OneSignal is putting a hard ceiling on its Free plan. Starting soon, mobile push and in-app messaging stop being free above 1,000 monthly active users. New accounts hit the wall on September 1, 2026, existing accounts on October 1. If your app has more than a thousand active users a month, you now have 3 choices: stay and pay, cut your audience, or move.
What’s changing and when
The Free plan keeps working below 1,000 MAU. Above that, mobile push and in-app messaging move to a paid tier.
- The dates: the limit hits new accounts on September 1, 2026 and existing accounts on October 1, 2026, per OneSignal’s billing FAQ.
- The threshold: fewer than 1,000 MAU for mobile push and in-app. Cross it and those channels stop sending until you upgrade.
- What’s untouched: web push and email stay on Free. The change is specific to mobile.
How MAU is counted
MAU stands for monthly active user. OneSignal counts 1 for any mobile subscription that was active in the last 30 days, whether or not the user opted in to push.
A few edges are easy to miss. 1 person on 2 devices counts as 2. An API call that updates last_active counts as activity, even with no message sent. So your MAU number can sit higher than your “people who got a push” number.
2 mechanics the announcement doesn’t spell out
2 details change how close to the limit you actually are, and neither is in the headline.
The limit is org-wide. It counts every app under your organization together, not per app. 3 small apps at 400 MAU each put you over the line, even though none of them is close on its own.
The 30-day window slides. Deleting subscribers doesn’t drop your count on the spot. A user stays in the tally until 30 days pass with no activity, so cutting audience to get back under the limit takes a month to show up, not a day.
What it will cost
Once you’re over 1,000 MAU, OneSignal’s Growth plan is $19 per month plus $0.012 per MAU.
| MAU | Monthly cost |
|---|---|
| 1K | $31 |
| 10K | $139 |
| 25K | $319 |
| 50K | $619 |
| Above 50K | Contact sales |
Who this hits hardest
The 1,000 MAU line is low, so most apps past early stage cross it. But the bill lands heaviest on a specific profile: high active audience, low push opt-in. You pay per MAU whether or not the user ever agreed to a push, so the wider that gap, the more you pay for people you can’t even message.
3 cases where that gap is widest:
- Mobile games. Daily-active audiences in the tens of thousands, push opt-in often under half. You’re billed on everyone who opened the app in 30 days, not on the slice you can actually reach.
- News and media. Large casual readerships, high churn, seasonal spikes. A traffic surge inflates MAU for a month, and the sliding window keeps it there for 30 days after the spike passes.
- E-commerce and delivery. Big installed base, but a long tail of users who open the app once a month. Each of those counts as a full MAU at $0.012, the same as your most engaged buyer.
If you’re a small team running several apps, the org-wide count stacks them together, so even modest apps add up past the line faster than you’d expect.
What are your options
Three paths, depending on where you sit.
Stay and pay. If the bill fits, this is the least work. You move to Growth above 1,000 MAU and the cost tracks your audience, per the table above.
Cut your audience. Trimming inactive subscribers can pull you back under the limit. 2 catches: the sliding window means the drop takes 30 days to show up, and you’re writing off users you paid to acquire. It buys time, not a fix.
Migrate. If the yearly math doesn’t work, moving to another platform is on the table.
That last option is where it’s worth comparing the year, not the month. Pushwoosh Push runs at $7 per 1,000 MAU, and the first thousand are free. Here’s how a year looks side by side:
| MAU | OneSignal Growth / year | Pushwoosh Push / year | Your saving / year |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10K | $1,668 | $756 | $912 |
| 25K | $3,828 | $2,016 | $1,812 |
| 50K | $7,428 | $4,116 | $3,312 |
At 50,000 MAU the gap is $3,312 a year. Moving isn’t free of effort, so weigh it against how much the difference matters to you. For a feature-by-feature look at what you’d be trading, see our Pushwoosh vs OneSignal comparison.
