Head to head · Notify push · October 2026 research run
Courier vs Novu
Novu has a score of 77.4 (BB) against Courier's 70.5 (BB). Both do notify push. The largest gap is agent ergonomics, 16 points.
Which one, for what
Pick Courier for
No category where it leads by five points or more.
Pick Novu for
- schema & documentation (+8)
- agent ergonomics (+16)
- security & auth (+7)
- payments & pricing (+5)
- maintenance & community (+6)
- transparency & trust (+5)
Score by category
| Category | Weight this run | Courier | Novu | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reliability | 16%20 | 92 | 93 | Novu +1 |
| Performance | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13%16.2 | 84 | 92 | Novu +8 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13%16.2 | 68 | 84 | Novu +16 |
| Security & auth | 14%17.5 | 56 | 63 | Novu +7 |
| Payments & pricing | 10%12.5 | 35 | 40 | Novu +5 |
| Task success | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7%8.8 | 86 | 92 | Novu +6 |
| Transparency & trust | 7%8.8 | 65 | 70 | Novu +5 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| Total | 70.5 · BB | 77.4 · BB |
Facts side by side
| Fact | Courier | Novu |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Courier | Novu |
| Hosted endpoint | https://api.courier.com | https://api.novu.co/v1 |
| Transports | HTTP, Streamable HTTP | HTTP, Streamable HTTP |
| Auth | API key | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Freemium | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Apache-2.0 (Node SDK) | MIT (core), commercial licence for the enterprise directories |
| Tools exposed | 170 | 30 |
| Context cost (tools/list) | n/a | n/a |
| p95 latency | not measured yet | not measured yet |
| Availability (30d) | not measured yet | not measured yet |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| MCP registry | io.github.trycourier/courier | not listed |
| Last release | 2026-09-24 | 2026-09-28 |
| Popularity | 63 stars, 189k npm/wk, 35k PyPI/wk | 40k stars, 135k npm/wk, 25k PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | 3/5 (2) | 3.4/5 (8) |
Verdicts
Courier
Free for 10,000 sends a month, then $0.005 a send with no platform fee. 170 MCP tools with no toolsets, filtering or read-only mode.
Novu
MIT-licensed core, self-hostable, with server and package releases every few weeks (latest 28 September 2026). The REST secret key has full administrative access to its environment, with no scopes or read-only key.
Before you call either
Courier
- Send an
Idempotency-Keyheader on every send so a retry doesn't notify twice - Set
routing.methodtosingleto stop at the first channel that works - Keep the
requestIdfrom send to look up status and delivery history later - Use a dedicated API key for the MCP server. Every one of the 170 tools runs with that key's full rights
- Space resends at least 2 seconds apart per message or you get a 429
Novu
- Send
Authorization: ApiKey <key>to the REST API. Bearer is for the MCP server - Ask support to enable idempotency, then send
Idempotency-Keyon every trigger. A 409 means the first call is still running - Use eu.api.novu.co and eu.mcp.novu.co for an EU account. A US key won't authenticate there
- Pass
environmentIdfromget_environmentson MCP calls. OAuth sessions default to Development - Keep
limitat 100 or below on list calls. Higher values return 422
Other comparisons with Courier or Novu
Machine-readable
/api/v1/tools/courier.json·/api/v1/tools/novu.json- This page as Markdown,
/compare/courier-vs-novu.md