Amazon Simple Notification Service
Amazon Simple Notification Service
Amazon SNS is the AWS pub/sub service — fans out messages to email, SMS, HTTP, Lambda, SQS, and more.
One publish fans out to many subscriber types
Delivery acknowledgment is not guaranteed (HTTP subscriptions can drop)
Call SNS.createTopic to create a topic, subscribe to add endpoints (email, SQS, Lambda), and publish to send. SNS fans out to every subscriber automatically.
Uptime · 30-day window
GitHub activity
About this API
SNS and SQS are the two pillars of AWS messaging — SQS is point-to-point queueing, SNS is pub/sub. A producer publishes a message to a topic, and SNS replicates and delivers to every subscriber. Subscriber types are remarkably diverse: email, SMS, mobile push (APNs, FCM), HTTP/S callbacks, SQS, Lambda, Kinesis Firehose, and more.
The classic pattern is SNS + multiple SQS for fanout: one event publishes to SNS, which pushes into several SQS queues so independent consumers can process it. Combined with subscription filter policies (JSON-based filtering on message attributes), each consumer only receives the subset of messages it cares about. FIFO topics are a newer feature offering ordered fanout — not as powerful as Kafka for dedicated stream processing, but appropriate for many in-AWS workloads.
What you can build
- 1Send alert emails and SMS to operators
- 2Push mobile notifications (APNs / FCM)
- 3Fan out one message to multiple SQS queues
- 4Receive CloudWatch alarm events
Strengths & limitations
Strengths
- One publish fans out to many subscriber types
- Subscription filter policies let subscribers receive only relevant messages
- FIFO topics support ordered fanout
Limitations
- Delivery acknowledgment is not guaranteed (HTTP subscriptions can drop)
- SMS pricing varies by destination country and adds up internationally
Getting started
Call SNS.createTopic to create a topic, subscribe to add endpoints (email, SQS, Lambda), and publish to send. SNS fans out to every subscriber automatically.
FAQ
SNS or SQS?+
SQS is a queue — multiple consumers compete for messages. SNS is broadcast — every subscriber receives each message. Combine them: SNS fanning out into many SQS queues.
How big is the free tier?+
1M publishes/month free. HTTP/S delivery is $0.60 per million. SMS is priced separately by destination country.
Subscriber isn't receiving messages — what now?+
Verify the subscription is confirmed (email subscribers must click confirm), and check whether the filter policy is filtering messages out.
Technical details
- Auth type
- api_key
- Pricing
- paid
- Protocols
- REST
- SDKs
- python, javascript, java, go, ruby, csharp
- Response time
- 41 ms
- Last health check
- 6/26/2026, 6:22:16 AM
Endpoints
Parsed from the OpenAPI spec. Showing 12 of 84 non-deprecated endpoints.
/#Action=AddPermission/#Action=AddPermission/#Action=CheckIfPhoneNumberIsOptedOut/#Action=CheckIfPhoneNumberIsOptedOut/#Action=ConfirmSubscription/#Action=ConfirmSubscription/#Action=CreatePlatformApplication/#Action=CreatePlatformApplication/#Action=CreatePlatformEndpoint/#Action=CreatePlatformEndpoint/#Action=CreateSMSSandboxPhoneNumber/#Action=CreateSMSSandboxPhoneNumber72 more endpoints not shown. See the OpenAPI spec for the full list.
More from Amazon Web Services
AWS IAM Access Analyzer API analyzes IAM resource policies for over-privileged access or external access — proactively surfaces security risks.
Alexa for Business helps you use Alexa in your organization.
Amazon API Gateway helps developers deliver robust, secure, and scalable mobile and web application back ends.
Use AppConfig, a capability of Amazon Web Services Systems Manager, to create, manage, and quickly deploy application configurations.
Welcome to the Amazon AppFlow API reference.
The Amazon AppIntegrations service enables you to configure and reuse connections to external applications.
Amazon AppStream 2.0 API Reference.
Amazon Athena is an interactive query service that lets you use standard SQL to analyze data directly in Amazon S3.