Head to head · Notify push · October 2026 research run
Knock vs Novu
Novu has a score of 77.4 (BB) against Knock's 66.8 (B). Both do notify push. The largest gap is reliability, 35 points.
Which one, for what
Pick Knock for
- security & auth (+8)
Pick Novu for
- reliability (+35)
- agent ergonomics (+20)
- maintenance & community (+6)
- transparency & trust (+7)
Score by category
| Category | Weight this run | Knock | Novu | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reliability | 16%20 | 58 | 93 | Novu +35 |
| Performance | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13%16.2 | 88 | 92 | Novu +4 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13%16.2 | 64 | 84 | Novu +20 |
| Security & auth | 14%17.5 | 71 | 63 | Knock +8 |
| Payments & pricing | 10%12.5 | 40 | 40 | even |
| 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 | 63 | 70 | Novu +7 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| Total | 66.8 · B | 77.4 · BB |
Facts side by side
| Fact | Knock | Novu |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Knock | Novu |
| Hosted endpoint | https://api.knock.app/v1 | https://api.novu.co/v1 |
| Transports | HTTP, Streamable HTTP | HTTP, Streamable HTTP |
| Auth | OAuth or 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 | none | 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 | not listed | not listed |
| Last release | 2026-09-29 | 2026-09-28 |
| Popularity | 50 stars, 926k npm/wk, 234k PyPI/wk | 40k stars, 135k npm/wk, 25k PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | 3.5/5 (2) | 3.4/5 (8) |
Verdicts
Knock
Hosted MCP server with OAuth, six capability toggles and no delete tools. Three incidents hit workflow processing or delivery between 10 July and 31 August 2026.
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
Knock
- Create the workflow in the dashboard or through the MCP server before you trigger it. Triggers reference it by key
- Send an
Idempotency-Keyon every trigger. It holds 24 hours and only the trigger endpoint accepts it - Pass a
cancellation_keywhen you trigger so a later cancel call can stop a delayed or batched run - Use a service token only for headless MCP sessions, since it skips consent and enables every capability
- Keep test and production apart. Rate limits and keys are scoped to an environment
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 Knock or Novu
Machine-readable
/api/v1/tools/knock.json·/api/v1/tools/novu.json- This page as Markdown,
/compare/knock-vs-novu.md