Prowl vs ntfy
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Prowl
Receive push notifications from your computer and various apps directly on your iOS device. Integrate the API into your own applications for custom alerts. Supports email-to-push and offers features like quiet hours and notification history.
- Push notifications from Mac/Windows
- Support for numerous apps/services
- Email to push functionality
- Customizable notification delivery
- Quiet Hours and Do Not Disturb modes
- Notification history and control
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Prowl is an easy push notifications client iOS. Push to your device notifications from your Mac or Windows computer, or from a multitude of apps and services. Easily integrate the Prowl API into your applications. A list of supported apps/services: http://prowlapp.com/apps.php The only limit of what the service can do is your imagination. REQUIREMENTS To receive notifications from your computer, you need the latest: • Growl on your Mac @ growl.info, or • Growl for Windows @ growlforwindows.com, or • Snarl on Windows @ fullphat.net, or • Any program or web service using the public API. THE CRITICS "I was extremely impressed with Prowl and the elegance with which I was able to view Growl notifications on my iPhone.” —Aron Trimble, TUAW "[A] powerful tool to connect your Mac with your iPhone, seamlessly over the air. —Federico Viticci, MacStories "Great idea. This opens up iPhone push notifications for anything you can think of.” —John Gruber, Daring Fireball "Probably the best $3 I’ve ever spent in the App Store.” —Darrell Etherington, The Apple Blog FEATURES • Push Notifications—When a Growl notification pops up on your computer, it's sent to Prowl and displayed on your iOS device within seconds. • Sweet application support—Prowl has support from a bunch of cool applications and services. Check out the full list at http://prowlapp.com/apps.php • Redirections—Launch a different application when you open a push notification. For example, a notification from your desktop Twitter client can relaunch into your favorite mobile client. You can even pick custom URLs to launch, so you can go anywhere! • Email to push—Use your Prowl email address (from the Prowl homepage's "API keys" tab) to get email delivery right on your device. Generate as many email addresses as you need! • An amazing API—Use the Prowl API with a multitude of libraries in various programming languages. You can send notifications from anything that can talk to the internet, and do some fun things along with it. • Quiet Hours—During the hours you specify, only the badge numbers are updated. No matter the source. Instead of getting a noisy alert, messages are quietly delivered. You can allow emergency-priority items to break quiet hours. • Do Not Disturb—Keep the application quiet whenever you're busy, or when you need a break from a constant alert. Controllable from within the application. • Control—Open the edit view to get a quick glance at your notifications, and do away with pesky ones. Quickly copy, email or SMS a notification directly from Prowl (depending on device and iOS version). • Browse quickly—Use Prowl's internal browser to quickly open links from a notification without having to open Safari. • History—Up to 10 days of notifications are kept on the server. You can delete notifications that you don't want to see any more, or remove all of your history. • Customized notifications—Only events you want are sent to Prowl. You can specify all kinds of conditions from the Prowl plugin for Growl. • Send any message to your device—From the Prowl website, you can send any text to your device: links and phone numbers are automatically linked, so you can easily navigate around without having to worry about typos. From the website or API, you can also automatically redirect to the attached URL. SETUP Prowl is built into Growl 2.0. For earlier versions: http://prowlapp.com/installation.php — for Mac. http://growlforwindows.com — for Windows. SUPPORT @prowlapp on Twitter http://prowlapp.com/support.php
ntfy
This app allows you to send push notifications to your phone from scripts or other applications using simple HTTP requests. It acts as a client for a free, open-source pub-sub service, enabling you to receive alerts and updates directly on your device.
- Send notifications via REST API
- Subscribe to topics
- Publish messages via HTTP
- Integrates with Bash/PowerShell
- Free and open source client
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Send push notifications to your phone from any Bash or PowerShell script, or from your own app using PUT/POST requests, e.g. via curl on Linux or Invoke-WebRequest. ntfy is a client for https://ntfy.sh, a free and open source HTTP-based pub-sub service. You can subscribe to topics in this app, and then publish messages via a simple HTTP API. Uses: * Notify yourself when a long-running process is done * Ping your phone when a backup has failed * Alerts when someone logs into your server Example: $ curl -d "Your backup is done" ntfy.sh/mytopic Find more examples and usage instructions here: https://ntfy.sh/docs
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is price: ntfy at Free against Prowl's $2.99. ntfy also leads on update cadence (fortnightly vs every 7 months) and rating (4.8 vs 4.6). Prowl's advantage is review sentiment (88% vs 79%) and iOS requirement (8.0 vs 15.0). On ads, in-app purchases and device support there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
ntfy is free to download; Prowl costs $2.99 up front. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
ntfy holds the better App Store score, 4.8 against 4.6. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 106 and 425 respectively. Written reviews complicate that: 88% of Prowl's written reviews are positive against 79% of ntfy's, so the app with the better star average is not the one people write more warmly about.
Prowl ships an update every 7 months, ntfy fortnightly. The most recent releases landed on September 26, 2026 and September 24, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Prowl | ntfy |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $2.99 | Free — better |
| Rating | 4.6 (106 ratings) | 4.8 (425 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 87.7% of reviews — better | 78.9% of reviews |
| Number of ratings | 106 | 425 — better |
| Update frequency | Every 7 months | Fortnightly — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Paid | Free — better |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod | iPhone, iPad, iPod |
| Requires iOS | 8.0 — better | 15.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 3 MB | 3 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Prowl Solutions LLC | Philipp Heckel |
Customer experience
Prowl
ntfy
User reviews
Prowl
From 106 App Store ratingsWhat we love
- 🚀 Works consistently and reliably
- 🚀 Versatile and customizable
- 👍 Easy to set up and use
- 👍 Indispensable for monitoring and notifications
- 🚀 Prompt and fast push notifications
Room to improve
- 🐛 Occasional visual bugs or glitches
- 📚 Interface looks dated and needs update
- 🔋 High battery consumption when used extensively
ntfy
From 425 App Store ratingsWhat we love
- 🚀 Simple and easy to use
- 🔒 Great for self-hosting
- 👍 Reliable and works as expected
- 🚀 Quick and easy to set up
- 🚀 Lightweight and functional
Room to improve
- 🐛 Notification issues on iOS
- 🔍 Limited features compared to other platforms
- 🔍 Lacks customization options
- 🐛 Occasional crashes or delivery issues
Bugs and requests
Prowl
Reported bugs
2 issues- Inconsistent notification delivery
- Login issues on mobile app
Requested features
4 requests- Support for modern iPhone screen sizes
- Custom notification sounds
- Improved notification management (e.g. delete multiple)
- Integration with Apple Watch
ntfy
Reported bugs
3 issues- Notifications not working on iOS
- Broken click URLs in notifications
- Compatibility issues with iOS notification summarizing
Requested features
5 requests- Ability to change notification sounds
- Support for Apple Watch
- Customizable topic names/aliases
- Improved iOS notification handling
- All topics view and read/unread indicators
In-app purchases
Prowl
No in-app purchases
ntfy
No in-app purchases









