Gotify Review, Pricing & Features

Gotify is a free, self-hosted push notification server with a REST API, WebSocket streaming, and an Android app. See features, setup, and alternatives.

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Developer Tools
Pricing
Open Source, from Free (self-hosted)
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Last updated
July 18, 2026
Web AppAndroidAPIOpen SourceSelf-Hosted

Overview

Gotify is a free, self-hosted server for sending and receiving push notifications. Any script or service can POST a message to its REST API, and the message is instantly pushed to connected phones, browsers, or desktops over WebSocket.

Maintained as an open-source project on GitHub under the MIT license, Gotify is a popular building block in self-hosted homelab stacks, offering a privacy-respecting alternative to commercial cloud notification services.

Key Features

Gotify organizes messages around 'applications' (message sources with their own API token) and 'clients' (message receivers such as a phone or browser, each with their own token), managed through an admin panel that supports multiple users.

It ships a native Android app, a web dashboard, a CLI tool, and a plugin system for extending server behavior, all running from a single lightweight Go binary or Docker container with minimal resource requirements.

Pricing

Gotify is entirely free and open source under the MIT license, with no paid tier or subscription of any kind.

Users only pay for the infrastructure (a VPS, home server, or Docker host) they choose to run it on, making the total cost of ownership as low as whatever hardware is already available.

Key Features

Pros & Cons

Pros

  • Completely free with no subscription or premium tier
  • Lightweight and low resource usage, ideal for small servers
  • Self-hosted, keeping notification data fully private
  • Simple REST API that is easy to integrate into scripts and monitoring tools
  • Established open-source project with an active community

Cons

  • No official iOS app, only Android
  • Requires self-hosting and ongoing server maintenance
  • Web and mobile UI are basic compared to polished commercial apps
  • No built-in end-to-end encryption for messages
  • Fewer built-in integrations than some newer alternatives like ntfy

Pricing

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Gotify?

Gotify is a free, open-source, self-hosted server that lets you send push notifications from your own scripts and services to your phone or browser in real time.

Is Gotify free to use?

Yes, Gotify is fully free and open source under the MIT license, with no paid plans or feature restrictions.

Does Gotify have an iOS app?

There is no official iOS app for Gotify, only a native Android app, though the open API can be used with third-party clients.

How do I send a notification through Gotify's API?

You send an authenticated HTTP POST request to your Gotify server's message endpoint with an application token, and it is delivered instantly to subscribed clients over WebSocket.

Can multiple people share one Gotify instance?

Yes, Gotify supports multiple users through its admin panel, each able to manage their own applications and receiving clients.

How does Gotify compare to Pushover or ntfy?

Unlike Pushover, which is closed-source and cloud-hosted, Gotify is self-hosted and free; compared to ntfy's simpler topic-based model, Gotify uses a more structured application/client and multi-user account system.

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