In-app messaging SDK and API that lets developers add real-time chat, voice, and video calling to any application.

Is CometChat free to use?

CometChat uses a Subscription pricing model. Current pricing is: From $149/mo for chat SDK. For comparison, Capacity starts at $25/mo and Airia uses subscription pricing. We'd suggest starting on the lowest tier or free plan to test it with your actual workflow before upgrading.

What are the main features of CometChat?

The main features are third-party integrations, mobile access, video & recording. We scored it on ease of setup, core feature quality, pricing transparency, integration options, and documentation. Feature depth varies by plan, but the core is solid.

What are the best CometChat alternatives?

The main alternatives are Capacity, Airia, UENI. Which one's best depends on your budget and what you prioritize. Compare them side by side at dupple.com/top-tools.

Is CometChat worth it?

We rated it 3.3/5. Fair price if you use it daily. Worth it if dev is core to your work. Overkill if you only need it occasionally.

CometChat Review 2026: Features, Pricing & Alternatives

Last updated: February 2026

Building real-time chat, voice, and video into your app from scratch means dealing with WebSocket connections, media streaming, push notifications, presence detection, and a dozen other technical headaches. Most teams spend months on it. CometChat gives you SDKs, APIs, and pre-built UI kits that get messaging and calling working in days.

I have seen teams go from "we need chat" to "chat is live" in under a week using CometChat's React UI kit. The trade-off is cost: the jump from the free tier (100 users) to the cheapest paid plan (~$299/month) is steep. If your app needs in-app communication and you can stomach the pricing, CometChat is one of the fastest paths to production-ready messaging.

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The SDK and UI Kit Advantage

CometChat's biggest time-saver is the pre-built UI kits. Instead of designing message bubbles, conversation lists, typing indicators, and call screens from scratch, you drop in components that already handle all of it. Kits are available for React, React Native, Angular, Vue, iOS (Swift), Android (Kotlin/Java), Flutter, and Ionic.

The components are customizable through themes and CSS overrides. You can match your app's design system without rebuilding everything. For teams that need something faster than custom development but more polished than a generic widget, this hits the sweet spot.

On the messaging side, you get one-on-one chat, group messaging (thousands of participants), threaded replies, reactions, mentions, read receipts, typing indicators, and file sharing. All of this works out of the box with the SDK handling delivery, storage, and cross-device sync.

Voice and Video Calling

The calling infrastructure handles WebRTC, TURN/STUN servers, codec negotiation, and bandwidth adaptation. You call the API and calls work across web and mobile. Features include one-on-one calls, group conferences, screen sharing, recording, and live transcription.

Calling is billed separately on pay-as-you-go: $0.001/minute for voice, $0.003/minute for video, $0.006/minute for recording. A free tier gives you 10,000 minutes for testing. For apps with moderate calling usage, costs stay predictable.

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AI Features Worth Knowing About

CometChat's AI layer adds three useful capabilities:

Smart Replies: AI analyzes conversation context and suggests relevant responses. Users tap to send.
AI Moderation: Content filtering that detects hate speech, spam, and inappropriate content using full conversation context (fewer false positives than keyword matching).
Conversational AI Agents: Build AI-powered chatbots with RAG, tool-calling, and guardrails. This is a newer product line with its own pricing.

The platform also offers real-time message translation, which is useful for apps serving international users.

Compliance for Regulated Industries

CometChat holds HIPAA, GDPR, ISO 27001, and SOC 2 certifications. Business Associate Agreements are available for healthcare apps. If you are building a telehealth platform, fintech app, or anything handling sensitive data, these certifications are table stakes, and many competitors lack them.

Pricing Reality Check

This is where CometChat gets uncomfortable. The pricing uses monthly active users (MAU):

Build (Free): 100 MAU, all core features, no credit card. Good for development and testing.
Basic: ~$299/month billed annually for 1,000 MAU. Includes rich messaging, push notifications, basic moderation. Overage: $0.10/MAU.
Advanced: ~$449/month billed annually for 1,000 MAU. Adds AI moderation, smart replies, multi-tenancy, HIPAA/BAA, message translation, advanced search.
Enterprise: Custom pricing from ~$1,249/month for 10,000+ MAU. Zero overage charges, SSO, white-label, dedicated infrastructure.

The jump from free (100 MAU) to Basic ($299/month) is jarring. And the $0.10/MAU overage means an app with 50,000 MAU could face $5,000+/month before voice/video charges. At scale, negotiate an Enterprise deal early.

Where CometChat Shines

Integration speed: Days, not weeks. The UI kits and documentation with working code examples for every platform make this consistently fast.
Platform breadth: SDKs for React, React Native, Angular, Vue, iOS, Android, Flutter, Ionic, and even WordPress. Whatever your stack, CometChat probably supports it.
Compliance: HIPAA + SOC 2 + ISO 27001 opens doors in healthcare and finance that most competitors cannot enter.
Reliable infrastructure: Message queuing, delivery guarantees, push notifications, and global edge distribution handled for you.

Where It Frustrates

Steep pricing cliff: Going from free (100 MAU) to $299/month for Basic is a harsh jump for startups. Stream and Sendbird offer more gradual scaling.
Pricing model changes: Multiple users report CometChat has changed plans and forced migrations to more expensive tiers. Older plugins discontinued without alternatives.
Support timezone gaps: Several reviewers note limited availability outside European business hours. If you hit a production issue at 2 PM Eastern, you may wait.
UI kit adaptation: Pre-built components save time but do not always conform to framework-specific patterns (Ionic/Angular/Capacitor in particular). Deep customization can take longer than expected.
Overage surprises: A user spike on non-Enterprise plans means an unexpected bill. No hard cap, no warning.

Verdict

CometChat is one of the best options for adding real-time messaging and calling to an existing app. The UI kits save weeks of development, the SDK coverage is broad, the compliance certifications are real, and the AI features add genuine value. The pricing is the main drawback: $299/month minimum for paid plans is a lot for early-stage apps, and costs scale fast at volume. For teams building apps where chat is critical but secondary to the core product (marketplaces, telehealth, edtech), CometChat delivers the fastest path from "we need chat" to "chat is live." Start with the free Build tier to evaluate the SDK before committing budget.

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