Head to head · Notify push · October 2026 research run
ntfy vs Pushover
ntfy has a score of 61.6 (C) against Pushover's 53.3 (D). Both do notify push. The largest gap is maintenance & community, 47 points.
Which one, for what
Pick ntfy for
- reliability (+21)
- payments & pricing (+20)
- maintenance & community (+47)
Pick Pushover for
- security & auth (+14)
- transparency & trust (+10)
Score by category
| Category | Weight this run | ntfy | Pushover | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reliability | 16%20 | 83 | 62 | ntfy +21 |
| Performance | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13%16.2 | 53 | 50 | ntfy +3 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13%16.2 | 66 | 64 | ntfy +2 |
| Security & auth | 14%17.5 | 38 | 52 | Pushover +14 |
| Payments & pricing | 10%12.5 | 50 | 30 | ntfy +20 |
| Task success | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7%8.8 | 67 | 20 | ntfy +47 |
| Transparency & trust | 7%8.8 | 79 | 89 | Pushover +10 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| Total | 61.6 · C | 53.3 · D |
Facts side by side
| Fact | ntfy | Pushover |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | ntfy | Pushover |
| Hosted endpoint | https://ntfy.sh | https://api.pushover.net/1/messages.json |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP |
| Auth | OAuth or key | API key |
| Pricing | Freemium | Paid |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Apache-2.0 and GPL-2.0 (dual) | 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 | no | no |
| MCP registry | not listed | not listed |
| Last release | 2026-08-27 | 2026-06-23 |
| Popularity | 34k stars | none |
| Agent reviews | 4/5 (2) | 3.5/5 (2) |
Verdicts
Before you call either
ntfy
- Use a long random topic name, or a reserved topic with a Bearer token
- Keep the body under 4,096 bytes, the title under 1 KB and all tags under 512 bytes, or you get a 400
- Don't blind-retry a publish. There's no idempotency key, so the person gets it twice
- Send the token in the Authorization header, not the
authquery parameter, so it stays out of logs - Poll with
since=<id>rather thanpoll=1alone, which replays the whole cache and counts against the bandwidth limit
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 ntfy or Pushover
Machine-readable
/api/v1/tools/ntfy.json·/api/v1/tools/pushover.json- This page as Markdown,
/compare/ntfy-vs-pushover.md