You've probably already run the numbers on a few chat SDKs. The free tier looked promising until you got to the fine print — a few hundred users, a handful of concurrent connections, half the features locked behind a plan you weren't ready to pay for yet. And somewhere in the terms, a line you almost skipped past: for testing and development only.
That line is the one that matters most, and it's the one most comparisons skip. Here's what we built instead: a free plan sized for an actual launch, not a proof of concept.
The Offer: Full Pro Capabilities at $0
Full Chat Pro capabilities. Free until 10,000 MAU/month. If you sign up during the current window, you get the complete Pro-tier feature set on a real production Chat App, at $0, through the end of 2027.
That's not a trimmed-down evaluation copy of the product. It's the same infrastructure, the same feature set, the same reliability commitments you'd get on a paid Pro plan — the difference is what shows up on your invoice, not what shows up in your app.
Here is what defines the offer:
Built for real product launches: Unlimited messages and full access to Direct, Group, Community, and Open Channels from day one.
Uncompromised user experience: Core polish like read receipts, typing indicators, mentions, unread badges, and multi-device sync are standard, never gated behind paid tiers.
Push notifications included: Multi-channel mobile push ships out of the box with zero add-on fees or separate contracts.
Full migration support: If you are switching from a legacy provider, end-to-end data migration is included at no extra charge.
AI integration ready: Pre-built Skill for Cursor, Claude Code, and Codex that generates SDK code, UI components, and backend endpoints from a single prompt.
Market Comparison: Why Free Tiers Fail at Production
The Free Tier Landscape, Side by Side
Before getting into why the number matters, here's how it stacks up against what else is out there:
Dimension
Nexconn
Sendbird
CometChat
Stream
PubNub
Tencent RTC Chat
Ably
Free MAU
10,000
100 (permanent)
100
1,000 (self-serve) / 2,000 (Maker Account)
200
1,000
Not MAU-based
Peak Concurrent Connections
5% of MAU (500 at 10K)
10
25
100 (self-serve) / hard-capped
Unlimited
Not capped per vendor docs
200 (actual unit)
Feature Completeness
Full Pro-Tier Feature Set
Most Pro features with usage caps
Core features, moderation metered
Core features included
Core pub/sub (build-your-own chat)
Full-featured per vendor docs
Infrastructure only (not chat-specific)
Push Notifications Included
✓ Multi-channel, no extra cost
✗ Separate integration
✗ Separate integration
✗ Paid add-on
✗ Separate integration
✓
✗ Not chat-specific
Storage / Retention
10GB storage, 10GB upload, 180-day history
Not disclosed, 6-month retention
Not separately disclosed
5M text messages limit; CDN file storage extra
7-day retention
7-day retention
Not chat-specific
Licensed for Production
✓ Yes, explicitly
Impractical beyond prototyping; suspension risk at limit
25-concurrent ceiling constrains live traffic
Maker Account rejects excess volume
Explicitly test/development only
✓ Yes, explicitly
General infrastructure (chat must be built)
Why Small Free Tiers Fail: Policy Restrictions vs. Sample Size
There are two separate reasons most free chat tiers can't carry a real product, and they don't get the same amount of attention. One is policy. The other is math — and the math is the bigger problem.
The policy problem is the one that's easy to spot. Some vendors say it outright. PubNub's own support documentation positions the free plan for testing and development, with production traffic requiring a paid upgrade. Stream's startup-facing option, the Maker Account, is gated behind an application requiring under five team members and under $10K in monthly revenue. Even if approved, its terms of service state that exceeding the plan's limits means the service "will reject all excess volume" until the next billing cycle or an upgrade. Sendbird doesn't say it as directly, but the practical effect lands in the same place: its permanent Developer plan has been independently assessed by third-party pricing analyses as workable for prototyping and internal testing, with reported account-level suspension once the MAU ceiling is crossed.
The math problem is the one most comparisons skip, and it doesn't require a policy to be real. A free tier can technically allow production traffic and still be structurally incapable of telling you anything useful about whether your product works — because the sample size itself is too small to mean anything.
Here's the concrete version of that argument:
Evaluation Aspect
Free tiers in the ~100–1,000 MAU range
Nexconn's 10,000 MAU
What it can actually validate
Internal demos, technical checks, small prototype tests
A real product launch, seed-user growth, product-market fit
What the user count is comparable to
~100 users is roughly the size of a single active Slack channel
10,000 users is roughly the size of a functioning community product
Can you validate retention?
No — the sample is too small for the data to be statistically meaningful
Yes — enough volume to run a real retention and growth curve
Can you test social graph behavior?
No — 100 people can't form a meaningful social network to observe
Yes — enough users to see how friend relationships and community structure actually behave
Production compliance
Most free tiers explicitly restrict this
Explicitly allowed
The reason this matters more than it sounds like it should: retention curves, social graph density, and community formation are exactly the things a chat-centric product lives or dies on — and none of them are observable at a sample size of a hundred people, regardless of what the vendor's terms of service say about production use. A 100-MAU free tier that technically permits production traffic still can't answer the question a real launch needs answered, because the number of people involved is too small for the answer to mean anything. You'd need a genuinely larger sample before the data stops being noise — which is precisely the gap a 10,000-MAU free tier is sized to close, policy restrictions aside.
