PubNub

PubNub is a realtime communication platform supporting pub/sub, presence, chat, App Context (object metadata), Functions (server-less compute on the edge), Push Notifications, and IoT messaging across 1B+ devices. The PubNub REST API runs at ps.pndsn.com; SDKs handle the underlying long-poll / WebSocket protocol. Authentication uses a publish/subscribe key pair per keyset.

PubNub is listed with 2 APIs on the APIs.io network, including REST API, and 1 more. Tagged areas include Real-Time, WebSocket, Pub/Sub, IoT, and Messaging.

The PubNub catalog on APIs.io includes 1 event-driven AsyncAPI specification and 1 Spectral governance ruleset.

PubNub’s developer surface includes developer portal, documentation, pricing, GitHub presence, engineering blog, and 8 more developer resources.

🌐 Visit website 📡 Profile data on GitHub

31.1/100 thin ▬ flat Agent 45/100 agent ready Front door AI 4/6 moderate saas Full breakdown ↓
scored 2026-10-17 · rubric v0.24.0

AccessFreemium

2 APIs 1 MCP Servers 22 Agent Skills

Real-Time WebSocketPub/SubIoT Messaging Chat Presence Functions

Kin Score

Kin Score How this is scored →
scored 2026-10-17 · rubric v0.24.0

Composite quality — 31.1/100 · thin

Contract Quality 8.6 / 21

Developer Ergonomics 4.7 / 17

Access Clarity 3.1 / 17

Operational Transparency 3.2 / 11

Contract Governance 1.4 / 10

Discoverability 5.8 / 9

Regulatory Posture 1.8 / 15

Agent readiness — 45/100 · agent ready

Machine-Readable Contract 18 / 18

Agentic Access Contract 0 / 10

Documented Reversibility 0 / 6

MCP Server 12 / 12

Machine-Readable Auth 10 / 10

Idempotency 0 / 9

Stable Error Semantics 0 / 8

Request/Response Examples 0 / 7

Rate-Limit Signaling 7 / 7

Typed Event Surface 6 / 6

Agent Skills 5 / 5

Well-Known Catalog 0 / 4

Consent & Bot Identity 0 / 3

A2A Agent Card 0 / 8

Dry-Run / Simulate Mode 0 / 4

Delegated User Identity 6 / 6

Protected Resource Metadata 5 / 5

Registration Without a Human 6 / 6

Agentic Commerce Well-Known Document 0 / 5

Regulatory Posture applies to this provider. Its tags matched the Horizontal (data, software, accessibility, platform) regime, so Regulatory Posture carries 15 points of the composite. If this regime is wrong for your business, say so on your provider repo — the applicability map is public and we will correct it.

Create-or-Update Ergonomics could not be measured. We hold no machine-readable contract for this provider to read, so there is nothing to measure a write surface against. Excluded rather than scored zero: never-measured and measured-empty are different facts. Publishing an OpenAPI is what makes this facet — and several others — scorable at all.

The six quality facets above are damped to 85 points between them, because the conditional facet above carries the other 15. That is why each facet's contribution is shown against a damped maximum: raising a quality facet moves the composite by 85% of its nominal weight, not 100%. The full arithmetic is at apis.io/rating/.

Improve this rating by publishing the missing artifacts — every area above can be raised, and the full rubric is at apis.io/rating/. Every facet and dimension name above is a link: it opens that measurement's own page — what it means, the exact checks that feed it, how the whole catalog distributes on it, and the providers at the top of it. This rating is computed from github.com/api-evangelist/pubnub: open an issue to ask a question, or submit a pull request to add artifacts. Submit an artifact on GitHub — free → Manage your own listing — the Influence plan, $499/mo →

Standards implemented 2

Standards this provider implements or carries. De facto ones are profiled and measured by the API Commons; formal ones come from the standards directory and are linked by the provider's own tags. The evidence column says how each claim was established — not that it was made.

Pub/Sub

tagged — the provider's own APIs.json carries the standard as a tag; implementation not verified

WebSockets

tagged — the provider's own APIs.json carries the standard as a tag; implementation not verified

APIs 2

Individual APIs this provider publishes, each with its own machine-readable definition.

PubNub REST API

Single REST surface for publish, subscribe (long-poll), presence, history, signal, and App Context. Pub/Sub key authentication. SDKs available for 50+ languages and platforms.

PubNub Functions

Edge serverless functions executed on PubNub's network in response to messages, presence events, or HTTP triggers.

MCP Servers 1

Model Context Protocol servers that expose these APIs to AI agents.

PubNub MCP Server

Remote MCP server at mcp.pubnub.com over HTTP.

