TalkJS vs building chat on Firebase
Firebase gives you a database, auth, storage, and push to build chat on. TalkJS gives you the chat. This page lists what each part takes, with sources and dates.
Firebase gives you services to build chat on (Firestore, Authentication, Cloud Storage, Cloud Functions, and FCM), and you build each chat feature and screen from scratch. TalkJS gives you a head start with pre-built, fully customizable chat UIs and built-in email, SMS, and push notifications. Firebase fits when chat is your core product or you need SOC 2 or HIPAA coverage, while TalkJS is ISO 27001 certified and GDPR compliant.
TalkJS is a chat API with a pre-built, customizable chat UI for web and mobile apps. Its UI works with JavaScript, React, Vue, Angular, Svelte, and Web Components, plus React Native and Flutter, and theme components let you replace parts of it with your own React or Web components. Email, SMS, and push notifications and a profanity filter are built in. TalkJS is ISO 27001 certified, GDPR compliant, and hosted in Europe.
- Chat is a feature of your product, and you want a working chat UI for web and mobile without building the screens yourself
- You want typing indicators, read receipts, and online presence included, without a data model to design for them
- You want email, SMS, and push notifications and reply by email on every plan, without Cloud Functions or an email or SMS provider of your own
- You want a profanity filter with word blocklists and regex, without writing a trigger for new messages
- You want to build and test with every feature in a free development mode
- ISO 27001 and GDPR, with data hosted in Europe, cover your compliance needs
- You want chat and email support from engineers on every plan, rather than your own team keeping the chat running
Firebase is Google's app development platform. It includes Cloud Firestore and Realtime Database, Authentication, Cloud Storage, Cloud Functions, and Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM). Firebase has no chat product or chat UI: you design the data model, the Security Rules, and the screens yourself. Firestore runs in regions on every continent, and its SLA is 99.999% for multi-region databases.
- Chat is the core product you want to own, and you need control of the data model, the UI, and every rule, with no chat vendor's limits on top
- You need SOC 2: Firestore, Cloud Functions, Cloud Storage, and Authentication have it
- You need HIPAA coverage: the Google Cloud BAA covers Firestore, Cloud Storage, and Cloud Run functions
- You need a hosting region outside Europe: Firestore runs in regions on every continent, or multi-region in Europe or the United States
- You need a higher published SLA: Firestore's is 99.999% multi-region and 99.99% regional
- Your clients include C++ or Unity, which Firestore SDKs cover
- Your team already runs on Firebase and wants one platform, one bill, and one console, with the free Spark plan for a prototype
Compare TalkJS and building on Firebase
This table compares what TalkJS includes with what you'd build on Firebase, as of October 2026. Each Firebase cell names the Firebase product you'd build that part with, from Firebase's docs, and each TalkJS cell says what you start with. Firebase leads on SOC 2, HIPAA coverage, hosting regions, its published Firestore SLA, and client SDKs for C++ and Unity. TalkJS sends its mobile push notifications through Firebase Cloud Messaging too.
| TalkJS | Firebase | Why it matters | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Core messaging | Core messaging | |||||
| 1-on-1 chat | Yes | No (build it with Firestore listeners and Security Rules) | Private buyer–seller, support or DM conversations. | |||
| Group chat | Yes Hundreds or thousands of users per chat | No (build it with Firestore collections and Security Rules) | Communities, teams and multi-party transactions. Membership and access rules are part of the build. | |||
| Typing indicators | Yes | No (build it with Firestore listeners) | Shows the other side is replying. | |||
| Read receipts | Yes | No (build it with Firestore writes and listeners) | Tells senders a message was seen. | |||
| Online presence | Yes Online status indicator | No (build it with Realtime Database and Cloud Functions) | Shows who's online. Firestore has no presence of its own, so Firebase's guide adds a second database. | |||
Message features and interactions | Message features and interactions | |||||
| Emoji reactions | Yes Emoji reactions per user role | No (build it with Firestore writes and listeners) | Acknowledge without a full reply. | |||
| Message search | Yes Growth plan and up | No (build it with Firestore text search, Enterprise edition) | Users find earlier messages. | |||
Content and media | Content and media | |||||
| File sharing | Yes 100 MB max file size, unlimited storage | No (build it with Cloud Storage for Firebase) | Documents and images inside the conversation. | |||
| Message translation | Yes Growth plan and up (charged separately) | No (build it with Cloud Functions and the Cloud Translation API) | Users chat across languages. | |||
