Head to head · Notify push · October 2026 research run
Amazon SNS vs OneSignal
Amazon SNS scores 72.8 (BB) on agent readiness against OneSignal's 69.3 (B), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. OneSignal leads on maintenance & community. Both do notify push.
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 70
- Security & auth, 89 against 74
- Transparency & trust, 83 against 72
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
Good for A team whose main channel is push to its own mobile or web app and who wants delivery handled without a separate push provider.
Ahead on
- Maintenance & community, 81 against 75
Watch for
Three incidents on the API and SDK endpoints in September 2026
Score by category
| Category | Weight this run | Amazon SNS | OneSignal | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reliability | 16%20 | 75 | 70 | Amazon SNS +5 |
| Performance | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13%16.2 | 83 | 87 | OneSignal +4 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13%16.2 | 65 | 64 | Amazon SNS +1 |
| Security & auth | 14%17.5 | 89 | 74 | Amazon SNS +15 |
| Payments & pricing | 10%12.5 | 35 | 35 | even |
| Task success | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7%8.8 | 75 | 81 | OneSignal +6 |
| Transparency & trust | 7%8.8 | 83 | 72 | Amazon SNS +11 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| Total | 72.8 · BB | 69.3 · B |
Facts side by side
| Fact | Amazon SNS | OneSignal |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Amazon Web Services | OneSignal |
| Hosted endpoint | https://sns.us-east-1.amazonaws.com | https://api.onesignal.com |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP, Streamable HTTP |
| Auth | OAuth or key | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Pay per use | Freemium |
| Price for notify push | $0. per message | not published |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Proprietary service under the AWS Customer Agreement. The AWS SDKs and the AWS Labs MCP server are Apache-2.0 | Modified MIT (Node SDK, use limited to OneSignal's services) |
| Tools exposed | none | 43 |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| Last release | 2026-10-06 | 2026-09-30 |
| Terms last updated | 2026-08-14 | 2024-06-12 |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2026-05-18 | couldn't be read |
| Customer content may train models | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict automated access | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| 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 | yes |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | yes | yes |
| Popularity | 6.5M npm/wk | 52 stars, 231k npm/wk, 28k PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | none | 3.5/5 (2) |
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.
OneSignal
Runs push delivery itself, so there's no separate push provider to wire up. Three incidents on the API and SDK endpoints in September 2026.
Before you call either
Amazon SNS
- Sign requests with SigV4 for service
snsatsns.<region>.amazonaws.com, or callaws sns publish --topic-arn <arn> --message <text>from the AWS CLI - Track
MessageIdyourself on standard topics, because a retriedPublishsends again. Use a FIFO topic withMessageDeduplicationIdwhen duplicates matter - Send per-channel text by setting
MessageStructuretojsonand passing a JSON string with adefaultkey plus keys such asAPNS,GCM,emailandsms - Check
GetSMSSandboxAccountStatusand the monthly spend quota before texting. Sandbox sends reach only verified numbers - Expect an email subscription to stay in
PendingConfirmationuntil the recipient clicks the link, and keep each email subscription under 10 messages a second
OneSignal
- Use
Authorization: Key <key>, not Bearer, and putapp_idin the body - Send an
idempotency_keyUUID with every create call and reuse it on each retry - On 429, wait for
Retry-After, then back off with jitter, up to 10 attempts - Stay under 10 sends per subscribed subscription in 15 minutes or the app is disabled
- Target people with
include_aliases.external_idand settarget_channel
Questions
Which is better for AI agents, Amazon SNS or OneSignal?
Amazon SNS scores 72.8 (BB) on agent readiness against OneSignal's 69.3 (B), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. OneSignal leads on maintenance & community.
Do Amazon SNS and OneSignal need an API key?
Both take an API key or an OAuth sign-in.
Can an agent call Amazon SNS and OneSignal without installing anything?
Yes. Amazon SNS has a hosted endpoint at https://sns.us-east-1.amazonaws.com and OneSignal at https://api.onesignal.com.
Other comparisons with Amazon SNS or OneSignal
Machine-readable
- This page as Markdown
/compare/amazon-sns-vs-onesignal.md· slim.min.md· JSON.json(or sendAccept: text/markdown) - Each listing in full
/api/v1/tools/amazon-sns.json·/api/v1/tools/onesignal.json - From a terminal
anchor compare amazon-sns onesignal(the CLI) - Over MCP
compare_tools {"a": "amazon-sns", "b": "onesignal"}at/mcp, no key