---
title: BuzzKit vs Apple Push Notification service
description: What BuzzKit adds on top of raw APNs: subscribers, segments, scheduling, preferences, workflows and a delivery ledger.
canonical: https://buzzkit.dev/compare/apns
last-updated: 2026-09-02
---

# BuzzKit vs raw APNs. The transport, and everything around it.

APNs moves a payload to a device token and stops there. BuzzKit is everything around it: subscribers by your ids, segments, local-time delivery, workflows and a ledger of every attempt.

## Side by side

| Capability | BuzzKit | Apple Push Notification service |
| --- | --- | --- |
| **Channels** | | |
| iOS push | Yes | Yes |
| Live Activities | Yes | Yes |
| Android push | Soon | — |
| Email | Soon | — |
| SMS | Soon | — |
| In-app messages | — | — |
| **Sending** | | |
| Your own APNs and FCM keys | Yes | Is the transport |
| Action buttons and deep links | Yes | Built by you |
| Delivery in each subscriber’s time zone | Yes | — |
| Quiet hours and daily caps | Yes | — |
| A ledger of every delivery attempt | Yes | — |
| **Audience** | | |
| Subscribers by your own ids | Yes | Device tokens |
| Unlimited subscribers | Yes | Yes |
| Segments over attributes and events | Yes | — |
| Topics and preferences | Yes | — |
| Tenants for platforms built on top of it | Yes | — |
| **Automation** | | |
| Workflows that start from user events | Yes | — |
| Conditions on what the user did | Yes | — |
| Wait for an event | Yes | — |
| Wait for a quiet moment on the device | Yes | — |
| Branches and loops | Yes | — |
| Call your own API from a step | Yes | — |
| Workflows as versioned specs | Yes | — |
| Webhooks from other tools as events | Yes | — |
| **Platform** | | |
| Open source | Yes | — |
| Hosted | Yes | Apple |
| Self-hosted on your infrastructure | Yes | — |
| Pricing | Per delivery | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |

## Choose BuzzKit when

- You want everything a push needs in one place: sending, segments, scheduling, preferences, workflows and a ledger, from one POST.
- You would rather not build token storage, retries and delivery tracking yourself.
- You want users addressed by your own ids, with preferences they control.
- You run a platform and need isolated tenants with their own keys.

## Choose Apple Push Notification service when

- You only ever send a handful of notifications from one backend.
- You want nothing between your server and the device.
- You already built the tooling around APNs and it works.

## Questions

### Does BuzzKit replace APNs?

No. BuzzKit sends through APNs with your own key. It replaces the code around sending: tokens, targeting, scheduling, retries and the ledger.

### Do I still need an Apple developer account?

Yes. The APNs key comes from your account and stays yours. BuzzKit stores it encrypted and uses it to send.

### What happens when APNs reports a dead token?

The subscription flips to invalid and the change lands on the subscriber’s timeline. No later send is wasted on it.

## Start

- [Start sending](https://buzzkit.dev/dashboard)
- [API Reference](https://docs.buzzkit.dev)
- [BuzzKit on GitHub](https://github.com/buzzkit-dev/buzzkit)