The primitive for
software that thinks.
Rivet Actors are a serverless primitive for stateful workloads.
Each Rivet Actor has built-in:
And could be a:
AI broke the way we build backends.
Long-running tasks, persistent sessions, real-time streaming — AI apps need all of it. So teams stitch together 7+ services just to ship one feature.
An Actor is just a function. Import it like a library, write your logic, and these capabilities come built in — making Actors natively suited for agent memory, background jobs, game lobbies, and more.
The status quo
7 services. Weeks of integration.
One Actor
One lightweight primitive. All the capabilities built-in.
A different architecture.
A simple primitive for stateful software with serverless benefits. No services to stitch, no database to share, no infrastructure to scale. Lightweight enough to run one per agent, session, or user, and they hibernate when idle.
AI Agents
Long-running agents with persistent memory and context.
Traditional
Shared database for all agent sessions, manual state management, timeouts on long tasks
With Actors
Each agent is an actor with its own memory, streams updates in real-time, hibernates when idle
Game Servers
Real-time multiplayer with authoritative state.
Traditional
Dedicated servers per region, complex matchmaking, scaling infrastructure
With Actors
One actor per game room, built-in WebSockets, scales to millions of rooms
Collaboration
Shared state with real-time sync.
Traditional
CRDT libraries, separate WebSocket servers, external pub/sub
With Actors
Actor holds document state, broadcasts changes to all connected clients
Per-Tenant Data
Isolated databases per customer or user.
Traditional
Row-level security, shared tables, complex access control
With Actors
Each tenant gets their own actor with isolated SQLite database
Workflows
Durable execution with retries and scheduling.
Traditional
External workflow engine, message queues, separate scheduler
With Actors
Built-in workflow runtime, scheduling, and state, all in one actor
Your Existing Stack
Add actors alongside what you already have.
Traditional
Adopt a whole new platform, migrate your database, rewrite your backend
With Actors
Actors supplement your existing infrastructure. Keep your database, add actors where you need state
How Actors work.
Define state, write a run loop, broadcast events.
Define the Actor
An Actor is an independent process with its own isolated state. Create one per user, per agent, or per session.
Declare State
State is automatically persisted and loaded into memory when the Actor wakes. No database queries. No ORM. Just an object.
Process Messages
The run loop executes continuously. Wait for messages from a queue, process them with your logic. The Actor stays alive as long as it needs to.
Broadcast in Real-time
Push updates to all connected clients instantly. WebSockets and SSE are built in — no Socket.io, no pub/sub layer, just one line.
Runs where you do.
Rivet Actors integrate with your existing infrastructure, frameworks, runtimes, and tools.
Built-In Observability
Powerful debugging and monitoring tools that work seamlessly from local development to production at scale.
Live State Inspection
View and edit your actor state in real-time as messages are sent and processed
Network Inspector
Monitor active connections with state and parameters for each client
Event Monitoring
See all events happening in your actor in real-time and track every state change and action as it happens
REPL
Debug your actor in real-time by calling actions, subscribing to events, and interacting directly with your code
Start local. Scale to millions.
Three options, same API. Pick what works for you.
Self-Host
Single Rust binary or Docker container. Works with Postgres, file system, or FoundationDB. Full dashboard included.
Rivet Cloud
Fully managed. Global edge network. Connects to your existing cloud — Vercel, Railway, AWS, wherever you already deploy.
- Global Edge Network
- Scales Seamlessly
- Connects To Your Cloud
Open Source
Apache 2.0. Audit the code, contribute features, run it however you want.
Infrastructure for software that thinks.
The next generation of software needs a new kind of backend. This is it.