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Foony vs Sendbird

A complete chat suite against chat infrastructure: what Sendbird’s MAU pricing buys, and when message pricing fits better.

Sendbird sells finished chat: UIKits on five platforms, moderation dashboards, push notifications, and translations, priced per monthly active user. Foony sells the infrastructure: a chat SDK over pub/sub, priced per message. Whether the suite is worth its premium depends almost entirely on how much of it you would actually use.

When Foony fits

You are building your own chat UI anyway. Then the UIKits, the biggest thing the premium buys, go unused.
Always-connected users. Sendbird caps peak concurrent connections at 5% of your MAU tier, so the $349 plan allows about 250 simultaneous users. Games, trading dashboards, and tools where everyone is online at once hit that wall long before MAU.
A price that starts at zero and moves smoothly: free tier, then $19/month, with published overage. Sendbird jumps from a 1,000-MAU free plan to $349/month, and its overage rates are not published.
Realtime beyond chat on the same connection: presence, live cursors, game state, and Database Sync, none of which fit a chat-suite API.
Chat features without tier gates: Sendbird locks translations, profanity filters, and image moderation behind Pro, and its best moderation behind Enterprise.

When Sendbird fits

You want chat shipped this sprint: polished UIKits for iOS, Android, React, React Native, and Flutter, with threads, polls, and read receipts done.
Moderation as a product: dashboards, AI image moderation, and a rule engine, not APIs you assemble.
Managed push notifications through FCM and APNs are included, where Foony has no push pipeline.
Enterprise chat compliance: HIPAA options, regional deployments, and a decade of chat-only track record.

Product shape

	Foony	Sendbird
UI kits	None, bring your UI	iOS, Android, React, React Native, Flutter
Moderation	Your code on your channels	Dashboard, filters, and AI moderation by tier
Push notifications	Not offered	Included, FCM and APNs
Message editing and history	Edit, delete, and history in the chat SDK, 30-day retention by rule	Full featured, 6-month retention on all plans
Beyond chat	Pub/sub, presence, Database Sync on one connection	Chat, with calls as a separate product

Pricing

	Foony	Sendbird
Model	Per message, in and out	Monthly active users, tiered
Free tier	9M messages/month, 300 concurrent connections, free forever	1,000 MAU, 20 peak concurrent connections
Entry paid plan	$19/month for 100M messages	$349/month for 5,000 MAU, about 250 peak concurrent
Overage	Overage $0.25 per million messages	Not published, requires sales
Concurrency	300 free, up to 150,000 by plan	Capped at 5% of the MAU tier

Competitor numbers last checked July 2026. If something has drifted, tell us and we will fix it.

Try it on the free tier

9M messages a month, presence, history, and the Pusher-compatible API are all on the free plan. No card required.