Knock vs Stripe
Notifications-as-a-service: in-app feeds, email, push, SMS, chat via one API
vs. Payments, subscriptions, fraud protection, and financial infrastructure
Pricing tiers
Knock
Developer
Free forever. 10K messages, 500 guide users, 500 AI credits/month.
$0 base (usage-based)
Starter
$250/mo. 50K messages, 2.5K guide users, 2K AI credits. Remove branding.
$250/mo
Enterprise
Custom pricing. White-label, i18n, data warehouse, Datadog, SCIM, SAML, HIPAA/BAA.
Custom
Stripe
Payments (Pay-as-you-go)
Default pricing: 2.9% + 30¢ per domestic card transaction. No setup/monthly fees.
$0 base (usage-based)
Billing (Pay-as-you-go)
0.7% of billing volume (on top of payment fees). Stripe-hosted subscription + invoice management.
$0 base (usage-based)
Billing (Monthly plan)
Starting $620/month with 1-year contract. Discount on high volumes.
$620/mo
Enterprise / Custom
Volume discounts + IC+ pricing (interchange-plus) available at scale.
Custom
Free-tier quotas head-to-head
Comparing starter on Knock vs payments-payg on Stripe.
| Metric | Knock | Stripe |
|---|---|---|
| guide users | 2500 users | — |
| guide users overage | $0.05/user USD/user | — |
| messages monthly | 50000 messages/mo | — |
| messages overage | $0.005/message USD/message | — |
Features
Knock · 13 features
- AI Agents — Autonomous notification drafting & workflow generation.
- Batch + Digest — Group notifications into digests on schedule or window.
- Chat — Slack, Microsoft Teams, Discord.
- Email — Send via SendGrid/Postmark/Resend/Mailgun/AWS SES as relays.
- Guides — In-product messaging, announcements, modals, banners.
- i18n / Localization — Translate templates by user locale.
- In-App Feed — Notification inbox with React/Vue/iOS/Android drop-in components.
- Multi-tenancy — Per-tenant branding, preferences, quiet hours.
- Outbound Webhooks — Subscribe to delivery events.
- Preferences — User + tenant preference center with granular controls.
- Push — iOS (APNs), Android (FCM), Expo, Web Push.
- SMS — Twilio, MessageBird, Telnyx, Vonage as providers.
- Workflows — Visual notification orchestration (branch, batch, delay, throttle).
Stripe · 17 features
- Atlas — Incorporate a US Delaware C-Corp in minutes.
- Billing (Subscriptions) — Recurring invoices, trials, proration, metered billing, tax-included.
- Climate — Route % of revenue to carbon removal.
- Connect — Multi-party payments for marketplaces/platforms. Express, Custom, Standard accou…
- Data Pipeline — Nightly sync of Stripe data to your warehouse (Snowflake, Redshift, BigQuery, S3…
- Identity — Document + selfie verification for KYC.
- Invoicing — One-off invoices with hosted pages + reminders.
- Issuing — Issue virtual/physical cards programmatically.
- Payments — Core card + wallet (Apple Pay, Google Pay, Link) + bank payment processing.
- Radar (Fraud) — ML-based fraud detection. Teams tier for custom rules.
- Sigma — SQL analytics over your Stripe data.
- Stripe Checkout — Hosted prebuilt checkout page. Zero UI work.
- Stripe Elements — Pre-styled UI components for custom checkout flows.
- Stripe Tax — Auto-calc sales tax, VAT, GST across jurisdictions + reporting.
- Terminal (In-Person) — Card readers + SDKs for POS and mobile payments.
- Treasury — Embedded banking — accounts, ACH, issuing cards via platform.
- Webhooks — Event notifications for all resource changes. Signed with webhook secret.
Developer interfaces
| Kind | Knock | Stripe |
|---|---|---|
| CLI | Knock CLI | Stripe CLI |
| SDK | knockapi (Python), knockapi (Ruby), knock-elixir, knock-go, knock-java, @knocklabs/node, @knocklabs/react | stripe-dotnet, stripe-go, stripe-java, stripe-js (client), stripe-node, stripe-php, stripe-python, @stripe/react-stripe-js, stripe-ruby |
| REST | Knock REST API | Stripe REST API |
| MCP | Knock MCP Server | Stripe MCP |
| OTHER | Outbound Webhooks | Webhook Events |
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