 <p>GCM notifications work perfectly with debug APKs.</p> <p>There is something wrong in the client code or the server code.</p> <p>If you are getting a success response from Google server AND if you are able to see the logcat logs of the received GCM message in your GCM intent service then your server side code is working well and there is probably an error in the client code. If you receive a failure message from the the Google server or do not see logs, then the issue is in your server code.</p> <p>Note: You need to use the server key.</p> <p>You can use this <a href="http://techzog.com/development/gcm-notification-test-tool-android/" rel="nofollow">GCM Test Tool</a> as the server to test if your client is working or not.</p>