Need clarification on firebase notifications and nabu casa subscription

I’ve looked through the forum search results and other online articles and can only find some indications that imply that firebase push notifications are a “free” service with or without a nabu casa subscription.

However after the free trial ended, I noticed that notifications would only be received after turning on the screen. I’m on a selfimposed very very tight budget, so $5 a month isnt a big deal, but I’d rather keep my monthly expenses barebones for a while.

Anyway, I paid the 5$ bones and it seems I’m getting firebase notifications with the screen off. Getting reliable notifications is worth it to me, but I would like a concise answer.

Are firebase push notifications a feature of the nabu casa service or a complimentary feature of homeassistant? I do not need the proxy service, or even AI assistants.

I don’t know the answer to your question but if you are on a tight budget there are free options, e.g. a VPN or DuckDNS.

Thanks, I already pay $100+ a month for my colocation network and other cloud services which is part of why I’m trying to keep any additional services to a minimum.

Something is not right, because even after setting up the service, I still do not get push notifications reliably. I get other notifications just fine from other services while the phone has been in low power for several minutes.

I still would like a clear answer on the question at hand

You don’t need nabucasa for the firebase messages.
It is working for me without the subscription. So firebase is free

Is your home assistant logged into nabu casa in any way? Even without an active subscription?

Also, do you get push notifications if your phone has been screen off for over 5 minutes?

My suspicion has been that the app is checking in to home assistant on screen on, rather than push working

Are you hitting the rate limit?

maximum sendable notifications per 24 hours of 150 notifications

No where close, all of my notification flows have a 1msg/10 minutes limitation as well.
I also only have 1 flow that can frequently generates messages, couldn’t be more that 50 a day in the extreme.

I‘m not logged in at all
And yes. I’m getting messages even if the device is locked

this has nothing to do with nabu casa, you want to use critical notifications so they show up early: Critical notifications | Home Assistant Companion Docs

firebase notifications are for any user who installs the google play store version of the app, more info here: Privacy, rate limiting and security | Home Assistant Companion Docs

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Rate limit has since been increased to 500 :slight_smile:

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Wow, this is exactly the problem and solution. I’ll test this and mark as solution later today!