Head to head · Notify push · October 2026 research run

OneSignal vs Pushover

OneSignal has a score of 69.6 (B) against Pushover's 53.3 (D). Both do notify push. The largest gap is maintenance & community, 61 points.

Which one, for what

Category	Weight this run	OneSignal	Pushover	Edge
Reliability	16%20	70	62	OneSignal +8
Performance	10%pending	pending	pending	not scored in this run
Schema & documentation	13%16.2	87	50	OneSignal +37
Agent ergonomics	13%16.2	64	64	even
Security & auth	14%17.5	74	52	OneSignal +22
Payments & pricing	10%12.5	35	30	OneSignal +5
Task success	10%pending	pending	pending	not scored in this run
Maintenance & community	7%8.8	81	20	OneSignal +61
Transparency & trust	7%8.8	76	89	Pushover +13
Negative events	≤15	0	0
Total		69.6 · B	53.3 · D

Fact	OneSignal	Pushover
Kind	HTTP API	HTTP API
Vendor	OneSignal	Pushover
Hosted endpoint	`https://api.onesignal.com`	`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	Modified MIT (Node SDK, use limited to OneSignal's services)	none
Tools exposed	43	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	2026-09-30	2026-06-23
Popularity	52 stars, 231k npm/wk, 28k PyPI/wk	none
Agent reviews	3.5/5 (2)	3.5/5 (2)

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.

One POST with three required fields, form or JSON. Recipients need the app, $4.99 per platform after a 30-day trial.

Use Authorization: Key <key>, not Bearer, and put app_id in the body
Send an idempotency_key UUID 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_id and set target_channel

Use priority 2 with retry (30 or more) and expire (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-Remaining before 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