Choosing a push service

Lauther vs Pushover
vs ntfy vs Gotify

Written by the person who makes one of them, so read it with that in mind. The cases where the others are the better pick are stated first, because you will find them anyway — and because three of these four are genuinely good software.

Checked August 2026. Prices and features move; every product is linked so you can verify before you decide.

The short version

Pick the one that matches your constraint

Most of this decision is settled by two questions: do you need it to run on your own hardware, and does anything need an answer rather than just a notification?

PICK PUSHOVER IF

You want the one that has worked for a decade

Running since 2012, small team, own hardware, a reliability reputation it earned. Its API is the closest thing this space has to a standard — hundreds of tools ship a Pushover option already. If you want to pay once and stop thinking about it, this is the answer.

$4.99 once per platform · 10,000 free API messages a month · pushover.net

PICK NTFY IF

It has to run on your own box

Open source, self-hostable, and the Android app is excellent — including UnifiedPush and F-Droid. curl ntfy.sh/mytopic is the shortest path from a script to a phone that anyone has built. If self-hosting is the requirement, stop here: Lauther cannot do this and is not trying to.

Free hosted, or self-host free · paid tiers from $5/mo · ntfy.sh

PICK GOTIFY IF

You are Android-only and want MIT and nothing else

Self-hosted, MIT, no accounts anywhere but your own server. It has no iOS app and the maintainers have said it will stay that way rather than depend on a third party — a defensible position, and a real constraint if anyone in your house has an iPhone.

Free, self-host only · gotify.net

PICK LAUTHER IF

Something needs an answer, or an iPhone is involved

One call puts Approve / Deny on your phone, waits for your thumb, and returns which one you pressed — optionally behind a fingerprint, and the response says it was confirmed biometrically. It also signs people in to websites without a password. Hosted only, which is the trade for iOS delivery that behaves.

Free for everything personal · on both stores · get the app

Side by side

The comparison, without the marketing

Lauther Pushover ntfy Gotify
Cost Free personal $4.99 once, per platform Free / from $5 mo Free
Self-hostable No No Yes Yes
Open source Not yet — protocol is documented No Yes Yes (MIT)
iOS Yes Yes App exists; the project documents reliability problems None, by policy
Android Yes Yes Yes — the best of the four Yes
Approve / deny buttons Yes, blocking, with the answer returned No Yes — action buttons you wire yourself Open request since 2018
Who pressed the button Signed, optionally biometric — Token travels in the payload —
Passwordless sign-in Yes No No No
End-to-end encryption No — on the roadmap No — long-standing FAQ item No — issue open since 2021 No
Track record Shipped 2026 Since 2012 Since 2021, large community Stable, little recent movement
On the Pushover row. Lauther implements Pushover's message API, so tools that let you change the Pushover server URL work by pointing them at api.lauther.id. That also means leaving is a URL change rather than a rewrite, which is the point: a service you can walk away from in one line has to keep earning you.
Where Lauther loses

Reasons to choose something else

You need it on your own hardware

Lauther's relay holds the APNs connection and the identity layer, and neither can meaningfully run on your box. If self-hosting is a requirement rather than a preference, ntfy or Gotify is your answer and no amount of feature comparison changes that.

You want a decade of track record

Pushover has run since 2012. Lauther shipped in 2026. If the thing you are alerting on is critical and you want the boring choice, the boring choice is a fair one.

You want the code

ntfy and Gotify are open source today. Lauther's protocol is plain documented HTTPS with no SDK, and opening the client pieces is on the roadmap — but a roadmap is not a repository, and you should weigh it as one.

You need end-to-end encryption

Nobody in this table ships it. Bark does, if iOS-only and one-way is acceptable. Lauther's notification bodies travel over TLS and are readable by us — that is stated on the privacy page rather than buried here.

Where Lauther is different

Two things the others do not do

AN ANSWER, NOT AN ALERT

The call waits for your thumb

curl -X POST https://api.lauther.id/v1/approve \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer lpt_…" \
  -d '{"title":"Deploy v2.4?","wait":25}'

→ {"ok":true,"response":"approve"}

One request. It blocks, then tells your script what you pressed. Gate a deploy, a payment, a restore, or an AI agent about to act — and require a fingerprint when it matters, with the response recording that it was given.

A NAME PER SITE

Sign in without a password field

Each site you connect to sees a different identity for you, so two sites cannot work out they have the same person. You end any of those relationships in one tap, and the site loses its ability to reach you at the same moment.

Push services do not do this because they are not identity products. It is the half of Lauther that has no equivalent in the table above. How it works →

Before you decide

Make your own phone buzz first

The Workbench sends a real notification to a real phone in about a minute, and blocks a script on your own approval so you can feel the difference between an alert and a question. Nothing to install to try the sending side.

Open the Workbench Get the app

Something here out of date or unfair? Tell us at hello@lauther.id and it gets fixed — a comparison page that flatters its author is worth nothing to the person reading it.