WebSocket, SSE or Polling?
Use six practical questions to choose a real-time transport and compare direction, reconnection, infrastructure and cost.
websocket-sse-pollingLOCAL WORKSPACE
1. Configure and explore
Inputs stay in this tab; no browser persistence, page-URL encoding or network requests.
2. Results and interpretation
Choose a sample, fill the fields or explore the flow.
| Option | Tradeoffs and limits |
|---|---|
| WebSocket | Bidirectional text/binary; application reconnect/backoff, heartbeat, auth and backpressure; persistent infrastructure. |
| SSE | Server-to-client UTF-8 stream; EventSource reconnect and event IDs; proxy buffering and HTTP/1 connection limits. |
| HTTP polling | Regular short requests; easy proxies and serverless; delay/request cost tradeoff, caching and jitter. |
No connection is opened. Hosting support, idle timeouts, authentication, backpressure and measured traffic still require validation.
Data / rules date: 2026-10-21 · Official source
How to use this tool
Describe direction, latency, hosting, scale, binary data and proxy constraints. Inspect the recommendation and alternatives.
When not to use it
No connection is opened. Hosting support, idle timeouts, authentication, backpressure and measured traffic still require validation.
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