After the October 1 Free plan change, the OneSignal alternatives worth comparing split 3 ways. Platforms that price per audience: Pushwoosh, PushEngage, Customer.io. Enterprise suites quoted by sales: Braze, CleverTap, MoEngage, Airship, Insider. Notification infrastructure priced per message: Knock, Courier, SuprSend, Novu, MagicBell, Engagespot. Firebase sits underneath all of them, and it’s free.
Pricing verified August 31, 2026.
What changed at OneSignal on October 1
OneSignal put a ceiling on its Free plan. Mobile push and in-app messaging now require fewer than 1,000 monthly active users. New accounts hit the limit on September 1, 2026; existing accounts on October 1. Cross it without upgrading and those 2 channels stop sending until you move to Growth, which costs $19 a month plus $0.012 per MAU. Web push and email stay free.
The threshold arrives faster than most teams plan for. A MAU is any mobile subscription active in the last 30 days, opted in to push or not. Counts add up across all your apps rather than per app. And the 30-day window slides, so trimming your audience buys a month rather than a way out.
How we compared
1 criterion: what the same audience costs after the pricing change, measured at 1,000 and 10,000 MAU, with the free-tier limit stated next to it.
That sounds obvious until you try it. A public price for a given audience size exists for only 4 of the 20 platforms here. The rest either bill in a different unit (per subscriber, per profile, per message) or quote only through sales. So the summary table holds the 4 you can line up side by side. Every other platform is priced in its own card, in its own unit, with a link to the source. No estimated MAU conversions, because a made-up number is worse than an honest “priced differently.”
The 4 you can actually price-compare
| Platform | 1K MAU | 10K MAU | Free plan | Channels | Mobile or web |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pushwoosh | $0 | $63/mo | First 1,000 MAU every month | Push, in-app, web push, email, SMS, WhatsApp, Wallet | Both |
| OneSignal | $31/mo | $139/mo | Under 1,000 MAU (mobile push, in-app); web push and email unlimited | Push, in-app, email, SMS | Both |
| PushEngage | ~$9/mo | ~$19/mo | 200 subscribers, 30 campaigns/mo | Web push, app push, SMS | Both, web-first |
| Customer.io | $100/mo minimum | ~$145/mo | None (12 months free for startups under $10M raised) | Email, push, in-app, SMS, webhooks | Both |
The other 15 platforms aren’t in this table because their price can’t be stated per 1,000 MAU without inventing it. Each one is priced in the cards below, in the unit its vendor actually charges in.
The full list, priced and placed
Pushwoosh
- Best for: mobile-first teams that want omnichannel without enterprise pricing.
- Pricing model: per audience (MAU).
- Price: Push only, $7 per 1,000 MAU. $0 at 1K, $63/mo at 10K. Omnichannel is $13 per 1,000 MAU; Email only is $5 per 1,000 recipients.
- Free tier: first 1,000 MAU every month
- Beats OneSignal on: behavior-based segmentation, RF(M) analysis, and a visual Customer Journey Builder where push, in-app, email and SMS run in 1 canvas. OneSignal stops at tag-based segments and linear automation.
- When not Pushwoosh: if you’re web-push-only, a dedicated web tool is cheaper. If you need infrastructure with no marketing layer, use Firebase.
- Migration: push tokens belong to your app, so imported iOS and Android devices keep working from day one. A full move is usually days, not weeks.
PushEngage
- Best for: publishers and e-commerce sites that live on web push.
- Pricing model: per subscriber.
- Price: Business from ~$9/mo (annual), scaling by subscriber count; flat tiers ~$8–24.
- Free tier: up to 200 subscribers.
- Beats OneSignal on: predictable flat subscriber tiers and web-push depth (cart, price-drop, inventory automations).
- When not Pushwoosh: if mobile app engagement and omnichannel journeys are the point, PushEngage is narrower.
- Migration: re-collect web opt-ins; subscriptions don’t transfer between domains’ service workers.
Customer.io
- Best for: product-led SaaS teams with engineering resources and event-driven messaging.
- Pricing model: per profile.
- Price: Essentials from $100/mo for 5,000 profiles; extra profiles $0.009 each; Premium from $1,000/mo billed annually
- Free tier: none — 14-day trial; startup program (1 year free for <$10M raised).
- Beats OneSignal on: detailed event triggers and a flexible workflow builder.
- When not Pushwoosh: profile-based billing counts inactive contacts, so high-volume B2C with many dormant users pays for users it isn’t messaging.
- Migration: heavier — data model and events need mapping; plan for developer time.
Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM)
- Best for: developers who want the send pipe and will build everything above it.
- Pricing model: free infrastructure.
- Price: $0 at any volume, no messaging quota.
- Free tier: unlimited sends.
- Beats OneSignal on: cost, and nothing else. It’s the transport layer OneSignal (and everyone here) sends through.
- When not Pushwoosh: almost always, if you’re a marketer. FCM has no behavior segmentation, scheduling, journeys, A/B testing, user profiles, or analytics past delivery. You write all of it.
- Migration: not a switch but a build. The $0 buys sending, not a campaign system.
