Stream’s chat suite against chat infrastructure, with the concurrency line item that decides it for always-online apps.
Stream ships what many consider the best chat UI kits in the industry, plus feeds and video on the same platform, priced per MAU with unusually transparent overage rates. The comparison with Foony is the same suite-versus-infrastructure question as Sendbird, with one extra line item: what a concurrent connection costs.
When Foony fits
Concurrent connections aren’t a meter. Stream includes 100 on the free tier and bills $0.79 to $0.99 per extra concurrent connection. A community where 2,000 people idle in rooms is a four-figure monthly line item before a message is sent.
Message pricing over MAU pricing when usage is spiky: $19/month covers 100M messages regardless of how many users they come from.
Payload freedom: Stream messages cap at 5 KB including custom fields. Foony takes 64 KB free and 1 MB paid.
Realtime beyond chat: presence, live state, and Database Sync ride the same connection as your rooms.
HIPAA, multi-tenancy, and translations without the Elevate tier: Foony has no feature tiers to climb, what exists is on every plan.
When Stream Chat fits
The UI kits: React, React Native, Flutter, Swift, and Kotlin components that are genuinely best in class, with threads, reactions, and link enrichment done.
Published overage on everything, rare honesty in this category, and a $100/month Maker credit that makes it free for small startups.
Feeds and video on the same vendor when chat is one of three realtime products you need.
Advanced moderation and search as products from the Start tier.
Product shape
Foony
Stream Chat
UI kits
None, bring your UI
React, React Native, Flutter, Swift, Kotlin
Message size
64 KB free, up to 1 MB on paid plans
5 KB including custom fields
Moderation
Your code on your channels
Advanced moderation from Start tier, AI moderation add-on