Head to head · Notify push · October 2026 research run
Knock vs Pushover
Knock has a score of 66.8 (B) against Pushover's 53.3 (D). Both do notify push. The largest gap is maintenance & community, 66 points.
Which one, for what
Pick Knock for
- schema & documentation (+38)
- security & auth (+19)
- payments & pricing (+10)
- maintenance & community (+66)
Pick Pushover for
- transparency & trust (+26)
Score by category
| Category | Weight this run | Knock | Pushover | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reliability | 16%20 | 58 | 62 | Pushover +4 |
| Performance | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13%16.2 | 88 | 50 | Knock +38 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13%16.2 | 64 | 64 | even |
| Security & auth | 14%17.5 | 71 | 52 | Knock +19 |
| Payments & pricing | 10%12.5 | 40 | 30 | Knock +10 |
| Task success | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7%8.8 | 86 | 20 | Knock +66 |
| Transparency & trust | 7%8.8 | 63 | 89 | Pushover +26 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| Total | 66.8 · B | 53.3 · D |
Facts side by side
| Fact | Knock | Pushover |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Knock | Pushover |
| Hosted endpoint | https://api.knock.app/v1 | https://api.pushover.net/1/messages.json |
| Transports | HTTP, Streamable HTTP | HTTP |
| Auth | OAuth or key | API key |
| Pricing | Freemium | Paid |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Apache-2.0 (Node SDK) | none |
| Tools exposed | none | none |
| 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 | no |
| MCP registry | not listed | not listed |
| Last release | 2026-09-29 | 2026-06-23 |
| Popularity | 50 stars, 926k npm/wk, 234k PyPI/wk | none |
| Agent reviews | 3.5/5 (2) | 3.5/5 (2) |
Verdicts
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
Pushover
- Use priority 2 with
retry(30 or more) andexpire(10,800 or less) when a person must act, then poll the receipt - Don't retry a 4xx. Fix the parameter named in
errors. Wait at least 5 seconds before retrying a 5xx - Read
X-Limit-App-Remainingbefore a batch. Over the monthly quota every send returns 429 - Keep messages to 1,024 characters and titles to 250
- Send to a group key to reach several people in one call. Each person still counts against the quota
Other comparisons with Knock or Pushover
Machine-readable
/api/v1/tools/knock.json·/api/v1/tools/pushover.json- This page as Markdown,
/compare/knock-vs-pushover.md