novu is a free, open source miscellaneous project written in TypeScript and released under a custom open-source licence. It has 40,249 GitHub stars, 4,522 forks and 105 open issues, and was last pushed 16 hours ago. On this registry it ranks #3 of 25 tracked projects in Miscellaneous, with 5 head-to-head comparisons available. It gained 150 stars over the last 30 tracked days.

novu — null

What is novu?

What it is

Novu is an open-source communication infrastructure platform for building and managing multi-channel notifications in products and connecting them to AI agents. It lives in the Node.js/TypeScript ecosystem and targets developers who need to send and receive messages across email, SMS, push, in-app inbox, chat, and collaboration tools like Slack and Microsoft Teams.

It solves the problem of rebuilding notification pipelines and channel integrations from scratch for every product or agent. Instead of managing separate providers, webhooks, and message formats per channel, Novu provides a single API and unified conversation model that abstracts away channel-specific complexity, enabling both product-based notifications and bidirectional agent-user interactions.

Key capabilities

  • Single API for sending notifications across Inbox, Email, SMS, Push, and Chat channels
  • Embeddable React `` component for real-time, interactive notification feeds
  • Notification workflow engine with branching logic, conditions, and digests
  • Bidirectional messaging for agents: receive inbound messages and send replies through one layer
  • Unified conversation model across Slack, Microsoft Teams, Telegram, WhatsApp, and email
  • No-code email editor and embeddable user preferences component for notification controls
  • Provider integrations for major email, SMS, and push services without custom code

Who uses it and how

Product teams embed Novu’s Inbox component to deliver real-time in-app notifications and let users manage preferences.
AI/ML teams connect custom-built agents (e.g., LangGraph, AI SDK, Claude Managed Agents) to real-world channels like Slack or WhatsApp using Novu’s ACI layer.
SaaS companies replace fragmented notification stacks with one infrastructure for both user alerts and agent conversations.

Getting started

Create a free account at the dashboard, then install the Novu SDK (@novu/node, @novu/notification-center) via npm or use the Docker image novuhq/novu. The README points to dashboard-guided setup, not self-hosting instructions.

When to use it — and when not to

Use Novu when you need multi-channel notifications or agent messaging without building and maintaining per-channel integrations. It replaces paid platforms like SendGrid + OneSignal + custom webhook routing, but requires operating your own infrastructure if self-hosted (database, storage, SMTP if not using a provider). Avoid if you only need one channel (e.g., email-only) or cannot host your own backend services — Novu does not offer a fully managed hosted option beyond the free-tier dashboard.

project readme (upstream, from github) — read inline


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The open-source communication infrastructure for agents and products

One API and one unified conversation model to connect your products and your agents to every channel your users live on — Inbox, Email, SMS, Push, Chat, Slack, Microsoft Teams, Telegram, and more.


Learn More »

Report a bug · Docs · Website · Join our Discord · Changelog · Roadmap · X · Contact us

Software is becoming more conversational, and user expectations are rising with it. People no longer want static, irrelevant notifications they glance at and forget, they want to engage, ask questions, and go deeper. Instead of a one-way report dropped in their inbox, they expect a thread they can explore: follow up on a metric, drill into an anomaly, or continue a conversation right where they left off. That shift, from broadcast to meaningful dialog is what Novu's communication infrastructure is built for.

⭐️ Why Novu?

Every product and every agent eventually needs to talk to people, across the channels those people already use. Novu is the open-source layer that handles that communication for you, so you don't rebuild Inbox feeds, provider integrations, and channel webhooks from scratch every time.

There are two ways to build with Novu, and they share the same foundation: a single API and a unified conversation model.

  • Communication infrastructure for products — Send notifications across Inbox/In-App, Email, SMS, Push, and Chat through one API, with workflows, digests, and an embeddable `` component.
  • Agent Communication Infrastructure (ACI) — Connect any agent you've already built to any communication channel: Slack, Microsoft Teams, Telegram, WhatsApp, email through one conversation model.

🚀 Getting Started

Create a free account and follow the instructions on the dashboard.

