Real-Time Web Applications with WebSockets & Redis Pub/Sub: Live Dashboards & Collaborative Portals (2026)

Use Server-Sent Events (SSE) for one-way data streaming (like LLM text token streaming or live score tickers). Use WebSockets when you need low-latency bidirectional communication (like live collaborative whiteboards, multiplayer editing, or real-time chat).

When client A is connected to Server 1 and client B is connected to Server 2, Redis Pub/Sub acts as the universal message broker, broadcasting events across all server nodes in milliseconds.

Using Conflict-Free Replicated Data Types (CRDTs) or Operational Transformation (OT), allowing multi-user text and document editing without locking.