DevVersus

Sendbird vs Novu(2026)

Sendbird is better for teams that need best for chat-heavy apps. Novu is the stronger choice if open source. Sendbird is freemium (from $399/month) and Novu is open-source (from $250/month (cloud)).

Full feature breakdown, pricing details, and pros & cons below.

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Sendbird logo

Sendbird

freemium

Sendbird provides in-app chat, messaging, video calls, and push notification APIs for mobile and web applications.

Starting at $399/month

Visit Sendbird
Novu logo

Novu

open-source

Novu is an open source notification infrastructure for managing in-app, email, SMS, push, and chat notifications via a single API.

Starting at $250/month (cloud)

Visit Novu

How Do Sendbird and Novu Compare on Features?

FeatureSendbirdNovu
Pricing modelfreemiumopen-source
Starting price$399/month$250/month (cloud)
In-app chat API
Push notifications
Video & voice calls
Moderation tools
AI chatbot
UIKit components
Multi-channel notifications
In-app notification center
Workflow builder
Digest & batching
Subscriber management
Provider-agnostic

Sendbird Pros and Cons vs Novu

S

Sendbird

+Best for chat-heavy apps
+Prebuilt UIKit
+Video calls included
+Reliable scale
Very expensive
Overkill for simple notifications
Long contracts
N

Novu

+Open source
+Multi-channel (email, SMS, push, in-app)
+Self-hostable
+Good workflow builder
Complex for simple use cases
Cloud pricing is high
Still maturing

Should You Use Sendbird or Novu?

Choose Sendbird if…

  • Best for chat-heavy apps
  • Prebuilt UIKit
  • Video calls included

Choose Novu if…

  • Open source
  • Multi-channel (email, SMS, push, in-app)
  • Self-hostable

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