Novu vs Knock
Open-source self-host versus polished hosted product.
What matters for early-stage startups
At an early stage the deciding factors are what the free tier actually covers, what the first paid invoice looks like, and how much of a founding engineer's week the setup costs. Feature depth that only matters at a million sends a month is noise until it is not.
| Priority | Novu | Knock |
|---|---|---|
| Free tier | 30,000 events/mo on cloud, free self-hosted | 10,000 notifications/mo |
| Best published rate per 1,000 | Tiers not published in comparable form | Tiers not published in comparable form |
| Starts at | $250/mo (Business cloud) | $249/mo (Starter) |
| DX score | 8/10 | 9/10 |
| Deliverability | BYO provider. | Inherits the deliverability of the provider you BYO (Postmark, SendGrid, Resend). |
| Operating since | 2021 | 2021 |
| Scheduling | Yes | Yes |
| SDKs | node, python, go, php, java, dotnet | node, python, go, ruby, php, elixir, java, dotnet |
| Webhooks | Yes | Yes |
For a pre-revenue or early-revenue team running a waitlist, a launch announcement, onboarding email, and the first transactional sends, Knock takes every priority that separates them here (developer experience and SDK breadth), while Novu matches it on the rest. On free tier, Novu offers 30,000 events/mo on cloud, free self-hosted against 10,000 notifications/mo from Knock. That ordering reflects this audience. Weigh the same table differently and the answer changes.
Side by side
| Feature | Novu | Knock |
|---|---|---|
| Free tier | 30,000 events/mo on cloud, free self-hosted | 10,000 notifications/mo |
| Starts at | $250/mo (Business cloud) | $249/mo (Starter) |
| DX score | 8/10 | 9/10 |
| Deliverability | BYO provider. | Inherits the deliverability of the provider you BYO (Postmark, SendGrid, Resend). |
| SDKs | node, python, go, php, java, dotnet | node, python, go, ruby, php, elixir, java, dotnet |
| Webhooks | Yes | Yes |
| Tagline | Open-source notification infrastructure. | Notification infrastructure with workflow engine. |
| Pricing model | volume | volume |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| SMTP | No | No |
| Templates | rich | rich |
| React Email | Yes | Yes |
| Inbound | No | No |
| Multi-tenant | Yes | Yes |
| Idempotency | Yes | Yes |
| Dedicated IP | No | No |
| Best for | Teams that want self-hostable notification infrastructure. | Teams that need multi-channel product notifications with preferences. |
Novu
- ›Open source, MIT-licensed
- ›Self-hostable
- ›Active community
- ›Self-hosting takes effort
- ›Cloud pricing competitive only above 1M events/mo
Knock
- ›Strong workflow engine
- ›In-app feed component
- ›Deep SDK coverage
- ›Idempotency keys
- ›Pricier than running your own; entry plan is steep
- ›Bring your own delivery provider