OneSignal and Airship both send mobile push, web push, in-app messages, email and SMS from one dashboard. OneSignal started with push for apps and websites, publishes its prices and is used mostly by small teams. Airship, renamed from Urban Airship in 2019, sells quoted contracts and is used mostly by mid-market and enterprise app teams.
Where OneSignal and Airship differ
Short answer
| If you need | Choose |
|---|---|
| You want push and in-app messages live this week on a free plan |  OneSignal |
| Pricing has to be published and billed month to month | OneSignal |
| You want email and SMS on a self-serve plan alongside push | OneSignal |
| Marketers build multi-screen in-app flows, stories and surveys without developers |  Airship |
| Users need an app inbox that keeps messages after they arrive | Airship |
| You issue boarding passes, tickets or loyalty cards to Apple and Google Wallet | Airship |
| Agents build and change the workflows, and engineers keep them in the repo |  SuprSend |
Need AI agents to build and run product alerts and campaigns end to end? Choose SuprSend
SuprSend is an agentic notification platform for product alerts and customer engagement messages, across email, SMS, push, WhatsApp, Slack, Microsoft Teams and an in-app inbox, with tenants, translations and preferences built in. Product alerts and marketing campaigns run through the same workflows, preferences and logs. An agent in Claude or Cursor can create a workflow, write its templates, test it and send, and engineers pull the same workflows into the repo with the CLI. Neither OneSignal’s nor Airship’s MCP server builds a journey.
| SuprSend | OneSignal | Airship | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Channels from one trigger | Email, SMS, push, WhatsApp, Slack, Teams, in-app | Push, email, SMS, in-app | Push, in-app, app inbox; email, SMS and wallet on Enterprise |
| Messages covered | Transactional, product and marketing | Marketing, plus transactional sends by API | Marketing, plus transactional email and push by API |
| What AI agents can do | Build and change workflows, templates and tenants, test and send, and query logs and analytics, from the SuprSend agent or any MCP client | OneSignal AI agent in the dashboard; over MCP, manage users, segments and templates, and send | Campaigns and Scenes agents in the dashboard; over MCP, send test pushes and look up channels and segments |
| CLI and environment promotion | CLI pulls and pushes workflows and templates; changes move from staging to production | No CLI; a separate app per environment | No CLI; separate test and production projects |
| In-app inbox | Drop-in or headless on web and mobile | Build it yourself | Message Center in the mobile SDKs |
| G2 rating | 4.8 from 129 reviews | 4.7 from 1,237 reviews | 4.0 from 83 reviews |
| G2 ease of setup | 9.4 out of 10 | 8.9 out of 10 | 7.0 out of 10 |
Feature by feature
From both pricing pages, both documentation sites and G2’s compare page, September 2026. Where a feature depends on the plan, the cell names the plan.
Basics
| Capability | OneSignal | Airship |
|---|---|---|
| G2 rating | 4.7 from 1,237 reviews | 4.0 from 83 reviews |
| Largest reviewer segment | Small business, 65.5 percent | Mid-market, 43.9 percent; enterprise 36.6 percent |
| G2 ease of setup | 8.9 out of 10 | 7.0 out of 10 |
| Billing unit | Platform fee plus mobile MAU, web push subscribers, email and SMS sends | Quoted contract on monthly active users, with channel add-ons |
Channels
| Capability | OneSignal | Airship |
|---|---|---|
| Mobile and web push | YES | YES |
| YESOn every plan, including Free | YES, BUTAn add-on to AXP Enterprise | |
| SMS, MMS and RCS | YES | YES, BUTAn add-on to AXP Enterprise; RCS for US data centre customers |
| NO | NO | |
| In-app messages | YES | YESPlus Scenes: multi-screen native screens, stories and surveys |
| Lasting in-app feed | NOMessage history is not stored per user | YESMessage Center app inbox |
| Mobile wallet passes | NO | YES, BUTApple and Google Wallet, an add-on to AXP Enterprise |
Journeys, segments and testing
| Capability | OneSignal | Airship |
|---|---|---|
| Journey builder | Journeys with branching and cross-channel steps; 3, 5, 20 or unlimited active by plan | Journeys that connect Sequences, Scenes and In-App Automations; 1,000 active automations, 25 on Essentials Starter |
| Segments | 6, 10, 20 or unlimited by plan | Segments, lifecycle lists, uploaded lists and RFM tiers from Audience Pulse |
| User attributes | Data tags: 6, 10, 100 or unlimited by plan | Tags and attributes; custom attributes are defined in the project first |
| A/B testing | Standard on Free and Growth; multivariate from Professional | A/B tests on messages, Scenes and Sequences, plus holdout experiments and control groups |
| Preferences | Push categories through the opt-in prompt | Subscription lists in a single- or multi-channel preference center |
| Data out | Event Streams: limited on Free, essential on Growth | Real-Time Data Streaming: one two-way connector on Enterprise, an add-on on Essentials |
Developers and agents
| Capability | OneSignal | Airship |
|---|---|---|
| MCP server | Remote, in beta: users, segments, templates, sends, exports | Open source, runs locally: test pushes, channel and segment lookups, SDK migration |
| Built-in AI | OneSignal AI agent, on every plan | Campaigns and Scenes AI agents and AI-drafted Journeys, on AXP plans |
| Personalization syntax | Liquid | Handlebars |
| Environments | A separate app per environment | Separate test and production projects |
Pricing
A worked example on OneSignal Growth, for an app with 20,000 mobile MAU, 5,000 web push subscribers and 40,000 emails a month: $19 platform fee, plus $240 for mobile MAU, $20 for web push and $30 for the 20,000 emails above the included 20,000, is $309 a month. Airship gives a price only in a quote.
| Capability | OneSignal | Airship |
|---|---|---|
| Entry plan | Free: mobile push and in-app up to 1,000 MAU, 10,000 emails a month | AXP Essentials: self-serve signup, price not published |
| First paid plan | Growth from $19 a month, month to month | AXP Enterprise, quote only |
| Mobile push | $0.012 per MAU on Growth | In the contract |
| 20,000 sends a month on Growth, then $1.50 per 1,000 | Enterprise add-on, in the contract |
FAQ
Is OneSignal better than Airship?
OneSignalOneSignal is better for a small team that wants push, email, SMS and in-app messages live quickly on published, month-to-month pricing, with a free plan to start on.
AirshipAirship is better for a larger app team that runs multi-screen in-app experiences, a lasting app inbox and wallet passes, and can support a quoted contract and a longer setup.
Which is cheaper, OneSignal or Airship?
They bill on different units. OneSignal charges a platform fee plus $0.012 per mobile monthly active user on Growth, with email and web push priced by send and subscriber. Airship quotes on monthly active users and adds email, SMS and wallet as Enterprise add-ons, so OneSignal is the one you can price without a sales call.
Can I use OneSignal and Airship together?
Both SDKs can run in the same app, but each keeps its own users, subscriptions and opt-outs. A user who turns off messages in one still receives them from the other unless you sync the two, which is why most teams pick one.
What moves when switching from OneSignal to Airship?
Users move by external ID, which becomes the Airship named user. OneSignal data tags become Airship tags or attributes, segments are rebuilt, and Journeys are rebuilt as Airship Journeys and Sequences. Templates move with their personalization rewritten from Liquid to Handlebars. The app swaps one SDK for the other, and the APNs and FCM credentials are added to Airship. Airship’s migration terminology page maps the names.
What if our notifications are product events owned by engineering?
SuprSend, which publishes this page, runs product alerts and customer engagement messages from workflows that engineers change from the repo and agents build over MCP.