Braze
- Best for: large enterprises running real-time personalization at scale.
- Pricing model: by quote.
- Price: custom, no public rate; positioned at the high end.
- Free tier: none.
- Beats OneSignal on: cross-channel orchestration, real-time data, and enterprise-grade segmentation.
- When not Pushwoosh: if you need enterprise breadth and have the budget and implementation team for it, Braze is built for that scale, and Pushwoosh is leaner and faster to stand up.
- Migration: significant implementation effort; expect a services-led rollout.
CleverTap
- Best for: mobile-first apps in gaming and e-commerce that lean on analytics.
- Pricing model: mostly by quote (an entry tier is published).
- Price: no public pricing; sales-led.
- Free tier: trial only.
- Beats OneSignal on: behavioral analytics depth and journey automation.
- When not Pushwoosh: if analytics is your center of gravity and you want it fused with messaging, CleverTap specializes there.
- Migration: SDK swap plus event re-mapping; moderate effort.
MoEngage
- Best for: mid-market to enterprise brands wanting insights-led engagement.
- Pricing model: by quote.
- Price: custom
- Free tier: trial only.
- Beats OneSignal on: behavior-based scoring and multi-channel breadth (push, in-app, email, SMS, web).
- When not Pushwoosh: strong fit for data-heavy teams in banking, media, and e-commerce that want AI-assisted insights baked in.
- Migration: data integration is the long pole; plan accordingly.
Airship
- Best for: enterprises with mature mobile programs and compliance needs.
- Pricing model: by quote.
- Price: custom, no public rate.
- Free tier: none.
- Beats OneSignal on: enterprise messaging governance and channel breadth.
- When not Pushwoosh: if you need heavyweight enterprise controls and have the budget, Airship is built for it.
- Migration: enterprise onboarding; services-led.
Knock
- Best for: product teams that want notifications-as-infrastructure across in-app, push, email, and Slack.
- Pricing model: per message.
- Price: $0.005 per message, free to 10,000/mo, then ~$250 per 50,000.
- Free tier: 10,000 messages/mo.
- Beats OneSignal on: developer ergonomics and a unified notification API with preference management.
- When not Pushwoosh: Knock routes to APNs/FCM; it isn’t a marketing platform and doesn’t send push itself. No campaign UI for marketers.
- Migration: it’s an engineering integration, not a marketing migration.
SuprSend
- Best for: developer teams wanting a notification API with a workflow layer.
- Pricing model: per message.
- Price: per-message with a free developer tier.
- Free tier: yes (developer tier).
- Beats OneSignal on: multi-channel routing and a clean API.
- When not Pushwoosh: routes to APNs/FCM; built for engineers, not campaign teams.
- Migration: engineering integration.
Courier
- Best for: teams orchestrating transactional notifications across channels from 1 API.
- Pricing model: per message.
- Price: published per-message rates; no per-audience figure exists.
- Free tier: available; check current message allowance.
- Beats OneSignal on: transactional routing and a provider-agnostic API.
- When not Pushwoosh: not a marketing platform; no marketer-facing campaign builder.
- Migration: engineering integration.
Novu
- Best for: teams that want an open-source notification framework, self-hosted or cloud.
- Pricing model: per message / self-host.
- Price: cloud per-message with a free tier; self-host is free to run (you pay infrastructure).
- Free tier: yes (and open-source self-host).
- Beats OneSignal on: control and cost at the infrastructure layer, no vendor lock-in.
- When not Pushwoosh: self-hosting means you own uptime, scaling, and the marketing layer. That’s the trade for control.
- Migration: stand up the framework; engineering-owned.
Also looked at
Included for completeness, 1 line each:
- Insider — enterprise engagement suite; quote-only, in most top listicles.
- Vero — behavioral email and push; smaller, developer-friendly.
- MagicBell — notification inbox API, per message; not a campaign tool.
- Engagespot — notification API, per message; developer-facing.
- PushBase — lightweight self-hosted option (confirm mobile push before citing).
- Pushly — web-push platform aimed at publishers.
- Firepush — web-push only, narrow by design.
Which OneSignal alternative should you choose?
Under 1,000 MAU and staying there for now, the Free plan still works. Nothing forces a move yet, and the first thousand are free on Pushwoosh too, if you’d rather not repeat this exercise next year.
Past 1,000 MAU with push as the main channel, the bill is $19 plus $0.012 per MAU on Growth against $7 per 1,000 on Pushwoosh. The gap widens with audience size.
Web subscribers on WordPress or Shopify and no app: PushEngage.
Event-triggered messaging where email carries most of the volume: Customer.io.
Engineers on hand, no marketing layer needed, cost above everything: Firebase.
Self-hosting required by policy or licensing: Novu.
Product notifications fired from your own backend rather than campaigns: Knock.
2 things decide most of these. First, what actually changed on the OneSignal Free plan: the 1,000-MAU wall is the reason most of these searches happen. Second, the real number for your audience. The OneSignal cost calculator shows your Growth-plan cost next to the same audience on Pushwoosh. If you decide to move, the migration guide walks the token import and SDK swap, and the side-by-side comparison covers the detail this page doesn’t.
