What are the genuine tradeoffs of using raw WebSockets compared to using a considerably higher level real time protocol such as GraphQL subscriptions or Firebase's own Realtime Database, specifically for building a genuinely real time feature?

Raw WebSockets genuinely provide maximum flexibility and considerably full control over your own particular exact message format and connection handling logic, but they also genuinely require you to properly build and separately maintain your own entire backend infrastructure specifically for handling connections, message routing, and genuine reconnection logic completely entirely yourself, whereas a considerably higher level managed solution such as Firebase's Realtime Database or Cloud Firestore, or GraphQL subscriptions, already properly handles a genuinely significant portion of this particular underlying complexity for you, at the reasonable cost of somewhat less flexibility and a genuine dependency on that particular specific chosen platform or protocol.

// Raw WebSockets: maximum flexibility, considerably more required backend infrastructure work
// Firebase Realtime Database: considerably less flexibility, but genuinely much less required setup work