
The bottom line
A realtime API isn't a fast REST API — it's a different system with stateful connections, reconnection logic, ordering and delivery guarantees, and a scaling model where thousands of clients hold open connections at once. Done naively it works in a demo and falls over under real load or flaky mobile networks. in Southampton Built deliberately, realtime becomes a dependable product capability — live collaboration, tracking and notifications that genuinely feel instant — instead of a fragile feature that breaks at scale.














