# Amazon SNS vs Firebase Cloud Messaging

> Amazon SNS scores 72.8 (BB) on agent readiness against Firebase Cloud Messaging's 69.8 (B), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. Firebase Cloud Messaging leads on agent ergonomics, payments & pricing and maintenance & community. Both do notify push. Category scores, facts…

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- Updated: 2026-10-09

Amazon SNS scores 72.8 (BB) on agent readiness against Firebase Cloud Messaging's 69.8 (B), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. Firebase Cloud Messaging leads on agent ergonomics, payments & pricing and maintenance & community. Both do notify push.

- Amazon SNS: grade BB, 72.8/100, rank #96 of 842. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/amazon-sns.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/amazon-sns.json
- Firebase Cloud Messaging: grade B, 69.8/100, rank #162 of 842. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/firebase-cloud-messaging.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/firebase-cloud-messaging.json

## Which one, for what

### Amazon SNS (BB)

Good for: Teams already on AWS that want cheap push, SMS and plain-text email alerts or fan-out to queues and functions under IAM and CloudTrail.

Ahead on:
- Reliability, 75 against 66
- Security & auth, 89 against 68

Also in its favour:
- Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better

Watch for: No idempotency token on `Publish` to a standard topic. Only FIFO topics deduplicate, over a five-minute window

### Firebase Cloud Messaging (B)

Good for: The push transport under an app that already holds device registrations, at no charge.

Ahead on:
- Agent ergonomics, 70 against 65
- Payments & pricing, 40 against 35
- Maintenance & community, 83 against 75

Watch for: Push transport only. No in-app feed, email, SMS, user preferences, digests or templates


## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Amazon SNS | Firebase Cloud Messaging | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 75 | 66 | Amazon SNS +9 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 83 | 86 | Firebase Cloud Messaging +3 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 65 | 70 | Firebase Cloud Messaging +5 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 89 | 68 | Amazon SNS +21 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 35 | 40 | Firebase Cloud Messaging +5 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 75 | 83 | Firebase Cloud Messaging +8 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 83 | 81 | Amazon SNS +2 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **72.8 · BB** | **69.8 · B** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Amazon SNS | Firebase Cloud Messaging |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Amazon Web Services | Google |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://sns.us-east-1.amazonaws.com` | `https://fcm.googleapis.com` |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP |
| Auth | OAuth or key | OAuth |
| Pricing | Pay per use | Free |
| Price for notify push | $0. per message | free |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Proprietary service under the AWS Customer Agreement. The AWS SDKs and the AWS Labs MCP server are Apache-2.0 | Proprietary service under the Google APIs Terms of Service. The Firebase Admin SDKs are Apache-2.0 |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| Last release | 2026-10-06 | 2026-09-24 |
| Terms last updated | 2026-08-14 | 2021-11-09 |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2026-05-18 | 2026-10-01 |
| Customer content may train models | not found in the text | yes |
| Terms restrict automated access | not found in the text | yes |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | yes | not found in the text |
| Popularity | 6.5M npm/wk | 11.5M npm/wk, 3.8M PyPI/wk |

## Verdicts

**Amazon SNS.** IAM and topic policies limit a credential to single actions and topics, a read-only managed policy exists, and CloudTrail can log each publish. Standard topics take no idempotency token, so a retried `Publish` can send twice. SNS has no user preferences, digests or in-app channel, email is plain text to confirmed subscribers, and SMS starts in a sandbox.

**Firebase Cloud Messaging.** Sending is free at any volume, with a published quota of 600,000 messages a minute per project and documented 429 handling. FCM is push transport only. It has no in-app feed, email, user preferences or digests, the send call takes no idempotency key, and a person has to create the Firebase project in a browser.

## Before you call either

### Amazon SNS

1. Sign requests with SigV4 for service `sns` at `sns.<region>.amazonaws.com`, or call `aws sns publish --topic-arn <arn> --message <text>` from the AWS CLI
2. Track `MessageId` yourself on standard topics, because a retried `Publish` sends again. Use a FIFO topic with `MessageDeduplicationId` when duplicates matter
3. Send per-channel text by setting `MessageStructure` to `json` and passing a JSON string with a `default` key plus keys such as `APNS`, `GCM`, `email` and `sms`
4. Check `GetSMSSandboxAccountStatus` and the monthly spend quota before texting. Sandbox sends reach only verified numbers
5. Expect an email subscription to stay in `PendingConfirmation` until the recipient clicks the link, and keep each email subscription under 10 messages a second

### Firebase Cloud Messaging

1. Mint an access token from a service account with the scope `https://www.googleapis.com/auth/firebase.messaging`, then POST to `https://fcm.googleapis.com/v1/projects/<project-id>/messages:send`
2. Set `validate_only` to true to test a message or a registration without sending it
3. On 429 wait for the `retry-after` header, or 60 seconds if it is absent. Retry 500 and 503 with exponential backoff and jitter, and never retry 400, 401, 403 or 404
4. Drop a registration when the error is `UNREGISTERED` (404). Keep your own record of sends, because a retry after a timeout can produce a duplicate
5. Target `fid` in new code. The `token` field is marked deprecated in the API, and device groups stop working after 29 September 2027

## Questions

### Which is better for AI agents, Amazon SNS or Firebase Cloud Messaging?

Amazon SNS scores 72.8 (BB) on agent readiness against Firebase Cloud Messaging's 69.8 (B), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. Firebase Cloud Messaging leads on agent ergonomics, payments & pricing and maintenance & community.

### Which is cheaper for notify push, Amazon SNS or Firebase Cloud Messaging?

Firebase Cloud Messaging, at free against $0. per message for Amazon SNS. These are the vendors' published prices for the job.

### Do Amazon SNS and Firebase Cloud Messaging need an API key?

Amazon SNS takes an API key or an OAuth sign-in. Firebase Cloud Messaging uses an OAuth sign-in.

### Can an agent call Amazon SNS and Firebase Cloud Messaging without installing anything?

Yes. Amazon SNS has a hosted endpoint at https://sns.us-east-1.amazonaws.com and Firebase Cloud Messaging at https://fcm.googleapis.com.


## For agents

- This comparison as JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/amazon-sns-vs-firebase-cloud-messaging.json, and with the fewest tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/amazon-sns-vs-firebase-cloud-messaging.min.md
- Over MCP at https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (no key): `compare_tools {"a": "amazon-sns", "b": "firebase-cloud-messaging"}`. From a terminal: `anchor compare amazon-sns firebase-cloud-messaging`
- Each listing in full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/amazon-sns.json and https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/firebase-cloud-messaging.json

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