Published 2026-04-03 · Reviewed 2026-09-05, corrections outstanding · Figures compiled 2026-04-03 · 5 of 5 figures in the “Pricing Change Timeline” table come from our records for 1,580 developer tools · 20+ email services compared
Quick verdict:Amazon SES is the cheapest at volume at $0.10 per 1,000 emails, but it no longer has a free tier — AWS replaced the old 62,000/month-from-EC2 allowance with $200 of Free Tier credits that expire, so budget for it from the first email. Resend has the best developer experience with a modern API, React Email integration, and 3,000 emails/month free. Brevo is ideal for daily drip sending with 300 emails/day permanent free (no monthly cap concern). Mailtrap is best for email testing with 4,000 emails/month production plus a separate sandbox for inbox simulation. Maileroo is the hidden gem with 3,000 emails/month free and no daily cap.
The SendGrid exodus: SendGrid — the most widely-used transactional email API — permanently removed its free tier on May 27, 2025. The perpetual 100 emails/day plan is gone, replaced by a 60-day trial only, then $19.95/month minimum. Thousands of side projects and startups were forced to migrate. The email API market is now split: pure-play transactional APIs (Resend, Postmark, MailerSend), all-in-one platforms (Brevo, Loops), and infrastructure (SES). This guide covers all paths.
Pricing is confusing: Per-email vs per-contact vs per-day caps. Transactional vs marketing distinctions. Overage charges that 10x your bill. Deliverability reputation that takes months to build, making switching costly. This comparison cuts through the confusion with concrete numbers.
Purpose-built APIs for sending password resets, order confirmations, welcome emails, and other triggered messages. No marketing features, no contact management — just fast, reliable email delivery with developer-first APIs.
Free tier: none. The 62,000 emails/month allowance for mail sent from EC2, Lambda or Elastic Beanstalk is gone for accounts opened since AWS restructured its Free Tier on July 16, 2025. New accounts get up to $200 in AWS Free Tier credits spendable across eligible services, and a free plan that runs 6 months from account creation. After that it is $0.10/1,000 emails from anywhere, plus EC2 compute and data transfer if you send from AWS. No monthly subscription, pure pay-per-use. Full SMTP and API support. Dedicated IPs are free but require manual warm-up. The catch: no built-in template editor, analytics dashboard, or suppression management — you build or integrate those yourself. Best for teams already on AWS who want the lowest per-email price and can budget for it from the first send.
Free tier: 3,000 emails/month, 100/day cap, 3 custom domains. Created by the team behind React Email. Modern REST API with excellent TypeScript SDK, React component-based email templates, and real-time delivery webhooks. Batch sending support. The daily cap (100/day) is the main constraint — you can't burst-send a newsletter. Best for developers building modern web apps who want the cleanest API experience.
Free tier: 3,000 emails/month with no daily cap. REST API and SMTP relay. Custom domain support, delivery tracking, and webhooks. Relatively new entrant matching Resend on monthly volume and clearing MailerSend's free plan six times over, with no daily sending limit. Worth evaluating for early-stage projects that need burst capacity. Good email verification built in.
Free tier: 500 emails/month, down from 3,000 in April 2026. Free accounts get 1 domain, 10 templates, 5 seats, 1,000 daily API requests and 1-day activity retention; the 14-day Professional trial carries the same 500 emails/month. Built by the team behind MailerLite. Clean API, inbound email processing, and email verification included. No daily cap. Good template editor. SMS support on paid tiers. Hobby is $7.00/month for 5,000 emails ($5.60/month billed yearly), which is where a project sending more than 500 lands.
Free tier: 100 test emails/month in a sandbox. Not usable for production without paying ($15/mo for 10K emails). Postmark's differentiator is delivery speed — average delivery in <10 seconds. Best deliverability reputation in the industry. Excellent bounce handling. The "free tier" is effectively a testing sandbox, not a production service. Worth the $15/mo for production if delivery speed matters.
Free tier: 500 emails/day (~15,000/month). European email service with SMTP and REST API. Custom domain, webhooks, and analytics included. The daily volume is generous and the monthly equivalent rivals paid tiers on other services. Good option for GDPR-conscious European teams.
Free tier: 1,000 emails/month. Focused on transactional email with SMTP relay and REST API. Webhooks for delivery events. Simple, no-frills service for small projects. Lower volume than Resend or MailerSend but adequate for side projects.
All-in-One (Marketing + Transactional)
Platforms that combine marketing email (newsletters, campaigns) with transactional email (triggered messages) in one product. Ideal for startups that want one vendor for all email needs.
Free tier: 300 emails/day permanent free tier (no monthly cap). Marketing automation, transactional email, SMS, WhatsApp, and CRM in one platform. The daily cap works well for steady-state sending (welcome emails, password resets) but limits burst sending. At 300/day, you get ~9,000/month — more than enough for most early-stage projects. The most feature-complete free tier in this category.
Free tier: 6,000 emails/month (200/day cap). Both transactional and marketing email in one platform. SMTP relay and REST API. Contact list management included. The daily cap is restrictive for transactional bursts, but the monthly volume is generous for small projects. Template collaboration features on paid tiers.
Free tier: 1,000 contacts, 4,000 emails per 30 days. Purpose-built for SaaS companies. Combines marketing loops (drip sequences, newsletters) with transactional messages (welcome emails, usage alerts). Modern UI designed for product-led growth teams. The contact limit is the constraint, not volume — generous for early-stage SaaS. API and webhooks included.
