: "my-event",
      data: "👋",
    }),
  }),
)

lambdaClient.Invoke(context.TODO(), &lambda.InvokeInput{
  FunctionName: aws.String("Hotsock-PublishFunction-AAABBBCCCDDD"),
  Payload:      []byte(`{"channel": "my-channel", "event": "my-event", "data": "👋"}`),
})

const hotsock = new HotsockClient("wss://real-time.example.com", {
  connectTokenFn: () => "eyJhbGciOiJFUzI1NiIsIm...",
})
hotsock.channels("my-channel").bind("my-event", (message) => {
  console.log("Received message:", message)
})

3. Subscribe

Connect and subscribe to messages using the Hotsock JS library or using any WebSockets client.

View connect and subscribe docs

aws cloudformation create-stack \
  --stack-name HotsockInstallerPermissions \
  --template-url https://hotsock-stack-templates-us-west-2.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/installer-permissions.yml \
  --capabilities CAPABILITY_NAMED_IAM \
  --tags Key=hotsock:service,Value=Hotsock

aws cloudformation create-stack \
  --stack-name Hotsock \
  --template-url https://hotsock-stack-templates-${AWS_REGION}.s3.${AWS_REGION}.amazonaws.com/hotsock-v1.x.yml \
  --capabilities CAPABILITY_NAMED_IAM CAPABILITY_AUTO_EXPAND \
  --role-arn arn:aws:iam::$(aws sts get-caller-identity --query "Account" --output text):role/hotsock/HotsockInstallerRole \
  --tags Key=hotsock:service,Value=Hotsock

lambdaClient.send(
  new InvokeCommand({
    FunctionName: "Hotsock-PublishFunction-AAABBBCCCDDD",
    Payload: JSON.stringify({
      channel: "my-channel",
      event: "my-event",
      data: "👋",
    }),
  }),
)

lambdaClient.Invoke(context.TODO(), &lambda.InvokeInput{
  FunctionName: aws.String("Hotsock-PublishFunction-AAABBBCCCDDD"),
  Payload:      []byte(`{"channel": "my-channel", "event": "my-event", "data": "👋"}`),
})

const hotsock = new HotsockClient("wss://real-time.example.com", {
  connectTokenFn: () => "eyJhbGciOiJFUzI1NiIsIm...",
})
hotsock.channels("my-channel").bind("my-event", (message) => {
  console.log("Received message:", message)
})

Everything you'd build yourself, already built

Your complete WebSocket platform

Hotsock includes the primitives real-time apps need: presence, storage, scheduling, message history, and event fan-out. You can focus on your product instead of reinventing the messaging layer.

◉

Private & presence channels

JWT-gated subscriptions with built-in presence tracking and per-member metadata.

▣

Channel storage

New

Persistent per-key state delivered to subscribers on join, with independent TTLs.

↻

Live metadata updates

New

Change a connection's user metadata on the fly. No reconnecting, no resubscribing.

⚡

Auto-subscribe on connect

Skip the subscribe round-trip. Clients join their channels the moment they connect.

⇄

Channel aliases

Keep internal IDs off the client. Issue a friendly alias in the token and subscribe with it.

⏱

Scheduled messages

Publish a message now, deliver it later. Backed by EventBridge Scheduler.

▦

Message storage & history

Retain messages per-event and query them by channel and event name, sorted by time.

⇡

Broadcast to unsubscribed

Publish from a client to any channel it has permission for. No subscription required.

☷

Pub/sub to SNS & EventBridge

Fan connection, message, and storage events out to the rest of your AWS workload.

⟨⟩

Regex & wildcard claims

Grant permission to dynamic channel and event names with wildcard or Go regex patterns.

⌂

Custom domains

Keep WebSocket connections on your own domain for consistent branding and trust.

▤

Built-in web console

Debug JWTs, connections, subscriptions, storage, and publish messages from the browser.

