GetStream (Stream.io) offers chat, activity feed, and video/audio APIs for developers, with a free tier and usage-based pricing from $399/month.
getstream.io is the product site for Stream.io, Inc., a company that builds backend infrastructure for real-time communication features so development teams don't have to build messaging systems from scratch. Rather than being an end-user app, Stream is a set of APIs and client SDKs that get embedded into other companies' products.
Stream was founded in 2014 and is headquartered in Boulder, Colorado, with an additional office in Amsterdam, Netherlands. The company says its infrastructure powers over 2,000 applications and more than 1 billion end users, spanning industries such as dating, fintech, gaming, healthcare, education, and social networking.
Stream's core products are Chat (real-time in-app messaging with customizable UI components), Activity Feeds (social feed infrastructure with personalization and ranking algorithms), and Video & Audio (video calling, voice calling, and livestreaming). Newer additions include AI Moderation, which uses LLM-powered classification to screen text, images, video, and audio in real time, and Vision Agents, an open-source SDK for building low-latency, multi-modal AI agents with voice and vision capabilities.
Across products, Stream offers 10+ platform SDKs covering React, Swift, Android, Flutter, Kotlin, Python, Go, and Java, a global edge network with sub-9ms latency claims, offline support, webhooks, and enterprise-grade compliance including SOC 2, HIPAA, GDPR, and ISO 27001.
Stream's Chat product uses a usage-based pricing model tied to monthly active users (MAU) and concurrent connections. The free Build tier covers 1,000 MAU and 100 concurrent connections with no credit card required. The Start tier is $399/month billed annually (or $499/month billed monthly) for 10,000 MAU and 500 concurrent connections, adding advanced moderation, a global edge network, offline support, and data export, with overage rates of $0.09 per additional MAU and $0.99 per additional concurrent connection.
The Elevate tier is $599/month billed annually (or $675/month billed monthly) and includes everything in Start plus multi-tenancy, advanced search, HIPAA compliance, and message translation. Enterprise plans are custom-priced for organizations needing 1 million or more MAU, dedicated infrastructure, AI moderation, and a 99.999% SLA. Stream's Video, Activity Feeds, and Moderation products are priced separately through their own product-specific pricing pages.
Yes, the Chat product has a free Build tier covering 1,000 monthly active users and 100 concurrent connections with no credit card required.
Stream offers Chat messaging, Activity Feeds, Video & Audio calling, AI Moderation, and an open-source Vision Agents SDK for AI agents.
Chat pricing is usage-based: Build is free up to 1,000 MAU, Start is $399/month (annual billing) for 10,000 MAU, Elevate is $599/month (annual billing) with added compliance and search features, and Enterprise is custom-priced.
Stream.io, Inc. is headquartered in Boulder, Colorado, with an additional office in Amsterdam, Netherlands.
Stream was founded in 2014.
Yes, Stream states its platform supports SOC 2, HIPAA, GDPR, and ISO 27001 compliance, with HIPAA available on the Elevate tier and above.