# Amazon SNS (slim) > Amazon SNS is AWS's publish and subscribe messaging service. A message published to a topic, or directly to a device or phone number, goes out as mobile push, SMS, plain-text email, HTTPS calls or to SQS queues and Lambda functions. - Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/amazon-sns.md (~8,600 tokens) · this version ~1,780 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/amazon-sns.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/amazon-sns - Index: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt · API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json · Updated: 2026-10-08 **BB · 72.8/100 · rank #86 of 722 · #1 in Notifications · agent-ready · confidence medium** Assessment: IAM and topic policies limit a credential to single actions and topics, a read-only managed policy exists, and CloudTrail can log each publish. Standard topics take no idempotency token, so a retried `Publish` can send twice. SNS has no user preferences, digests or in-app channel, email is plain text to confirmed subscribers, and SMS starts in a sandbox. ## Facts - Kind: HTTP API · vendor: Amazon Web Services · category: Notifications · legal entity: Amazon Web Services, Inc. · provenance 95/100 - Endpoint: `https://sns.us-east-1.amazonaws.com` (HTTP) - Auth: OAuth or key · pricing: Pay per use · x402: no · licence: Proprietary service under the AWS Customer Agreement. The AWS SDKs and the AWS Labs MCP server are Apache-2.0 - Probe metrics: not measured yet (probes haven't run) - API: Amazon SNS API version 2010-03-31, 42 operations, AWS Query protocol with XML responses, signed with SigV4. Reached through the AWS CLI (`aws sns`) and the AWS SDKs - Endpoint: `sns..amazonaws.com`, with dual-stack `sns..api.aws` and FIPS endpoints in US and Canada Regions. 36 Regions on the endpoints page, GovCloud included - Channels to people: Mobile push (APNs, FCM, ADM, Baidu, MPNS, WNS), SMS through AWS End User Messaging, and plain-text email to confirmed subscribers. No in-app channel - Other subscribers: Amazon SQS, AWS Lambda, HTTP and HTTPS endpoints, Amazon Data Firehose - Topics: Standard topics, up to 100,000 per account and 12,500,000 subscriptions each. FIFO topics, up to 1,000 per account and 100 subscriptions each, with ordering and five-minute deduplication - Rate limits: Published messages per account per second, 30,000 in US East (N. Virginia), 9,000 in US West (Oregon) and Europe (Ireland), 1,500 in eight Regions, 300 elsewhere on standard topics. `Subscribe` 100 a second. Email 10 a second per subscription, a hard limit. SMS 20 a second - Message size: 256 KiB by default, up to 1 MiB with the topic's `MaximumMessageSize`. `PublishBatch` takes up to 10 messages - Retries: Push, SMS and email, 50 attempts over 6 hours. SQS and Lambda, 100,015 attempts over 23 days. Then the message is discarded unless the subscription has a dead-letter queue. HTTPS retry policy can be set, up to 3,600 seconds - Filtering: Subscription filter policies on message attributes or body, 200 per topic and 10,000 per account - SMS sandbox: Sends only to verified numbers (up to 10) with a $1.00 monthly spend quota until an AWS Support case is approved - Audit: CloudTrail management events for control-plane calls and optional data events for `Publish` and `PublishBatch` on topics and platform endpoints. Publishes to a phone number are not logged. Push delivery status to CloudWatch Logs - Agent tooling: AWS Labs local MCP server `awslabs.amazon-sns-sqs-mcp-server` 2.1.1, stdio, tools generated from the SDK. Resource creation is off unless `--allow-resource-creation` is passed. No hosted MCP server for the service - SLA: Amazon Messaging SLA, 99.9 per cent monthly uptime per Region for SNS and SQS, credits of 10, 25 or 100 per cent - Compliance: Amazon SNS is in scope for SOC 1, 2 and 3 (page updated 11 August 2026) - Prices: API requests, standard topics $0.0005 per 1,000 requests; Publishes, FIFO topics $0.0003 per 1,000 requests; Mobile push notification $0. per message; Email notification $0.02 per 1,000 emails; HTTP or HTTPS notification $0. per message - Scores: Reliability 75, Performance pending, Schema & documentation 83, Agent ergonomics 65, Security & auth 89, Payments & pricing 35, Task success pending, Maintenance & community 75, Transparency & trust 83 · total over the 7 assessed categories - Why: Reliability, AWS Health Dashboard with per-service, per-Region history (20). · Schema & documentation, No OpenAPI, but the Smithy model is published in aws/api-models-aws, 42 operations under API version 2010-03-31 (25). · Agent ergonomics, Graded on the SNS API through the AWS CLI and SDKs. · Security & auth, IAM with identity policies and topic resource policies per action and ARN, service condition keys, temporary credentials and rotation. · Payments & pricing, No x402, MPP or L402 (0). · Maintenance & community, The SNS model last changed on 17 September 2026, and the JavaScript SDK client shipped 3.1147.0 on 6 October (30). · Transparency & trust, Closed service under the AWS Customer Agreement and section 11 of the Service Terms, with Apache-2.0 SDKs (20 of 30). - Sources: 43, open questions: 8, both in the full twin - Capabilities: notify.push, notify.multichannel, messaging.sms - JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/amazon-sns.json - Verify (for the vendor): the badge `https://www.anchorterminal.com/badges/amazon-sns.svg` or a link to https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/amazon-sns from a page on aws.amazon.com or one of its subdomains, or the README of github.com/aws/api-models-aws, then `POST https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/verify` `{"slug", "url"}` or `verify_listing` at /mcp; re-checked weekly, no effect on the grade. Snippets in the full twin. ## Before you call it 1. Sign requests with SigV4 for service `sns` at `sns..amazonaws.com`, or call `aws sns publish --topic-arn --message ` from the AWS CLI 2. Track `MessageId` yourself on standard topics, because a retried `Publish` sends again. Use a FIFO topic with `MessageDeduplicationId` when duplicates matter 3. Send per-channel text by setting `MessageStructure` to `json` and passing a JSON string with a `default` key plus keys such as `APNS`, `GCM`, `email` and `sms` 4. Check `GetSMSSandboxAccountStatus` and the monthly spend quota before texting. Sandbox sends reach only verified numbers 5. Expect an email subscription to stay in `PendingConfirmation` until the recipient clicks the link, and keep each email subscription under 10 messages a second ## Similar tools | Tool | Grade | Score | Shared capabilities | Slim | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | OneSignal | B | 69.3 | notify.push, notify.multichannel, messaging.sms | https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/onesignal.min.md | | Customer.io | BB | 74.5 | messaging.sms, notify.push | https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/customer-io.min.md | | SuprSend | BB | 72.6 | notify.push, notify.multichannel | https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/suprsend.min.md | | Courier | BB | 70.5 | notify.push, notify.multichannel | https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/courier.min.md | | Knock | B | 66.5 | notify.push, notify.multichannel | https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/knock.min.md | ## Panel reviews (0, desk reviews from public material, no calls made)