Realtime · facts read November 9, 2026
Cached polling (no realtime service)
Clients re-fetch one results endpoint every few seconds, and the host caches its answer so every player shares it. Live-enough numbers for crowds with no extra vendor: one cached endpoint, polled every few seconds.
- Free plan
- No service to sign up for. On Vercel, a function response with Cache-Control: s-maxage is served from the CDN, and a cached response doesn't run the function; on Cloudflare Workers, cache the answer with the Cache API, and each poll is a Worker request.
- Paid from
- Not stated on the pricing page
- Monthly cost at 1,000 users
- $0/month No separate bill; each poll is a cached CDN request on Vercel or a Worker request on Cloudflare.
- Free plan allows commercial use
- Not stated
- Open source
- No
- Self-hostable
- Yes
Source: Cached polling (no realtime service) pricing, read November 9, 2026. Prices change; check the vendor's page before you commit.
Best for
- Live vote percentages and leaderboards
- Traffic that spikes when something is shared
- Staying on one bill
Watch out for
- Players see numbers up to the cache time old (a few seconds); use a push service for chat, cursors or fast multiplayer.
How Cuely scores Cached polling (no realtime service)
The published scores, from −3 to +3, that decide when Cuely picks it. Method
- +3traffic comes in viral spikes. Every player reads the same cached answer, so a viral day adds cheap cached requests, not connections or messages.
- +2keep costs as low as possible. No extra vendor or bill.
- +2votes, scores, leaderboards or streaks (many writes to the same numbers). Fits tallies and leaderboards that only need to be a few seconds fresh.
- −1realtime features. Updates every few seconds rather than instantly: fine for crowd numbers, not for presence, chat or shared editing.