Novu Pricing in May 2026

Novu's pricing follows tiered usage structure: Free Cloud (30K events/month), Business at $250/month for 250K events, Enterprise custom-quote starting around $1K/month. Self-hosted Novu is genuinely free at any scale (open-source under MIT). Real-world Novu Cloud bills for managed deployment land at $250-1,500/month at Business; teams self-hosting pay only their infrastructure costs.

The $500 startup credit covers 4-15+ months of Novu Cloud usage at Business tier. Eligibility focuses on accelerator-backed and pre-Series-A startups. The credit applies to Novu Cloud services. The strategic decision: Novu's value is the open-source alternative to Knock and Courier — orchestrate notifications across email, SMS, push, Slack, and in-app with self-hostable infrastructure. The unique differentiator vs commercial alternatives is the embedded in-app notification center components (React/Angular/Vue) that competitors require you to build yourself. For teams committed to open-source self-hosting (compliance, sovereignty, cost reasons), Novu is one of the few credible options in notification orchestration. For teams committed to managed services, Knock and Courier offer more polished commercial experiences. The credit window is the right time to validate whether managed Novu Cloud or self-hosted Novu fits your operational model. For products with simple notification needs (just transactional email + push), Resend + OneSignal as separate tools often beats orchestrated platforms on cost. For products with complex preference management requiring self-hosting, Novu is genuinely the right choice.