Rivet

Rivet is an open-source library designed to empower developers to build modern, fast, and scalable real-time applications without unnecessary complexity. It serves as a powerful alternative to proprietary solutions like Cloudflare Durable Objects, offering a flexible, self-hostable framework for managing long-lived processes with durable state. At its core, Rivet uses an "actor model," where each actor is a lightweight, stateful unit of compute that can remember information between requests, eliminating the need for constant database lookups and overcoming typical serverless timeouts.

How to use Rivet

Getting started with Rivet is designed to be quick and intuitive, especially for developers familiar with TypeScript and Node.js environments.

1. Installation: Begin by installing the Rivet actor library into your project using npm or your preferred package manager: npm install @rivetkit/actor.
2. Define an Actor: Create a new file to define your actor. An actor consists of a persistent state, actions (functions that clients can call), and lifecycle hooks (e.g., onStart). You define the state's shape and implement the logic for each action, which can modify the state and broadcast events.
3. Setup and Registry: In your main server file, import your defined actors and register them using the setup function from Rivet. This makes them available to be instantiated and used.
4. Integrate with a Framework: Expose your Rivet actors through an HTTP server. Rivet integrates seamlessly with popular backend frameworks like Express, Hono, and Elysia.
5. Client Interaction: Use the Rivet client library in your frontend application (React, vanilla JS, etc.) or even a Rust client to connect to your actors. You can get or create actor instances, call their actions, and subscribe to real-time events.
6. Develop and Debug: Leverage the Rivet Studio, a Postman-like tool for stateful serverless development. It allows you to inspect and edit actor state in real-time, call actions, monitor connections, and see code changes instantly with hot reloading.

Core Features of Rivet

• Long-Lived, Stateful Compute: Actors act like tiny, persistent servers that maintain state across requests, ideal for applications requiring memory and context.
• Blazing-Fast Reads & Writes: State is co-located with compute, minimizing latency by eliminating database round trips for state modifications.
• Realtime, Made Simple: Built-in support for WebSockets and Server-Sent Events (SSE) allows you to broadcast state changes to connected clients effortlessly, without external pub/sub systems.
• Infinite Scalability: Automatically scales from zero to millions of concurrent actors with a pay-for-what-you-use model and no cold starts.
• Fault Tolerance: Actors automatically restart on failure, preserving state integrity and ensuring continuous operation.
• End-to-End Type Safety: Full TypeScript support provides type inference and compile-time checking between clients and actors, reducing bugs.
• Runs Anywhere: Deploy on serverless platforms, your own infrastructure, or use the managed Rivet Cloud. It supports Node.js and Bun runtimes.
• Rivet Studio: A powerful local development tool for real-time debugging, state inspection, and interaction with your actors.

Use Cases for Rivet

Rivet's architecture is well-suited for a wide range of applications that require persistent state and real-time updates.

• AI & Automation: Build stateful AI agents that maintain conversation history, orchestrate complex AI workflows, or run long-running business processes with state persistence.
• Real-time Communication: Power real-time chat rooms with message history and user presence, create collaborative document editors (integrates with Yjs), and manage game state for multiplayer games.
• Data & Synchronization: Implement local-first sync for offline-capable applications, manage isolated data stores for multi-tenant SaaS products, and schedule time-based tasks with persistent state.
• Infrastructure: Create distributed rate limiters with persistent counters and build real-time stream processing pipelines.

Advantages of Rivet

Rivet offers a distinct set of advantages for modern application development. Its architecture simplifies development by unifying compute and state, reducing the need for complex, multi-component systems. The performance is exceptional due to co-located state and compute. The developer experience is enhanced by strong type safety and the powerful Rivet Studio. Finally, its open-source and self-hostable nature provides ultimate flexibility and prevents vendor lock-in, while the managed cloud option offers convenience and scalability.

Pricing and Plans

Rivet Cloud offers a flexible, freemium pricing model to suit projects of all sizes.

• Community Plan: $0/month. Includes $5 in free credits, community support, 2 seats, and is ideal for personal projects and experimentation.
• Pro Plan: Starts at $20/month + usage. Includes $20 in free credits per month, everything in the Community plan, unlimited seats, and email support. Designed for professional applications and small teams.
• Team Plan: Starts at $200/month + usage. Includes $200 in free credits per month, everything in the Pro plan, dedicated hardware, custom regions, and Slack support. Suited for growing businesses with higher performance needs.
• Enterprise Plan: Custom pricing. Offers everything in the Team plan plus priority support, SLAs, on-premise deployment options, and SSO integration.