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Relay – SMS API for developers (send your first text in 2 min)

by danielkdewar·Feb 26, 2026·4 points·0 comments
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AI Analysis

●●SolidSolve My ProblemShip ItDark Horse

Stripe-level simplicity for SMS, but Twilio, MessageBird, and Vonage already own price-sensitive developers.

Strengths
  • •Autonomous agent account creation (no human verification) solves a real pain point for AI workflows.
  • •Free sms-dev local testing tool shows genuine developer empathy and lowers integration friction.
  • •10DLC/carrier handling removes compliance burden that would normally require lawyers consulting Twilio docs.
Weaknesses
  • •US/Canada-only severely limits TAM compared to global SMS providers like Twilio or Vonage.
  • •$19/mo pricing unclear against Twilio's $0.01–$0.05 per SMS; unclear if this is cheaper or just simpler.
Target Audience

Developers integrating SMS verification, SaaS founders, AI agent builders

Similar To

Twilio · Vonage · MessageBird

Post Description

Relay is an SMS API I built because integrating Twilio for a simple verification flow took me an unreasonable amount of time. The API is a single POST endpoint. You sign up, get an API key, and send a real SMS in under 2 minutes.

Tech stack: Express.js API, AWS End User Messaging for delivery, PostgreSQL (Supabase), Redis rate limiting. SDKs for JS/TS, Python, and Go.

Currently US/Canada only. Starting at $19/mo with 1,500 messages included. We handle 10DLC compliance and carrier registration.

One thing that might interest HN: AI agents can create accounts and start sending via POST /v1/accounts/autonomous. No human verification required. Trust levels auto-upgrade based on delivery quality.

Also released sms-dev as a free local dev tool (npm install -g @relay-works/sms-dev) for testing SMS flows without sending real messages.

Docs: docs.relay.works | Site: relay.works

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