Honest comparison
Courier is a multi-channel customer messaging platform, and its send API is fire-and-forget by design. Pushary waits for an answer. Your user connects their phone once with a link, and decisions.ask() waits for that person to tap Approve or Deny. If nobody answers in time, the action does not run.
The two overlap for about one second: the moment a message lands on a phone. Courier's job is done at delivery, and everything it ships (journeys, preferences, inbox, provider routing) makes delivery better. An agent approval's job starts at delivery. Hold the agent, collect the answer, enforce the time limit, keep the record. If you need the first job, Courier is a fine choice. If you need the second, you would build it yourself on top.
Courier's automation steps cover sending, delays, branches, batching and digests. The Delay step pauses for a duration or until a time. For an agent that needs a person, Courier's own guide shows the pattern: the automation waits for a webhook or an inbound event that tells it the user responded. Collecting that response and sending it in is your job, so the wait, the matching and the record live in your backend. decisions.ask() handles all three.
The do-it-yourself version uses action buttons pointing at your endpoint, automations for escalation, and your own database for who approved what. It works, and Courier has documented the pattern themselves. The cost comes later. You store pending requests, match answers to questions, write a timeout rule, recover after a restart, and keep an audit record. Your team writes and maintains each one. Pushary sells that set as two calls.
Courier pushes through the mobile app you ship, with the push credentials you manage. If you have that app, it is a fine path. If you do not, Pushary saves you the build. Your user opens your connect link once and installs the free Pushary app or turns on browser notifications. Delivery to both is handled for you, tied to your own user id.
For customer messaging breadth, Courier is well ahead: 50+ providers behind one API, journeys, preferences, multi-tenancy and an embeddable inbox. Agents can also run the platform itself through their MCP server and CLI, and that works well. Pushary does not compete for that job. For lifecycle and product messaging at scale, use Courier, and keep Pushary for the steps where a person must decide.
| Feature | Pushary | Courier |
|---|---|---|
| One call that asks a person and returns the answerCORE | ||
| No answer means no, with no code of your own | ||
| Your users connect their phone with a linkCONNECT | ||
| Push approvals to a phone without shipping your own app | ||
| Every answer saved, and you can look it up | ||
| Yes/no, a choice from a list, or a typed answer | ||
| Signed webhook when a person answers | ||
| One send API across email, SMS, push, in-app and chat | ||
| Visual journeys with delays, branches, digests | ||
| Embeddable in-app notification inbox | ||
| Pricing | Partner $99/mo, public and self-serve | Free tier + per-send usage (see their pricing) |
Competitor rows reflect Courier's public docs and pricing page as of October 2026. Check their docs for current state.
You can build one yourself, and Courier's Automations docs show how. Their Agent-Human Collaboration pattern sends a message, then waits for a webhook or an inbound event that tells it the user responded. The Send API itself does not wait for a reply. Collecting the answer, matching it to the question, the rule that no answer means no, and the decision record are yours to build. Pushary does that whole loop in decisions.ask().
Yes, a big one, and it points the other way. Courier ships a hosted MCP server, a CLI, agent skills and machine-readable docs so AI agents can run the messaging platform: send messages, manage templates, debug pipelines. That gives an agent the power to send. It does not give the agent an approval step on its own actions, which is the job Pushary does.
In Pushary, the action does not run. When your time limit passes, the request closes as not approved, the agent is told, and the expiry is saved. Courier's docs show no deny-on-no-answer outcome. Its Delay node pauses for a duration or until a time, so you build a timeout rule from delays, status checks and your own code.
Courier delivers push through your own mobile app with your own APNs, FCM, Expo or OneSignal credentials, and SMS through your provider. Pushary brings the receiving side itself. Your user opens your connect link once and installs the free Pushary app or turns on browser notifications. Requests then arrive as a push in the app or in the browser.
When the job is customer messaging: one API sending across email, SMS, push, in-app inbox and chat providers, with journeys, preferences and multi-tenant branding. Courier is built for that and has a real free tier to start on. Pick Pushary when an agent has to stop at a step, a specific person has to decide on their phone, and the outcome has to be enforced and saved.
Connect each user once with a link. Then ask before the risky step, and your code waits for Approve or Deny. No answer means no, and every answer is saved. Works with the Vercel AI SDK, LangGraph, CrewAI, Mastra, the OpenAI Agents SDK, Eve, Hermes and MCP.
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