“For most applications, Sendbird or Stream offer the best balance of features and developer experience for chat-focused products”MiniMax M2.5 · Comparative question · first choice

“Choose Stream or Sendbird if you are building an app where users need to talk to each other”Gemini 3.5 Flash · Comparative question · first choice

“Stream for developer experience ... Excellent developer experience and transparent pricing”Kimi K2 · Comparative question · first choice

“For most apps: Stream or Sendbird are strong choices”GLM 4.7 FlashX · Comparative question · first choice

What gives them pause

“Concurrent connection cap can be restrictive; jump from free to $399 is steep”DeepSeek V4 Flash · Budget-constrained question · warning

Also on the shortlist

The products named in the same answers as Stream Chat, over the 58 answers that named it, and how often each was the first choice instead.

Product	Named together	Picked instead
Sendbird	50	5	View →
CometChat	38	5	View →
Intercom	29	7	View →
OneSignal	29	6	View →
PubNub	23	0	View →
Twilio Conversations	23	0	View →
Braze	18	4	View →
TalkJS	15	2	View →
Appcues	14	0	View →
Userpilot	12	0	View →

What the models named instead of Stream Chat →

A side-by-side page exists where both products are among a category's top eight.

At a glance

Stated on Stream Chat's own site, not checked by Gane.

For: developers
Price stated: Start building in-app chat for free.
Starting price: 0
Free plan or trial: Start building in-app chat for free.
Certifications: ISO 27001, HIPAA, GDPR, CCPA, ISO 20243, SOC 2 Type II
Hosting: Boulder, CO, Amsterdam, NL, servers all around the globe
Customers named: Bumble, eBay, Strava, Nextdoor, GoGoFundMe, Peloton, Whoop, Feeld

Visit getstream.io ↗

How this is measured

Fourteen AI models from 12 labs are asked the same buying questions six ways, for three company sizes. Standings refresh every edition.

Gane sells AI visibility software. No company can pay to change a result.

Read the method →

Sources returned with these answers

The sites and pages the answers that named Stream Chat came back with. A fact about retrieval, not a cause of the answer.

Fourteen of the fourteen models returned a source list in this edition: five return the pages they cited and nine the search results they consulted. These counts come from 48 of the 58 answers that named Stream Chat and are not a share of its labels.

Domains cited

cometchat.com33

github.com27

sendbird.com22

getstream.ioIts own site21

trtc.io20

dupple.com15

guideflow.com15

talkjs.com15

ably.com9

g2.com9

165 of the 186 domain citations in answers naming Stream Chat came from a third party's page.

Pages cited

github.com/ishandutta2007/Awesome-In-App-Direct-Messaging27

cometchat.com/blog/best-enterprise-chat-platforms-for-in-app-messaging-202617

dupple.com/learn/best-in-app-messaging-tools15

sendbird.com/sendbird-alternatives11

talkjs.com/compare/best-chat-apis9

cometchat.com/pricing8

guideflow.com/blog/chat-api-software8

guideflow.com/blog/in-app-messaging-software8

Pages are listed as the models cited them.

By model

How each model answered on Stream Chat across every prompt where it was named for a mid-market B2B company. Fourteen models, six prompts per category.

Model	First choice	Alternative	Mention	Warning	Labels
Claude Haiku 4.5	0	0	0	0	0
GPT-5.4 mini	0	0	0	0	0
Gemini 3.5 Flash	1	1	2	0	4
Perplexity Sonar	0	1	0	0	1
Grok 4.20	0	1	1	0	2
Mistral Small	0	1	1	0	2
DeepSeek V4 Flash	0	1	1	1	3
Llama 4 Maverick	0	0	0	0	0
Qwen 3.7 Flash	1	0	0	0	1
Kimi K2	1	1	1	0	3
GLM 4.7 FlashX	1	0	1	0	2
MiniMax M2.5	1	0	0	0	1
GPT-6 Luna	0	0	0	0	0
Muse Glimmer 30B	0	1	2	0	3

What it publishes

Addresses on getstream.io

4,257

subdomains included

Content

1,851

counted in the table below

Documentation

2,261

Product · Integration

13 · 1

Kind	Pages	Last 90 days	Latest
Blog	725	45	2026-09-28
Podcast or video	489	undated
Report or ebook	357	undated
Glossary or explainer	167	4	2026-08-24
Webinar or virtual event	52	3	2026-09-10
Comparison	26	1	2026-07-06
Conference or event	20	undated
Case study	13	0	2024-09-27
News or press	2	0	2022-11-10

Most recent

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2026-09-18Best voice ai platforms blog
2026-09-16Care com blog

How it is countedHide how it is counted

Every page getstream.io exposes, subdomains included. Kind is read from the address and title. The last 90 days, the latest date and the twelve months count pages by when they were published, from the site's feeds, a date in the address, or the page's own publication date, read from up to a hundred of its most recently changed pages; a page that says only when it last changed is counted in its kind but not in when, so the recent counts are a floor, and a kind none of whose pages gives a publication date reads undated. An event counts as online when its address or title says so (webinar, on demand, virtual or online summit); a conference, summit, trade show, expo or roadshow that does not say so is counted as a conference or event, which on a vendor's site is mostly in person. Read September 29, 2026.