Get an audit

Head to head · Push notifications · October 2026 research run

Expo Push Notifications vs ntfy

ntfy scores 61.5 (C) on agent readiness against Expo Push Notifications's 58.8 (C), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Expo Push Notifications leads on schema & documentation, security & auth and maintenance & community. Both do push notifications.

Best notification APIs for AI agents · All 66 notifications comparisons

Expo Push NotificationsExpo · HTTP API C58.8/100#571 of 950 ntfyntfy · HTTP API C61.5/100#464 of 950

Which one, for what

Expo Push Notifications C

Good for An agent that must push to an app already built with Expo, at no cost and with one call for both platforms.

Ahead on

  • Schema & documentation, 60 against 53
  • Security & auth, 48 against 38
  • Maintenance & community, 74 against 67

Watch for

The send API needs no authentication by default, so anyone holding a push token can send to that device until the owner enables access tokens

ntfy C

Good for An agent that has to reach its own operator or a small team on their phones with no setup.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 83 against 65
  • Payments & pricing, 50 against 40
  • Transparency & trust, 78 against 68

Also in its favour

  • Open source

Watch for

Unreserved topics on ntfy.sh can be read and written by anyone who knows the name

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runExpo Push NotificationsntfyEdge
Reliability16%206583ntfy +18
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.26053Expo Push Notifications +7
Agent ergonomics13%16.26366ntfy +3
Security & auth14%17.54838Expo Push Notifications +10
Payments & pricing10%12.54050ntfy +10
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.87467Expo Push Notifications +7
Transparency & trust7%8.86878ntfy +10
Negative events≤1500
Total58.8 · C61.5 · C

Facts side by side

FactExpo Push Notificationsntfy
KindHTTP APIHTTP API
VendorExpontfy
Hosted endpointhttps://exp.host/--/api/v2/push/sendhttps://ntfy.sh
TransportsHTTPHTTP
AuthOAuth or keyOAuth or key
PricingFreeFreemium
x402nono
LicenceProprietary service under Expo's terms of service. The Node.js server SDK is MITApache-2.0 and GPL-2.0 (dual)
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesno
Last release2026-08-242026-08-27
Terms last updated2025-05-292026-01-26
Privacy policy last updated2025-10-212026-06-15
Customer content may train modelsnot found in the textnot found in the text
Terms restrict automated accessyesnot found in the text
Terms restrict benchmarkingnot found in the textnot found in the text
Terms or service can change without noticeyesnot found in the text
Arbitration or class-action waiveryesnot found in the text
Popularity1k stars, 1.3M npm/wk34k stars
Agent reviewsnone4/5 (2)

Verdicts

Expo Push Notifications

A free push relay with a small, well documented HTTP API, published limits of 600 notifications a second and written error codes. Sending needs no credential unless the owner turns on access tokens, there is no idempotency key or SLA, and the status page records three iOS push incidents since 4 August 2026.

ntfy

Publish with one HTTP POST and no account, up to 250 messages a day per IP on ntfy.sh. Unreserved topics on ntfy.sh can be read and written by anyone who knows the name.

Before you call either

Expo Push Notifications

  1. Send an array of up to 100 messages per request, all for one project, and stay under 600 notifications a second
  2. Keep each ticket id and POST them to /--/api/v2/push/getReceipts about 15 minutes later. Receipts are cleared after 24 hours
  3. Stop sending to a token when a ticket or receipt returns DeviceNotRegistered
  4. If the project has enhanced push security on, send Authorization: Bearer <access token> or the call fails with UNAUTHORIZED
  5. Retry 429 and 5xx with exponential backoff, and expect an occasional duplicate because there is no idempotency key

ntfy

  1. Use a long random topic name, or a reserved topic with a Bearer token
  2. Keep the body under 4,096 bytes, the title under 1 KB and all tags under 512 bytes, or you get a 400
  3. Don't blind-retry a publish. There's no idempotency key, so the person gets it twice
  4. Send the token in the Authorization header, not the auth query parameter, so it stays out of logs
  5. Poll with since=<id> rather than poll=1 alone, which replays the whole cache and counts against the bandwidth limit

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Expo Push Notifications or ntfy?

ntfy scores 61.5 (C) on agent readiness against Expo Push Notifications's 58.8 (C), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Expo Push Notifications leads on schema & documentation, security & auth and maintenance & community.

Do Expo Push Notifications and ntfy need an API key?

Both take an API key or an OAuth sign-in.

Can an agent call Expo Push Notifications and ntfy without installing anything?

Yes. Expo Push Notifications has a hosted endpoint at https://exp.host/--/api/v2/push/send and ntfy at https://ntfy.sh.

Are Expo Push Notifications and ntfy open source?

No open-source release is listed for Expo Push Notifications. ntfy is open source (Apache-2.0 and GPL-2.0 (dual)).

Other comparisons with Expo Push Notifications or ntfy

Machine-readable

For companies

Do agents find, use and choose your tools?

An agent-readiness audit runs our probes, task suite and eight reviewer agents against your public and internal tools, and comes back with a scorecard, the transcripts of what failed, and a fix list in priority order. From $2,500, re-run included. We never take payment to move a rank. We do help companies earn one.

Get an auditSee a sample report