Homing Pigeon vs. Textbelt

Both send a text from your code with one HTTP call and no carrier paperwork. They are built for different jobs.

Textbelt texts any number, in the US and many other countries. It suits texting other people: customers, friends, a team.

Homing Pigeon texts one phone: yours. It suits alerts from your own scripts, bots, servers and coding agents, and your agent can set it up without you opening a website.

If your texts go to your own phone, Homing Pigeon is the simpler fit. If they go to anyone else, use Textbelt.

	Homing Pigeon	Textbelt
Who it texts	Your own verified phone	Any number
Where	US mobile numbers	The US and many other countries
Free texts	50 a month	1 a day with the public free key
Paid, US	$19 a month for 1,000, cancel anytime	One-time packs: $3 for 50, $5 for 200, $10 for 700, $23 for 1,700, $45 for 3,500
Long messages	Up to 480 characters, counted as one text	Counted per 160-character segment
Links	One link per alert, no approval. Link shorteners are refused.	Need approval for your key first
Getting a key	Your agent verifies your phone with a six-digit code	Buy one on textbelt.com
Coding agents	MCP server for Claude Code, Codex and Cursor, plus hooks that text you when a long run finishes	HTTP examples to copy
Command line	homingpigeon send "Backup failed."	curl
Replies	STOP and START only	Sent to your webhook, US numbers only
Delivery status	Yes, with what to do about a problem	Yes

Textbelt details are from textbelt.com and its FAQ, checked November 3, 2026. Prices are for US and Canada texts.

It depends on how many alerts you send and how long they are.

• A few alerts a week: free on Homing Pigeon. Free on Textbelt as long as you never need more than one in a day, and $3 for 50 after that.
• About 300 short alerts a month: Textbelt is cheaper, at about $4 a month on its larger packs, against $19 a month on Homing Pigeon.
• Long alerts, such as a stack trace or a test summary: a 400-character alert is three texts on Textbelt and one on Homing Pigeon, which narrows the difference.

Textbelt credits are bought once and expire after a year with no use. Homing Pigeon's 50 free texts arrive every month, and the paid plan is monthly.

• You text other people, such as customers or a team.
• You text numbers outside the US.
• You need replies sent to your own webhook.
• You send hundreds of short texts a month and want the lowest price per text.

• The texts are alerts to your own phone.
• You work with Claude Code, Codex or Cursor and want it to set up texting, or to text you when a long run finishes.
• You send fewer than 50 alerts a month and want them free.
• Your alerts are long or include a link.
• You would rather not buy credits on a website before the first text.

Tell your coding agent:

Replace Textbelt with Homing Pigeon in this project.

It asks for your number, you read back the six-digit code, and it swaps the call. Here is the change it makes in Python. Before:

requests.post("https://textbelt.com/text", {
    "phone": "5551234567",
    "message": "Backup failed.",
    "key": TEXTBELT_KEY,
})

After:

requests.post(
    "https://homingpigeon.dev/v1/send",
    headers={"Authorization": f"Bearer {HOMINGPIGEON_API_KEY}"},
    json={"message": "Backup failed."},
    timeout=10,
)

There is no phone field. The text always goes to the number you verified.

Does Textbelt's free open-source version still work?

Often not. It sends through carrier email-to-text gateways. AT&T shut its gateways down on June 17, 2025, and the others have become unreliable. Textbelt's paid service does not depend on them.

Do I need carrier registration with either one?

No. With both, you get a key and send. Neither asks you to register a brand or a campaign.

Can I use both?

Yes. Some people use Homing Pigeon for their own alerts and Textbelt for texts to other people.

Homing Pigeon (homingpigeon.dev) sends text-message alerts from your code or your coding agent to one phone: yours. No carrier registration, no app, no browser signup. Free to start.

Add it to Claude Code, then ask for what you want:

claude mcp add homingpigeondev -- npx -y homingpigeondev mcp

Codex, Cursor, the command line and the API are in the README. See what people use it for.