User experience | User experience | |||||
| Pre-built web UI | Yes JavaScript, React, Vue, Angular, Svelte and Web Components | No (build the chat UI yourself) | Ship a working chat UI before building your own. | |||
| Pre-built mobile UI | Yes React Native and Flutter | No (build the chat UI yourself) | Ship chat in mobile apps without building the screens yourself. | |||
| UI customization | Theme components: replace parts of the UI with your own React or Web components | Full control (you build every screen) | How far the UI can match your product. | |||
| Real-time client SDKs | Yes JavaScript (web and React Native), Kotlin, Swift and Flutter (Android) | Yes Cloud Firestore SDKs for web, Apple, Android, Flutter, C++ and Unity (a database, not a chat SDK) | Build your own UI on live data. | |||
Notifications | Notifications | |||||
| Push notifications | Yes Mobile and browser push | Yes Firebase Cloud Messaging (you send each push from Cloud Functions or your server) | Brings mobile users back to the conversation. TalkJS sends its mobile push through FCM too. | |||
| Email notifications | Yes All plans, built in (no third-party account) | No (build it with Cloud Functions and your own email provider) | Reaches users who are offline. | |||
| SMS notifications | Yes All plans (SMS charged separately) | No (build it with Cloud Functions and your own SMS provider) | For urgent messages that can't wait for email. | |||
| Reply via email | Yes All plans (syncs to chat) | No (build it with Cloud Functions and an inbound email provider) | Users answer from their inbox and the reply lands in the chat. | |||
Moderation | Moderation | |||||
| Profanity filter | Yes Word blocklists and regex suppression | No (build it with Cloud Functions triggers on new messages) | Blocks offensive words before other users see them. | |||
Security and compliance | Security and compliance | |||||
| GDPR | Yes | Yes Data Processing and Security Terms | Required for EU users. | |||
| ISO 27001 | Yes | Yes All Firebase services | Common security-review requirement. | |||
| SOC 2 | No | Yes Firestore, Cloud Functions, Cloud Storage and Authentication | Common security-review requirement in the United States. | |||
| HIPAA (BAA) | No | Yes For Firestore, Cloud Storage and Cloud Run functions (not Firebase Authentication or FCM) | Required for healthcare data in the United States. | |||
| Data hosting region | Europe | Choice of region or multi-region, including Europe and the United States | Where chat data is stored. | |||
Developer experience and support | Developer experience and support | |||||
| Free for development | Yes Development mode with all features | Yes Spark plan: Firestore 1 GiB stored, 50K reads and 20K writes per day | Build and test before paying. | |||
| Data export | Yes Data import and export API, all plans | Yes Firestore managed export to Cloud Storage (Blaze plan) | Your chat data stays yours. | |||
| Uptime SLA | Yes 99.9% on Enterprise | Yes Firestore 99.999% multi-region, 99.99% regional | Contractual availability for production. | |||
| Voice and video calling | No (integrate a calling provider of your choice) | No (build it with WebRTC, using Firestore for signaling) | In-app calls next to chat. | |||
| Support | Chat and email with engineers, all plans (priority from Growth, named Solutions Engineer on Enterprise) | Support case form, plus community help on Stack Overflow | Who helps when the chat breaks. With a self-built chat, that's your team. | |||
Read more in the TalkJS docs: Notifications, Moderation, and Themes. To set up push with FCM, see Configure Firebase Cloud Messaging and the guide to web push notifications with Firebase Cloud Messaging.
Why TalkJS?
TalkJS has run chat in production since 2016 and delivers more than 130 million messages a month for customers in over 90 countries.
We were able to offload all messaging to TalkJS — hugely simplifying our development of an otherwise complex stack.
We've seen a 3x increase in booking conversion compared to our previous experience with a masked-SMS solution.
I demoed a working end-to-end chat conversation in our platform in just 2-3 days. The POC took less than an hour.
TalkJS pricing vs Firebase
TalkJS publishes monthly prices by monthly active users (MAU). Firebase has no MAU price: on its Blaze plan, you pay as you go for each service. The table shows the TalkJS price at 10,000, 25,000, and 50,000 MAU next to Firebase's pricing model.
| TalkJS | Firebase | |
|---|---|---|
| 10,000 MAU | Basic $239 | Usage-based, no MAU price (Blaze, pay as you go) |
| 25,000 MAU | Growth $499 | Usage-based, no MAU price (Blaze, pay as you go) |
| 50,000 MAU | Growth $1,249 | Usage-based, no MAU price (Blaze, pay as you go) |
Prices are in USD per month, billed annually, as of October 2026. At 50,000 MAU, the TalkJS price is the Growth plan plus overage for each MAU over the 25,000 it includes: $499 + 25,000 × $0.03 overage = $1,249. See the current prices on the TalkJS pricing page and the Firebase pricing page.
