Lightweight asynchronous Python client for Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM)

• Free software: MIT license
• Requires: Python 3.10+

Features

• Extremely lightweight and does not rely on firebase-admin which is hefty
• Send push notifications to Android, iOS, and Web devices
• Multicast push notifications (up to 500 tokens per call)
• Send to topics and topic conditions
• TTL, priority, and collapse-key support
• Dry-run mode for testing
• Topic management (subscribe/unsubscribe devices)
• Async context manager for proper resource cleanup

Installation

pip install async-firebase

Quick Start

import asyncio

from async_firebase import AsyncFirebaseClient, Message, AndroidConfig


async def main():
    async with AsyncFirebaseClient() as client:
        client.creds_from_service_account_file("secret-store/mobile-app-79225efac4bb.json")

        # or using a dictionary
        # client.creds_from_service_account_info({...})

        android_config = AndroidConfig.build(
            priority="high",
            ttl=2419200,
            collapse_key="push",
            title="Store Changes",
            body="Recent store changes",
            data={"discount": "15%", "key_1": "value_1"},
        )
        message = Message(android=android_config, token="device-token-here")
        response = await client.send(message)

        print(response.success, response.message_id)


if __name__ == "__main__":
    asyncio.run(main())

send() returns an FCMResponse with success (bool), message_id (str), and exception (on failure) attributes.

Message Types

FCM supports notification messages (displayed automatically by the system when the app is in the background), data messages (handled entirely by your app), and a combination of both. Use notification messages for user-visible alerts; use data messages for silent pushes, background syncs, or when your app needs full control over how content is processed.

See Set the message type in the official Firebase documentation for details.

Platform Configs

Build platform-specific configs using the .build() classmethod. The builders support both notification and data-only messages — simply omit notification/alert fields to produce a data-only payload.

Android

from async_firebase import AndroidConfig

android_config = AndroidConfig.build(
    priority="high",
    ttl=2419200,
    collapse_key="push",
    data={"discount": "15%", "key_1": "value_1"},
    title="Store Changes",
    body="Recent store changes",
)

To send a data-only message (no notification), simply omit all notification fields:

android_config = AndroidConfig.build(
    priority="high",
    ttl=2419200,
    collapse_key="push",
    data={"discount": "15%", "key_1": "value_1"},
)

New in v6.0: image, ticker, sticky, event_timestamp, local_only, notification_priority, vibrate_timings_millis, default_vibrate_timings, default_sound, light_settings, default_light_settings, fcm_options, direct_boot_ok, bandwidth_constrained_ok, restricted_satellite_ok.

iOS (APNs)

from async_firebase import APNSConfig

apns_config = APNSConfig.build(
    priority="normal",
    ttl=2419200,
    apns_topic="store-updated",
    collapse_key="push",
    title="Store Changes",
    alert="Recent store changes",
    badge=1,
    category="test-category",
    custom_data={"discount": "15%", "key_1": "value_1"},
)

To send a data-only APNS message, omit all alert fields:

apns_config = APNSConfig.build(
    priority="high",
    ttl=2419200,
    collapse_key="push",
    badge=0,
    category="test-category",
    content_available=True,
    custom_data={"key_1": "value_1"},
)

New in v6.0: subtitle, sound as CriticalSound, fcm_options, live_activity_token.

Web Push

from async_firebase import WebpushConfig

webpush_config = WebpushConfig.build(
    data={"discount": "15%"},
    title="Store Changes",
    body="Recent store changes",
    link="https://example.com/store",
)

Note: client.build_android_config(), client.build_apns_config(), and client.build_webpush_config() are deprecated. Use the .build() classmethods directly.

Multicast

Send notifications to up to 500 devices at once:

from async_firebase import AsyncFirebaseClient, MulticastMessage, AndroidConfig

async with AsyncFirebaseClient() as client:
    client.creds_from_service_account_info({...})

    android_config = AndroidConfig.build(priority="high", title="News", body="Breaking news!")

    multicast = MulticastMessage(
        android=android_config,
        tokens=["token_1", "token_2", "token_3"],
    )
    batch_response = await client.send_each_for_multicast(multicast)

    for resp in batch_response.responses:
        print(resp.success, resp.message_id)

send_each_for_multicast() returns an FCMBatchResponse containing individual FCMResponse objects for each token.

Topics

Sending to a topic

from async_firebase import AsyncFirebaseClient, Message, AndroidConfig

async with AsyncFirebaseClient() as client:
    client.creds_from_service_account_info({...})

    message = Message(
        android=AndroidConfig.build(priority="high", title="News", body="Update!"),
        topic="breaking-news",
    )
    response = await client.send(message)

A Message accepts exactly one of: token, topic, or condition.

Managing topic subscriptions

from async_firebase import AsyncFirebaseClient

async with AsyncFirebaseClient() as client:
    client.creds_from_service_account_info({...})

    # Subscribe
    response = await client.subscribe_devices_to_topic(
        device_tokens=["token_1", "token_2"],
        topic_name="breaking-news",
    )

    # Unsubscribe
    response = await client.unsubscribe_devices_from_topic(
        device_tokens=["token_1", "token_2"],
        topic_name="breaking-news",
    )

Advanced Usage

Dry-run mode

Validate messages without actually sending them:

response = await client.send(message, dry_run=True)

Dry-run is available on send(), send_each(), and send_each_for_multicast().

Direct dataclass construction

For full control, construct message dataclasses directly instead of using .build():

from datetime import datetime, timezone
from async_firebase.messages import APNSConfig, APNSPayload, ApsAlert, Aps, Message

apns_config = APNSConfig(
    headers={
        "apns-expiration": str(int(datetime.now(timezone.utc).timestamp()) + 7200),
        "apns-priority": "10",
        "apns-topic": "test-topic",
        "apns-collapse-id": "something",
    },
    payload=APNSPayload(
        aps=Aps(
            alert=ApsAlert(title="some-title", body="alert-message"),
            badge=0,
            sound="default",
            content_available=True,
            category="some-category",
            mutable_content=False,
            custom_data={
                "link": "https://link-to-somewhere.com",
                "ticket_id": "YXZ-655512",
            },
        )
    ),
)

message = Message(apns=apns_config, token="device-token-here")
response = await client.send(message)

Error handling

Send failures raise specific exceptions from async_firebase.errors:

from async_firebase.errors import (
    AsyncFirebaseError,
    UnregisteredError,
    QuotaExceededError,
    InvalidArgumentError,
)

try:
    response = await client.send(message)
except UnregisteredError:
    # Device token is no longer valid — remove it
    ...
except QuotaExceededError:
    # FCM rate limit hit — back off and retry
    ...
except AsyncFirebaseError as e:
    print(e.code, e.message)

Failed responses also populate FCMResponse.exception without raising, depending on the send method.

Changelog

See CHANGES.md for the full release history.

License

async-firebase is offered under the MIT license.