MCP SERVER

Agent Skills 22

Packaged agent skills for driving this provider's APIs from an AI assistant.

pubnub-app-context

AGENT SKILL

pubnub-app-developer

AGENT SKILL

pubnub-chat

AGENT SKILL

pubnub-choose-docs-path

AGENT SKILL

pubnub-events-and-actions

AGENT SKILL

pubnub-functions

AGENT SKILL

pubnub-history

AGENT SKILL

pubnub-illuminate

AGENT SKILL

pubnub-keyset-management

AGENT SKILL

pubnub-live-auctions

AGENT SKILL

pubnub-live-betting-casino

AGENT SKILL

pubnub-live-sport-updates

AGENT SKILL

pubnub-live-stock-quote-updates

AGENT SKILL

pubnub-live-voting

AGENT SKILL

pubnub-multiplayer-gaming

AGENT SKILL

pubnub-observability

AGENT SKILL

pubnub-order-delivery-driver

AGENT SKILL

pubnub-presence

AGENT SKILL

pubnub-reliability

AGENT SKILL

pubnub-scale

AGENT SKILL

pubnub-security

AGENT SKILL

pubnub-telemedicine

AGENT SKILL

Scroll for all 22

Pricing Plans 1

Published pricing tiers and plan structures.

Pubnub Plans Pricing

6 plans

PLANS

Rate Limits 1

Documented rate limits and quota policies.

Pubnub Rate Limits

3 limits

RATE LIMITS

FinOps 1

Cost, billing, and metering signals for API financial operations.

Pubnub Finops

FINOPS

Event Specifications 1

AsyncAPI definitions for this provider's event-driven and streaming APIs.

PubNub Realtime Streaming API

AsyncAPI description of PubNub's realtime subscribe surface — the event stream that delivers messages, signals, presence updates, file events, message-action events, and App Con...

ASYNCAPI

Spectral Rules 1

Spectral governance rulesets for linting and validating these APIs.

PubNub — asyncapi rules

8 rules · 1 errors 6 warnings 1 info

SPECTRAL

Security Posture 1

Authentication, domain security, vulnerability disclosure, and trust-center signals.

Pubnub Domain Security

TLSv1.2 · HSTS · DMARC

SECURITY

Resources

Get Started 1

Portal, sign-up, and the first successful call

Portal

Portal

Documentation 1

Reference material describing how the API behaves

Documentation

Documentation

Agent Surfaces 1

MCP servers, agent skills, and machine-readable catalogs

AgentSkills

AgentSkills

Build 1

SDKs, sample code, and the tooling you integrate with

GitHub

GitHub

Access & Security 1

Authentication, authorization, and security posture

DomainSecurity

DomainSecurity

Operate 2

Status, limits, changes, and where to get help

StatusPage

StatusPage

RateLimits

RateLimits

Commercial 3

Pricing, plans, and the legal terms of use

Pricing

Pricing

Plans

Plans

FinOps

FinOps

Company 3

The organization behind the API

Website

Website

LinkedIn

Blog

Blog

Source (apis.yml)