Firebase unit prices for the services a chat build uses, on the Blaze plan, as of October 2026:
- Cloud Firestore: no cost up to 1 GiB stored, 50,000 document reads, 20,000 writes, and 20,000 deletes per day. Beyond that, in us-central1 (Iowa): $0.03 per 100,000 reads, $0.09 per 100,000 writes, and $0.01 per 100,000 deletes. Rates vary by location (Firestore pricing).
- Firestore listeners: you're charged a read each time a document in a listener's results is added or updated. A listener that's been offline for more than 30 minutes is charged as a new query (Firestore billing).
- Cloud Functions: no cost up to 2 million invocations a month, then $0.40 per million. Compute has no cost up to 400,000 GB-seconds and 200,000 CPU-seconds a month, then Google Cloud pricing.
- Cloud Storage for Firebase: no cost up to 5 GB-months stored, 100 GB downloaded, 5,000 uploads, and 50,000 downloads a month, then Cloud Storage pricing.
- Realtime Database (for presence): no cost up to 1 GB stored, then $5 per GB, and up to 360 MB downloaded a day, then $1 per GB. Up to 200,000 simultaneous connections per database.
- Authentication: no cost up to 50,000 MAU, then Google Cloud pricing.
- Firebase Cloud Messaging: no cost.
Firebase's bill covers the services, not the engineering time to build and run the chat on them.
Moving from a self-built chat
To move a chat you built on Firebase to TalkJS, import your users, then conversations, then messages with their original timestamps through the TalkJS REST API (Import messages). Firestore's managed export writes your documents to a Cloud Storage bucket on the Blaze plan, which gives you the data to import. Tell the TalkJS team about your setup in the form below to plan the move.
- Data import and export API on all plans
- Migration help from the TalkJS team
FAQs
Firebase gives you the parts to build chat on: Cloud Firestore real-time listeners for messages, Authentication, Cloud Storage for files, and Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM) for push. You build the rest yourself: presence (Firebase's guide uses Realtime Database and Cloud Functions), typing indicators, read receipts, email and SMS notifications, moderation, and the chat UI. Building on Firebase fits when chat is your core product and you want control of every part of it. TalkJS includes these parts, with a pre-built chat UI.
You design a data model and Security Rules in Cloud Firestore, then use Firestore listeners for messages, typing indicators, and read receipts. For online presence, Firebase's guide adds Realtime Database and Cloud Functions. Files go in Cloud Storage for Firebase. Push notifications go through FCM, sent from Cloud Functions or your own server, and email notifications need your own email provider. You also build the chat UI for web and mobile.
Firebase has no price per monthly active user (MAU). On the Blaze plan, you pay as you go for each service. As of October 2026, Cloud Firestore has no cost up to 1 GiB stored, 50,000 document reads, 20,000 writes, and 20,000 deletes per day. Beyond that, in us-central1, it's $0.03 per 100,000 reads, $0.09 per 100,000 writes, and $0.01 per 100,000 deletes. A Firestore listener is charged a read each time a document in its results is added or updated. FCM has no cost. TalkJS, in USD per month billed annually: Basic is $239 at 10,000 MAU, Growth is $499 at 25,000 MAU, and Growth with overage is $1,249 at 50,000 MAU ($499 plus 25,000 MAU at $0.03 each).
Yes. TalkJS sends mobile push notifications through FCM and Apple Push Notification service (APNs). To set up FCM, upload a Firebase service account key in the TalkJS dashboard (see Configure Firebase Cloud Messaging). TalkJS decides when to send each notification, so you don't write a Cloud Function for it. For browser notifications, see the guide to web push notifications with Firebase Cloud Messaging.
Firebase documents these limits: Realtime Database, which Firebase's presence guide uses, allows 200,000 simultaneous connections per database. Firestore text search needs the Enterprise edition. Firestore listeners are charged a read for each document change in their results.
Firebase is ISO 27001 certified on all its services, and Firestore, Cloud Functions, Cloud Storage, and Authentication have SOC 2. The Google Cloud HIPAA business associate agreement (BAA) covers Firestore, Cloud Storage, and Cloud Run functions, but not Firebase Authentication or FCM. TalkJS is ISO 27001 certified and GDPR compliant on all plans. TalkJS doesn't have SOC 2 and doesn't sign a HIPAA BAA.
Yes. Export your data with Firestore's managed export, which writes your documents to a Cloud Storage bucket on the Blaze plan. Then import users, conversations, and messages with their original timestamps through the TalkJS REST API (see Import messages). For help planning the move, use the contact form.