Head to head · Notify push · October 2026 research run
Novu vs OneSignal
Novu has a score of 77.4 (BB) against OneSignal's 69.6 (B). Both do notify push. The largest gap is reliability, 23 points.
Which one, for what
Pick Novu for
- reliability (+23)
- schema & documentation (+5)
- agent ergonomics (+20)
- payments & pricing (+5)
- maintenance & community (+11)
Pick OneSignal for
- security & auth (+11)
- transparency & trust (+6)
Score by category
| Category | Weight this run | Novu | OneSignal | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reliability | 16%20 | 93 | 70 | Novu +23 |
| Performance | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13%16.2 | 92 | 87 | Novu +5 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13%16.2 | 84 | 64 | Novu +20 |
| Security & auth | 14%17.5 | 63 | 74 | OneSignal +11 |
| Payments & pricing | 10%12.5 | 40 | 35 | Novu +5 |
| Task success | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7%8.8 | 92 | 81 | Novu +11 |
| Transparency & trust | 7%8.8 | 70 | 76 | OneSignal +6 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| Total | 77.4 · BB | 69.6 · B |
Facts side by side
| Fact | Novu | OneSignal |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Novu | OneSignal |
| Hosted endpoint | https://api.novu.co/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 | MIT (core), commercial licence for the enterprise directories | Modified MIT (Node SDK, use limited to OneSignal's services) |
| Tools exposed | 30 | 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 | 2026-09-28 | 2026-09-30 |
| Popularity | 40k stars, 135k npm/wk, 25k PyPI/wk | 52 stars, 231k npm/wk, 28k PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | 3.4/5 (8) | 3.5/5 (2) |
Verdicts
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.
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
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
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 Novu or OneSignal
Machine-readable
/api/v1/tools/novu.json·/api/v1/tools/onesignal.json- This page as Markdown,
/compare/novu-vs-onesignal.md