Pusher Channels has introduced a new event type called subscription_count, designed to efficiently manage the number of connections in large-scale applications by providing a real-time count of subscribers to any given channel, excluding Presence channels. While traditional Presence channels allow for awareness of individual users, they are limited to a maximum of 100 members to prevent exponential growth in message distribution, which can strain resources. The subscription_count event overcomes this limitation by offering a scalable solution that updates subscriber counts in real time, suitable for applications with significant user numbers like live streams, online games, and large queues. This feature can be enabled through the Channels dashboard and functions by emitting internal events that update subscriber counts, ensuring accurate connection numbers while conserving message quotas. By distinguishing between small groups and large groups, Pusher optimizes resource usage, and the subscription_count is especially beneficial when the identity of individual users is less critical than the overall number of active connections.