CometChat Review 2026: Real-Time Chat API That Actually Works

Look, I've been around the block with chat APIs. Some promise the moon and deliver a potato. Others work fine until you hit 1,000 users and suddenly your server's on fire. CometChat? It's one of those rare tools that does what it says on the tin without making you want to throw your laptop out the window.

What CometChat Actually Is

CometChat is a chat SDK and API platform that lets you add messaging, voice, and video calling to your app without building everything from scratch. Think of it as the chat infrastructure you wish you'd built yourself, but without spending six months and half your engineering budget on it.

They've been doing this since 2009, which in tech years is basically ancient wisdom. They're not some startup that'll pivot to selling NFTs next quarter.

The Features That Matter

Here's what you actually get:

Text Messaging: One-on-one chats, group conversations, the whole deal. Typing indicators, read receipts, message history - all the stuff users expect because WhatsApp trained them to.

Voice & Video Calls: Built-in calling that doesn't sound like you're talking through a tin can. Individual calls, group calls, screen sharing. It works on mobile too, which is shockingly not a given with some competitors.

UI Kits: Pre-built chat interfaces that don't look like they were designed in 2003. Available for iOS, Android, React, Angular, Vue, and more. You can customize them or build your own if you're feeling ambitious.

Moderation Tools: Profanity filters, user blocking, message reporting. Because humans on the internet are predictably terrible sometimes.

End-to-End Encryption: Your messages stay private. CometChat can't read them, hackers can't read them, your nosy competitor can't read them.

Real Talk About Pricing

CometChat uses a monthly active user (MAU) model. Not "API calls" or other sneaky metrics that balloon your bill.

The Starter plan is free forever for up to 25 MAU. Perfect for testing or tiny projects. You get most core features, which is generous compared to competitors who lock everything behind paywalls.

Scale plans start around $49/month for 100 MAU and go up from there. For 1,000 active users, you're looking at roughly $249/month. Not pocket change, but reasonable if you're running an actual business.

Enterprise is custom pricing. If you need enterprise, you know who you are.

The nice part? No surprise charges. You know what you're paying upfront. Your bill doesn't randomly triple because your app went viral on Tuesday.

What People Actually Say

Real users (not paid testimonials) seem generally satisfied. Common praise: solid documentation, responsive support, and the thing actually works under load.

Common complaints? Some developers find the initial setup learning curve steep if you want heavy customization. And enterprise pricing can get spicy at scale, but that's true of most B2B SaaS.

The integration typically takes a few hours to a few days depending on complexity. Which beats spending months building your own infrastructure and then months more debugging why messages don't deliver on Tuesdays.

The Competition

Twilio: More flexible, more complex, usually more expensive. Great if you need ultimate control. Overkill if you just want chat to work.

SendBird: Similar to CometChat, often compared directly. Pricing and features are competitive. Comes down to which documentation style clicks with your brain.

Stream: Another solid option. Generally more expensive at scale.

Building it yourself: Please don't. The hidden costs of infrastructure, maintenance, scaling, and compliance will haunt you.

When CometChat Makes Sense

You're building a marketplace app where buyers and sellers need to communicate. You're creating a social platform. You're adding chat to your SaaS product. You need video calls for telehealth or remote collaboration.

Basically, if your users need to talk to each other and you don't want chat infrastructure to become your full-time job, CometChat handles it.

When It Doesn't

If you're building something that needs extreme message throughput (millions per second), you might need something more industrial. If your budget is literally zero and you have six months to spare, open-source solutions exist. If you enjoy pain, building from scratch is always an option.

The Bottom Line

CometChat is professional infrastructure for adding real-time communication to your app. It's not the cheapest option, but it's not trying to be. It's trying to save you from the nightmare of building, scaling, and maintaining chat infrastructure yourself.

The free tier is generous enough to actually test with real users. The paid tiers are straightforward. The features work. The documentation doesn't make you want to scream.

In a world where most developer tools promise everything and deliver chaos, CometChat is refreshingly boring in the best way. It does chat. It does it well. It doesn't randomly break at 2 AM.

👉 Start building with CometChat - the free tier gives you enough runway to see if it fits your needs without pulling out your credit card. And if your chat needs grow beyond 25 users, you've probably got a business worth paying for proper infrastructure.