Put the two pillars together and the pattern is consistent either way: a free tier under roughly 1,000 MAU is built to prove an SDK works. One at 10,000 MAU, with the full feature set behind it, is sized to prove a product does.
No asterisks buried in a footnote. Here's what's in the plan.
Channels and messaging: Unlimited messages across Direct, Group, Community, and Open Channels. Group Channel administration — manage admins, manage members, mute members. Community Channels built to support up to 10,000 members — with sub-channel and member-group management baked in. Open Channels with no limit on how many you create, full broadcast support, and priority handling for senders and messages during high-traffic moments.
Message capabilities: Metadata, message updates, mentions, read receipts, typing indicators, broadcast and push notifications, broadcast to all open channels simultaneously, retention across Direct, Group, and Open Channels, multi-device support, and unread message counts.
Delivery infrastructure: Multi-channel push notifications included by default. A complete webhook system, so your backend can react to what's happening in a conversation without polling for it.
Resources and data: 10,000 MAU. Peak concurrent connections at 5% of MAU. 10GB of storage. 10GB of upload capacity. 180 days of message history.
Governance and deployment: SSO/SAML, fine-grained permissions, and audit logs — the controls a real product needs before it can responsibly onboard real users. Multi-region deployment, private infrastructure, and disaster recovery are available as optional architecture paths as your needs grow.
If a feature is missing from this list, it's genuinely not part of the current offer — but almost everything a team needs to actually run a product, rather than just demonstrate one, already is.
Overage Pricing You Can Actually Plan Around
The other thing free plans rarely tell you upfront: what happens the moment you're successful enough to need more. Here's ours, in full, before you commit to anything:
Included Free
Overage Rate
Monthly Active Users
10,000
$0.12 per user
Peak concurrent connections
5% of MAU
$0.90 per concurrent connection
File storage
Up to 10 GB
$1 per 10GB
File upload
Up to 10 GB
$2 per 10GB
No sales call required to find these numbers. No "contact us for enterprise pricing" standing between you and knowing what next month's bill looks like if your product actually takes off. If you grow past the included limits, you keep running — you're billed for what you used, predictably, at rates you already know today.
Who It's Built For & How to Claim
Target Use Cases & Developer Profiles
Teams migrating from legacy providers: If you're running on Sendbird, CometChat, Stream Chat, Ably, Twilio, or Agora and message costs, push configuration, or integration friction have become a headache, this is sized to evaluate directly. Migration support is included at no extra cost.
Startups & growing products: Choosing chat infrastructure for a social app, marketplace, livestream, or gaming product. You get enough headroom to onboard real users without a pricing barrier.
Developers running multiple experiments: Validating early proofs of concept where room to experiment matters most. 10,000 MAU with the full feature set gives you the freedom to find out whether an idea has real traction.
How to Claim & Continuity Commitment
Sign up and create a new Chat App in the Nexconn Console on or after September 1, 2026.
Integrate the Chat SDK.
Send at least one successful message between September 1 and December 31, 2026.
This locks in one production Chat App per eligible organization at up to 10,000 MAU, at $0, for the entire 2027 calendar year (an $860/month value on the Pro 10K tier). Only apps created on or after September 1, 2026, qualify — and only one per organization.
Post-2027 Continuity: Nexconn will publish its 2028 continuity policy by December 1, 2027 at the latest, clarifying whether the Campaign benefits, free quota, pricing, or related policies will continue, change, or end from January 1, 2028. Starter and Pro remain available as paid options — you choose the plan that fits your stage, not the one we push you into.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Is the 10,000 MAU tier genuinely free, or is a credit card required?
It is 100% free with no credit card required. You receive the complete Pro-tier feature set on a real production Chat App—including multi-channel push notifications, 10GB storage/upload, 180-day message history, and up to 500 peak concurrent connections—at $0 through the end of 2027.
How do I qualify and lock in the $0 offer?
Sign up for an account in the Nexconn Console, create a Chat App, integrate the Chat SDK, and send at least one successful message between September 1 and December 31, 2026.
Is migration from Sendbird, Stream, or CometChat really free?
Yes. If you are moving off another provider (Sendbird, CometChat, Stream, PubNub, Twilio Conversations, or Agora Chat), end-to-end data migration support is included as part of onboarding at no extra charge.
Can I build this integration using AI coding assistants like Cursor, Claude Code, or Codex?
Yes. Nexconn provides the open-source Nexconn Chat Integration Skill (compatible with Codex, Claude Code, Cursor, Windsurf, GitHub Copilot, and any tool supporting SKILL.md). It reads live documentation via llms.txt and automatically generates verified client SDK code, pre-built Chat UI, and backend token endpoints from a single natural-language prompt.
We'd love to discuss how Nexconn's real-time communication solutions can support your business. Request a demo, explore pricing, or get tailored onboarding guidance.