📚 Table of contents

📬 Communication infrastructure for products

The notification platform that turns complex multi-channel delivery into a single component. Built for developers, designed for growth, powered by open source.

Novu provides a unified API to send notifications through multiple channels — Inbox/In-App, Push, Email, SMS, and Chat. Create custom workflows, define per-channel conditions, and let Novu deliver each notification in the most effective way, without stitching together a provider for every channel yourself.

  • One API for all messaging providers
  • Embeddable, real-time `` component
  • Notification workflow engine with branching and conditions
  • Digest engine to batch multiple notifications into a single message
  • No-code email editor
  • Embeddable preferences component so users control their own notifications

🤖 Agent Communication Infrastructure (ACI)

You build the agent. Novu gives it a voice.

ACI is a complete suite for companies already building agents that need to talk to users on real communication channels. It connects your agent to any channel and abstracts away the quirks of each platform behind a single, unified conversation model.

Novu handles the plumbing in both directions: it receives inbound messages from each channel, normalizes them into one consistent shape, routes them to your agent, and sends your agent's responses back out, so you integrate once instead of building and maintaining a webhook handler per platform.

  • Unified conversation model — one consistent model across every channel, instead of per-platform message formats and webhook quirks
  • Bidirectional messaging — receive user messages and send agent replies through the same layer
  • Channel integrations — Slack, Microsoft Teams, Telegram, WhatsApp, Email, and an In-App Inbox for agents
  • Bring your own agent — works with whatever you've built, whether that's Claude Managed Agents, AI SDK, LangGraph, or a custom stack; Novu doesn't constrain your agent logic
  • Best practices built in — conversation threading, reactions, channel-aware formatting, actions and a single integration surface Novu connects the agent to the world, it is not the agent itself.

Want to see ACI in action?

We have built Novu Connect to showcase the power of ACI, build on integrate an existing Claude Managed Agent as a teammate in Slack, Telegram, or Email in less than 2 minutes.

Try it now:

npx novu@latest connect

Embeddable Inbox component

Using the Novu API and admin panel, you can easily add a real-time notification center to your web app without building it yourself. You can use our React, or build your own via our API and SDK. React native, Vue, and Angular are coming soon.

Novu's Embeddable Inbox components

Read more about how to add a notification center Inbox to your app.

Providers

Novu provides a single API to manage providers across multiple channels with a simple-to-use API and UI interface.

Expand a channel below to browse supported providers.

💌 Email (20 providers)
📞 SMS (37 providers)
📱 Push (8 providers)
💬 Chat (13 providers)
📥 In-App (1 provider)
Provider
Novu Inbox

📋 Read Our Code Of Conduct

Before you begin coding and collaborating, please read our Code of Conduct thoroughly to understand the standards (that you are required to adhere to) for community engagement. As part of our open-source community, we hold ourselves and other contributors to a high standard of communication. As a participant and contributor to this project, you agree to abide by our Code of Conduct.

💻 Need Help?

We are more than happy to help you. If you are getting any errors or facing problems while working on this project, join our Discord server and ask for help. We are open to discussing anything related to the project.

🔗 Links

🛡️ License

Novu is a commercial open source company, which means some parts of this open source repository require a commercial license. The concept is called "Open Core," where the core technology is fully open source, licensed under MIT license, and the enterprise code is covered under a commercial license ("/enterprise" Enterprise Edition). Enterprise features are built by the core engineering team of Novu which is hired in full-time.

The following modules and folders are licensed under the enterprise license:

  • enterprise folder at the root of the project and all of its subfolders and modules

💪 Thanks to all of our contributors

Thanks a lot for spending your time helping Novu grow. Keep rocking 🥂

Contributors

The beatiful header animation was contributed by LottieFiles ❤️

Frequently asked questions

Is novu free to use?

novu is open source. There is no licence fee and no seat count — you can self-host it or, where the project offers one, pay a vendor for a managed version instead.

What does novu do?

The open-source communication infrastructure for agents and products

What is novu written in?

novu is primarily written in TypeScript. Its source is publicly available at https://github.com/novuhq/novu, and it has 40,249 GitHub stars.