# Courier vs Firebase Cloud Messaging (slim)

> Courier and Firebase Cloud Messaging score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 70.5 (BB) and 69.8 (B). Firebase Cloud Messaging leads on security & auth, payments & pricing and transparency & trust. Both do notify push. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent…

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/courier-vs-firebase-cloud-messaging.md (~2,250 tokens) · this version ~680 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/courier-vs-firebase-cloud-messaging.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/courier-vs-firebase-cloud-messaging
- Index: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt · API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json · Updated: 2026-10-09

Courier and Firebase Cloud Messaging score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 70.5 (BB) and 69.8 (B). Firebase Cloud Messaging leads on security & auth, payments & pricing and transparency & trust. Both do notify push.

- Courier: BB 70.5, rank #146 of 842 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/courier.min.md
- Firebase Cloud Messaging: B 69.8, rank #162 of 842 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/firebase-cloud-messaging.min.md
- Courier, good for A product team that wants simple per-send billing and one API across many providers, and for agents that only send. Ahead on Reliability, 92 against 66. Also Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better.
- Firebase Cloud Messaging, good for The push transport under an app that already holds device registrations, at no charge. Ahead on Security & auth, 68 against 56; Payments & pricing, 40 against 35; Transparency & trust, 81 against 65.

| Category | Courier | Firebase Cloud Messaging |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 92 | 66 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 84 | 86 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 68 | 70 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 56 | 68 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 35 | 40 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 86 | 83 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 65 | 81 |

| Fact (where they differ) | Courier | Firebase Cloud Messaging |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Vendor | Courier | Google |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://api.courier.com` | `https://fcm.googleapis.com` |
| Transports | HTTP, Streamable HTTP | HTTP |
| Auth | API key | OAuth |
| Pricing | Freemium | Free |
| Licence | Apache-2.0 (Node SDK) | Proprietary service under the Google APIs Terms of Service. The Firebase Admin SDKs are Apache-2.0 |
| Tools exposed | 170 | none |
| MCP registry | `io.github.trycourier/courier` | not listed |
| Terms last updated | 2026-09-10 | 2021-11-09 |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2025-12-08 | 2026-10-01 |
| Customer content may train models | not found in the text | yes |
| Terms restrict automated access | not found in the text | yes |
| Popularity | 63 stars, 189k npm/wk, 35k PyPI/wk | 11.5M npm/wk, 3.8M PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | 3/5 (2) | none |