A closer look

The details that matter in production

Privacy is the default

No one wants to learn their data was used for AI training or caught in a multi-tenant breach. Every byte flows through services that run privately in your AWS account. Your data always remains yours, and is only accessible by you.

Learn More

Presence, out of the box

Know who is online, where, and on what device. You never have to build a presence service yourself. Per-member metadata can be updated live, and every member gets an event when someone joins, leaves, or changes state.

Learn More

Persistent channel storage

Channels can now carry persistent key-value state that every subscriber reads on join. Keep configuration, room settings, feature flags, shared cursors, or game state on the channel and stop round-tripping to your backend. Each key has its own TTL and permission scope.

Learn More

Your domain, your branding

Host WebSocket connections on your own domain. Your customers never see a third-party host, your TLS certificate is managed by ACM, and switching providers later is a DNS change away.

Learn More

Web console for everything

A built-in console for JWTs, connections, subscriptions, channel storage, and publishing. It ships with JSON syntax highlighting, mobile support, and message filtering. Debugging a real-time bug should not require building your own test harness.

Learn More

Serverless to the core

Built on API Gateway, DynamoDB, Lambda, EventBridge, SNS, and SQS. Scales to zero while idle, fans out to millions of connections and billions of messages under production load, and costs only what AWS charges you.

Learn More

Built for the apps you actually build

From first message to production scale

Each of the patterns below ships as a live, interactive demo. Open the source, copy the JWT claim, and drop it into your app.

Chat

Real-time chat & messaging

Threaded conversations, typing indicators, read receipts, and online status. Presence channels do the heavy lifting.

Features used

Presence channelsTyping indicatorsPer-user metadata

Try the live demo

Dashboards

Live dashboards & telemetry

Push metrics, logs, and KPIs from your backend to every connected browser with a single publish call.

Features used

Server-published updatesBillions of messagesAuto fan-out

Try the live demo

Collaboration

Collaborative editing

Shared to-do lists, documents, boards, and cursors. Message history and channel storage keep every client in sync.

Features used

Message storageChannel storageHistory on reconnect

Try the live demo

Notifications

Notification feeds

Deliver notifications to a user the instant they land. Users receive them even on pages they haven't explicitly subscribed to.

Features used

Auto-subscribeChannel aliasesBroadcast messaging

Try the live demo

Shipping every month

Active, steady, backwards-compatible

Every release is a single CloudFormation update away. Installations with auto-update turned on get them for free.

View full changelog

v1.12LatestApril 2026

Channel storage & live user metadata

Persistent per-key state on channels, and live umd updates without reconnecting.

v1.11March 2026

Regex patterns in claims

Go regex support for channel and event name claims, with friendlier errors.

v1.10March 2026

Channel aliases & large-channel fan-out

Friendly client-side channel names and automatic fan-out past 250 subscribers.

v1.9February 2026

Fresh web console

JSON syntax highlighting, mobile-friendly layout, message filtering, 1MB pub/sub.

v1.8October 2025

Message history & tracing

Query stored messages by channel and event, with connection/source metadata attached.

v1.7September 2025

Auto-subscribe & broadcast

Channels subscribed the moment you connect, and publishing to channels you're not on.

Start for free, upgrade to a license for unlimited usage!

New, unlicensed installations have Free Tier access forever, which includes all features but is capped at 1 million WebSocket messages per month. Paid licenses provide unlimited messages and premium support! Learn more

Billed Monthly

$99/ month

per AWS account

✓Unlimited messages
✓Unlimited concurrent connections
✓Unlimited installations
✓All supported AWS regions
✓Premium support

Buy Now

Billed Annually

$999/ year

per AWS account

✓Unlimited messages
✓Unlimited concurrent connections
✓Unlimited installations
✓All supported AWS regions
✓Premium support

Buy Now

💡 Pricing note: Hotsock licensing fees are separate from AWS service costs. Your AWS costs will vary based on actual usage.

Launch your free installation