centrifugo

# Centrifugo

_Scalable real-time messaging server in a language-agnostic way._

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Centrifugo is an open-source scalable real-time messaging server. It instantly delivers messages to application online users connected over supported transports (WebSocket, HTTP-streaming, Server-Sent Events (aka EventSource), GRPC, WebTransport). Centrifugo has the concept of channel subscriptions – so it's a user-facing PUB/SUB server.

Centrifugo is language-agnostic and can be used to build chat apps, live comments, multiplayer games, real-time data visualizations, collaborative tools, AI streaming responses, etc. in combination with any backend. It is well suited for modern architectures and allows decoupling the business logic from the real-time transport layer.

The core idea of Centrifugo is simple – it's a PUB/SUB server on top of modern real-time transports:

<img src="https://centrifugal.dev/img/protocol_pub_sub.png?v=2" alt="Centrifugo PUB/SUB diagram" />

Your backend communicates with Centrifugo over a simple HTTP or GRPC API to publish messages into channels, while clients subscribe to those channels using one of the official SDKs (or the unidirectional approach with no SDK dependency).

## Quick start

Spin up Centrifugo with its embedded admin UI using Docker:

```bash
docker run -it --rm -p 8000:8000 centrifugo/centrifugo:latest centrifugo \
  --client.insecure --admin.enabled --admin.insecure
# ^ insecure flags: for local trial only, never use in production
```

Then open http://localhost:8000 to reach the admin UI, where you can watch live connections and publish messages into channels. The `insecure` flags above remove authentication for a frictionless local trial only – never use them in production.

For native binaries, Homebrew, packages, and production configuration see the [installation instructions](https://centrifugal.dev/docs/getting-started/installation), and follow the [quickstart tutorial](https://centrifugal.dev/docs/getting-started/quickstart) to connect your first client.

## Why Centrifugo

The hard part is to make the PUB/SUB concept production-ready, efficient, flexible and available from different application environment