GameNetworkingSockets vs Photon Realtime
GameNetworkingSockets
github.com
Photon Realtime
photonengine.comSide by side
| Figure | GameNetworkingSockets | Photon Realtime |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | $0.29/mo |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | — | Yes |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| iOS | Yes | Yes |
| Android | — | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 8 |
| Spec score · Game Networking Middleware | 8.2 (#8) | 8.9 (#2) |
| Integrations | Third-party language bindings are listed for C#, Go, and Rust. | The documented Realtime SDK variants are for Unity and .NET, and Photon’s SDK downloads also include JavaScript and native platform packages. |
Plans
Photon Realtime
- 20 CCU Development OnlyFree
- Development Only — 20 CCUFree
- Premium Cloud$0.29 a month
- 100 CCU$95, paid once
- 500 CCU$95 a month
- 1000 CCU$185 a month
- 2000 CCU$370 a month
- Enterprise CloudPriced on request
In their own words
GameNetworkingSockets
GameNetworkingSockets is a free BSD-3-Clause transport library for games that sends reliable and unreliable messages over UDP. It handles messages larger than the underlying MTU through fragmentation and reassembly, with retransmission for reliable messages. Packets use AES-GCM-256, while Curve25519 supports key exchange and certificate signatures. Peer-to-peer connections can use Google WebRTC ICE for NAT traversal, with an option to plug in a signaling service. Multiple message lanes can share one connection under strict priorities or weighted bandwidth rules. Included diagnostics simulate packet latency and loss and measure detailed statistics. The library is written in C++ and also exposes a plain C interface; third-party bindings are listed for C#, Go, and Rust. Build instructions cover Linux, Windows, macOS, and iOS. Steam is not required for the open-source library, but authentication, signaling, and Steam Datagram Relay remain Steam-only services. Higher-level entity serialization, delta encoding, and compression are not included.
Photon Realtime
Photon Realtime has no write-up on Specifiction yet; its figures are above.