---
canonical: "https://www.softatlas.io/bird/products/realtime"
name: "Realtime"
provider: "Bird"
category: "Developer & Engineering / Backend Platforms / Realtime Backend Platforms"
review_count: 0
ai_powered: false
website: "https://bird.com/en-us/products/realtime"
updated: "2026-07-28"
---

# Realtime

By [Bird](/bird.md)

The Realtime API provides hosted pub/sub capabilities over WebSockets for real-time data streaming.

## Features
- Subscribe to named channels and receive events as they are published
- Publish events from various sources including backend, CLI, or CI
- Manage presence channels to track who joins or leaves
- Authenticate private channels with a backend-signed subscription request
- Encrypt channels for end-to-end security of sensitive data
- Recover connection state and replay missed events upon reconnect
- Set channel-level rate limits with dashboard visibility
- Route connections to the nearest edge node for low latency

## Built for
DEVELOPERS, OPERATIONS

Source: https://www.softatlas.io/bird/products/realtime