Laravel 5.5 - Real time notifications free?

I am using laravel and the react scaffolding it comes with (they are on a single server, not separate node server for react).

As an example, I will use SO:

1. I am logged in, post a question, and stay on the same page.

2. The question gets a few answers (and the page automagically updates the notifications inbox count live)

How can I accomplish #2 in the react front end?

Note: I know that laravel has echo, which hooks with pusher, but pusher is a paid service and the solution should be free. I thought of socket.io but it seems you need to be running a node server, and I am currently only running the laravel server to serve the backend/frontend so not sure how to accomplish #2 without node).

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