Forum Discussion
Azure SignalR vs Web PubSub for a real-time live score website – which one fits better?
Hi everyone,
I'm building a live football score website from scratch as a personal project, mostly using AI-assisted coding. The core requirement is pushing score updates, match events (goals, cards, substitutions) and minute changes to visitors in real time without them refreshing the page.
I'm considering Azure for the real-time layer and I'm trying to decide between Azure SignalR Service and Azure Web PubSub. Traffic will be uneven: quiet most of the week, then spikes of concurrent users during big matches.
A few questions:
1. Which service handles sudden traffic spikes more cost-effectively?
2. Is Web PubSub simpler if my backend isn't ASP.NET?
3. Would polling an external score API every few seconds and broadcasting changes be a reasonable architecture, or is there a better pattern?
Any experience or advice would be appreciated. Thanks!
1 Reply
For your live scores, Web PubSub is a good fit if you want straightforward WebSocket publishing from a non-ASP.NET backend; choose SignalR when its client libraries, hub model, RPC, or transport fallbacks are useful. Neither is automatically cheaper during spikes: compare concurrent connections, allocated unit-hours, outbound message volume, and region-specific pricing. Broadcasting one update to thousands of viewers multiplies outbound traffic. Web PubSub autoscale requires Premium and usually takes minutes, so schedule capacity before major matches and keep headroom. Use one backend polling worker, subject to the score provider’s rate limits, rather than letting every visitor call the external API. Cache the latest match state, publish only changes to match-specific groups, and serve a snapshot when clients connect or reconnect. If the provider offers webhooks or streaming, prefer that input. Test a match-day load profile and cost estimate before choosing the production tier.
