netcode.io vs Photon Realtime
netcode.io
github.com
Photon Realtime
photonengine.comSide by side
| Figure | netcode.io | 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 |
| Android | — | Yes |
| API | — | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 8 |
| Spec score · Game Networking Middleware | 8.4 (#5) | 8.9 (#2) |
| Support | The maintainer asks users with build questions to open a GitHub issue and says he will do his best to help. | Photon offers public Discord, email contact and an authenticated support form. |
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
netcode.io
netcode.io is a free, open-source client/server protocol for real-time multiplayer games. It uses UDP to exchange unreliable, unordered packets without TCP head-of-line blocking. Game backends can issue connect tokens that authorize clients, while servers assign connecting clients to configured slots and reject connections when slots are full. The protocol supports clean disconnects and timeouts for hard disconnects. Packets are encrypted and signed with libsodium, with protections described against crafted packets, replay attacks, and amplification attacks. IPv4 and IPv6 are supported, along with packet tagging intended to reduce Wi-Fi jitter. Implementations are listed for C, C#, Go, Rust, Unity, Unreal Engine 4, and TypeScript. Builds use CMake on Windows, macOS, and Linux, with CMake 3.16 or later and a vendored libsodium subset by default. The BSD 3-Clause project documents REST-based token requests and reports a nonce-reuse issue affecting versions 1.3.5 and earlier, fixed in 1.4.0.
Photon Realtime
Photon Realtime has no write-up on Specifiction yet; its figures are above.