aid: pubnub
url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/pubnub/refs/heads/main/apis.yml
name: PubNub
kind: company
deliveryModel:
  model: saas
  open_source: false
  commercial: true
  callable_host: false
  label: Hosted service · you call their endpoint
  confidence: medium
  source:
  - pricing
  generated: '2026-08-28'
  method: derived
accessModel:
  pricing: freemium
  onboarding: unknown
  trial: false
  try_now: false
  public: false
  label: Freemium
  confidence: medium
  source:
  - plans
  generated: '2026-07-22'
  method: derived
image: https://kinlane-images.s3.amazonaws.com/shared/apis-json/icons/pubnub.png
tags:
- Real-Time
- WebSocket
- Pub/Sub
- IoT
- Messaging
- Chat
- Presence
- Functions
tags_raw:
- Realtime
- WebSockets
- Pub/Sub
- IoT
- Messaging
- Chat
- Presence
- Functions
created: '2026-05-08'
modified: '2026-05-29'
specificationVersion: '0.23'
description: PubNub is a realtime communication platform supporting pub/sub, presence, chat, App Context (object metadata),
  Functions (server-less compute on the edge), Push Notifications, and IoT messaging across 1B+ devices. The PubNub REST API
  runs at ps.pndsn.com; SDKs handle the underlying long-poll / WebSocket protocol. Authentication uses a publish/subscribe
  key pair per keyset.
apis:
- aid: pubnub:rest-api
  name: PubNub REST API
  tags:
  - Pub/Sub
  - Presence
  - Messaging
  - History
  - REST
  tags_raw:
  - Pub/Sub
  - Presence
  - Messaging
  - History
  - REST
  image: https://kinlane-images.s3.amazonaws.com/shared/apis-json/apis-json-logo.jpg
  baseURL: https://ps.pndsn.com
  humanURL: https://www.pubnub.com/docs/general/api-reference
  description: Single REST surface for publish, subscribe (long-poll), presence, history, signal, and App Context. Pub/Sub
    key authentication. SDKs available for 50+ languages and platforms.
  properties:
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://www.pubnub.com/docs/general/api-reference
  - type: Pricing
    url: https://www.pubnub.com/pricing/
  - type: AsyncAPI
    url: asyncapi/pubnub-asyncapi.yml
  x-features:
  - Publish, subscribe, presence, history, signal
  - Pub/Sub key model
  - 1B+ devices supported
  - 50+ SDKs
  x-use-cases:
  - In-app chat
  - IoT telemetry
  - Live experiences
- aid: pubnub:functions-api
  name: PubNub Functions
  tags:
  - Functions
  - Edge Compute
  - Serverless
  image: https://kinlane-images.s3.amazonaws.com/shared/apis-json/apis-json-logo.jpg
  baseURL: https://admin.pubnub.com/api/v1/functions
  humanURL: https://www.pubnub.com/docs/general/serverless/functions
  description: Edge serverless functions executed on PubNub's network in response to messages, presence events, or HTTP triggers.
  properties:
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://www.pubnub.com/docs/general/serverless/functions
  x-features:
  - JS-based serverless functions
  - Event handlers (publish, presence)
  - HTTP triggers
  x-use-cases:
  - Message transformation
  - Realtime moderation
  - Webhook fan-out
common:
- type: Website
  url: https://www.pubnub.com/
- type: DomainSecurity
  url: security/pubnub-domain-security.yml
- name: Agent Skills
  url: https://github.com/pubnub/skills
  type: AgentSkills
- type: LinkedIn
  url: https://www.linkedin.com/company/pubnub
- type: Portal
  url: https://www.pubnub.com/
- type: Documentation
  url: https://www.pubnub.com/docs
- type: Pricing
  url: https://www.pubnub.com/pricing/
- type: GitHub
  url: https://github.com/pubnub
- type: StatusPage
  url: https://status.pubnub.com/
- type: Plans
  url: plans/pubnub-plans-pricing.yml
- type: RateLimits
  url: rate-limits/pubnub-rate-limits.yml
- type: FinOps
  url: finops/pubnub-finops.yml
- type: Integrations
  url: https://www.pubnub.com/integrations/
- type: Blog
  url: https://www.pubnub.com/blog
integrations:
- name: PubNub
- name: JavaScript SDK
- name: Java SDK
- name: Unreal Engine SDK
- name: Kotlin SDK
- name: Ruby SDK
- name: C# SDK
- name: Swift SDK
- name: C-core SDK
- name: Unity SDK
- name: Python SDK
- name: PHP SDK
- name: GO SDK
- name: Rust SDK
- name: Objective-C SDK
- name: REST API
- name: Dart SDK
- name: Integrations Hero
maintainers:
- FN: Kin Lane
  email: kin@apievangelist.com

Work with this as data

Every provider here is available over the APIs.io API and to AI agents over MCP.

MCP server

One button, every client — Claude, Cursor, VS Code and the rest.

https://apis.io/mcp

Tools for providers

9 MCP tools reach this

find_providersBrowse and filter every provider in the catalog.
get_provider_artifactsEvery artifact this provider publishes, grouped by type.
get_provider_operationsEvery operation across all of their OpenAPIs — one call instead of parsing every spec.
get_provider_toolsEvery MCP tool they ship, with the operation each wraps.
get_provider_evidenceHow each part of their score was established. Free — the basis for a claim should not sit behind it.
get_provider_ratingPRO — composite, band, trend and facet scores.
apis_io_searchSTART HERE — APIs, providers and tags for one query, each with its total.
resolveTurn a domain, URL or GitHub org into the provider it belongs to.
find_cohortsEvery scored population of providers in the catalog.

All 92 tools →

Call it yourself

curl for this page

This provider

curl "https://apis.io/api/v1/providers/pubnub"

All providers

curl "https://apis.io/api/v1/providers?limit=25"

Every operation they expose

curl "https://apis.io/api/v1/providers/pubnub/operations?limit=25"

How their score was established

curl "https://apis.io/api/v1/providers/pubnub/evidence"

Discovery needs no key. Ratings and market analysis are Pro.

Get an API key

Free tier, no form to fill in. Signing in shares your email address with us — we store it to create your key and to recognise you if you sign in with another provider. See our Privacy Policy and Terms.

GitHub Google LinkedIn

A second provider on the same verified email joins the account you already have.