Sendbird is a proprietary chat and messaging API used to embed real-time conversations, live support, and AI agents into apps, serving billions of messages a month for its customers. It's a closed platform — all chat data flows through and is stored on Sendbird's infrastructure, and pricing scales with usage as your user base grows.
If in-app notifications rather than full chat threads are what you actually need, Novu is a relevant open-source, self-hostable option for the messaging/notification layer.
FAQ
Is there a free, open-source alternative to Sendbird?
For the notification and multi-channel messaging piece, yes: Novu is open source and self-hostable.
What's the best open-source alternative to Sendbird?
Novu covers notification orchestration (in-app, email, SMS, push) well, though it's not a full in-app chat SDK replacement for Sendbird's real-time conversation threads.
What are the top open-source alternatives to Sendbird?
Browse all open-source alternatives to Sendbird above, or explore the full Developer Tools category for more options.