Beamable vs Colyseus

Beamable is a game server platform for creating and operating online games and virtual worlds. Its engine-native SDKs for Unity and Unreal connect to a serverless backend for cloud code, data persistence, custom gameplay logic, and Mongo-based persistence. The SDK includes player accounts, multiplayer networking, matchmaking, offers, currencies, inventory, leaderboards, groups, achievements, chat, tournaments, and multiplayer events. The LiveOps Portal supports events, promotions, content updates, A/B tests, player support, CRM, and messaging. Beamable describes built-in analytics and event forwarding integrations with GameAnalytics, Mixpanel, and Amplitude; its marketplace lists services including Edgegap, Photon Fusion, Tebex, and blockchain integrations. Studios can use managed SaaS or private cloud, both powered by AWS. Private Cloud offers dedicated single-tenant infrastructure. A 90-day free trial includes 12.5M API calls, 1,000 MAU, and three microservices. Paid monthly plans start at $125 a month for Developer. Pricing specifies a 10KB bandwidth allowance per API call, with additional bandwidth billed as overage.

Colyseus is an open-source Node.js framework for building real-time multiplayer games, with built-in matchmaking and state synchronization. Its authoritative server design has clients send inputs while the server decides game outcomes. Developers define game state on the server, and Colyseus synchronizes it to clients without manual serialization. The framework creates rooms and matches players automatically; rooms can be distributed across processes or machines. The site says this can scale from 10 to 10,000+ concurrent users. SDKs or integrations are listed for JavaScript, Unity, Godot, GameMaker, Defold, Haxe, C, and Construct 3. The MIT-licensed framework is free for commercial games and can be self-hosted as a standard Node.js application on cloud services or bare metal. Colyseus Cloud provides deployment, scaling, and monitoring across 32 global locations. Its Cloud plan starts at $15/mo and includes email support, while the free Open Source plan includes community support. Cloud has no free tier or automatic scaling; heavier workloads require upgrading deployment resources through the dashboard.