Head to head · Notify push · October 2026 research run
Knock vs OneSignal
OneSignal has a score of 69.6 (B) against Knock's 66.8 (B). Both do notify push. The largest gap is transparency & trust, 13 points.
Which one, for what
Pick Knock for
- payments & pricing (+5)
- maintenance & community (+5)
Pick OneSignal for
- reliability (+12)
- transparency & trust (+13)
Score by category
| Category | Weight this run | Knock | OneSignal | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reliability | 16%20 | 58 | 70 | OneSignal +12 |
| Performance | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13%16.2 | 88 | 87 | Knock +1 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13%16.2 | 64 | 64 | even |
| Security & auth | 14%17.5 | 71 | 74 | OneSignal +3 |
| Payments & pricing | 10%12.5 | 40 | 35 | Knock +5 |
| Task success | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7%8.8 | 86 | 81 | Knock +5 |
| Transparency & trust | 7%8.8 | 63 | 76 | OneSignal +13 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| Total | 66.8 · B | 69.6 · B |
Facts side by side
| Fact | Knock | OneSignal |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Knock | OneSignal |
| Hosted endpoint | https://api.knock.app/v1 | https://api.onesignal.com |
| 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) | Modified MIT (Node SDK, use limited to OneSignal's services) |
| Tools exposed | none | 43 |
| 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 | 2026-09-30 |
| Popularity | 50 stars, 926k npm/wk, 234k PyPI/wk | 52 stars, 231k npm/wk, 28k PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | 3.5/5 (2) | 3.5/5 (2) |
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.
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
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
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
Other comparisons with Knock or OneSignal
Machine-readable
/api/v1/tools/knock.json·/api/v1/tools/onesignal.json- This page as Markdown,
/compare/knock-vs-onesignal.md