Free tier: 9,000 emails/month (300/day). Combined transactional and marketing platform. EU-based with GDPR compliance built in. REST API, SMTP relay, and webhook delivery notifications. One of the more generous free tiers by monthly volume but lesser known. Good option for European teams.
Newsletter & Marketing Platforms
Platforms focused on subscriber management, campaigns, and newsletter delivery. Pricing based on contacts/subscribers rather than email volume.
Free tier: 2,500 subscribers, 10,000 emails/month. Simple, affordable email marketing. Uses Amazon SES under the hood for reliable delivery. Landing pages and forms included. The most generous subscriber-to-email ratio in the free tier category. Best for newsletters and content creators who want simplicity over features.
Free tier: 250 subscribers, 2,500 emails/month, 2 user seats, community support. The subscriber allowance was 1,000 until April 2026 and the send allowance 12,000. Full-featured email marketing with drag-and-drop editor, landing pages, automations, and A/B testing. Strong deliverability. Built by the same team behind MailerSend (transactional). Good migration path: start with MailerLite for marketing, add MailerSend for transactional when needed.
Free tier: 500 contacts, 500 emails/month, 500/day cap. Reduced from 2,000 contacts and 10,000 emails/month. The industry standard that keeps shrinking its free tier since the Intuit acquisition. Still has the largest ecosystem of integrations. No custom domain on free tier (Mailchimp branding). The free tier is now so limited it's mostly useful for testing the platform, not running a real newsletter.
Free tier: 100 subscribers, unlimited emails. Newsletter-focused platform with markdown support, RSS-to-email, and clean subscriber management. API access included. Popular with indie developers and technical writers. Limited subscriber count but excellent for personal newsletters and developer blogs.
Free tier: Unlimited subscribers, unlimited emails. No cost for free newsletters. Substack takes 10% of paid subscription revenue. Built-in audience discovery and recommendation network. No API, no webhooks, no custom domain. Best for writers who want zero setup and don't need programmatic control. The trade-off: platform lock-in and limited customization.
The SendGrid Exodus
The most impactful free tier removal in developer tooling history — and the migration paths forward.
What happened: On May 27, 2025, SendGrid permanently eliminated its free tier (100 emails/day, no credit card, no expiration). It was replaced with a 60-day trial only, after which the minimum is $19.95/month (Essentials plan). SendGrid was the default email API for a generation of developers — referenced in thousands of tutorials, starter templates, and boilerplates.
Who's affected: Any developer using SendGrid's free tier for transactional email in side projects, prototypes, or early-stage startups. Also: every tutorial and course that references "sign up for a free SendGrid account." The migration wave is still ongoing as developers discover the change when following old guides.
The pattern: VC-backed email APIs eliminate free tiers after acquisition. SendGrid (acquired by Twilio 2019, free tier removed 2025). SparkPost (acquired by MessageBird, rebranded to Bird). The lesson: if your email provider has been acquired, plan your migration before the free tier disappears.
Migration Paths by Use Case
If you used SendGrid for...
Migrate to
Why
Migration effort
Side project transactional
Resend or Maileroo
Modern API, generous free tier, no acquisition risk
Low — swap API key + SDK
High volume (50K+/mo)
Amazon SES
10x cheaper at scale ($0.10/1K vs $1/1K)
Medium — need to build template/analytics layer
Marketing + transactional No record
Brevo
300/day free, CRM + automation included
Medium — different API, different template system
Best DX / modern stack
Resend
React Email templates, TypeScript-first, clean API
Low — modern REST API, excellent docs
Email testing / staging No record
Mailtrap
Virtual inboxes + 4K/mo production sending
Low — separate test + prod environments
Self-hosted / OSS hedge
Plunk + SES backend
Open-source, unlimited volume, no vendor lock-in
High — need to deploy and maintain
Migration tip: Don't just swap the API — migrate your deliverability reputation. Warm up your new sending domain gradually (start at 50-100 emails/day, increase 50% every 3-5 days). If you switch providers cold and send your full volume on day 1, major email providers will flag you as a new (potentially spammy) sender. Budget 2-4 weeks for warm-up.
Email Testing & Development
Tools for testing email delivery, inspecting message content, and simulating inboxes without sending to real recipients.
Free tier: three separate free products. Email API/SMTP: 4,000 emails/month with a 150/day cap, 1 domain, 3-day log retention. Email Sandbox (testing): 50 test emails/month, 1 sandbox. Email Marketing: 1,500 emails/month, 500 contacts. The testing product captures emails in a virtual inbox, lets you inspect HTML/text/headers, check spam scores, and validate links. The sending product is a separate service for production delivery. Best for development teams who need proper email QA workflows.
Mailpit (self-hosted)
Cost: Free, open-source. Lightweight SMTP testing server with web UI. Catches all outgoing email in development. Single binary, zero config. The modern replacement for MailHog. Perfect for local development — point your app's SMTP at localhost:1025 and inspect all emails in the browser.
Ethereal Email
Cost: Free. Fake SMTP service by the Nodemailer team. Creates disposable SMTP accounts for testing. No setup required — generate credentials and start sending. Emails are never delivered to real recipients. Good for automated testing and CI/CD pipelines.
Email Verification
Services to validate email addresses before sending — reduces bounces, protects sender reputation, and improves deliverability.
Key takeaway: Email verification is essential once you're sending at volume. A 5% bounce rate can destroy your sender reputation and land all your emails in spam. Verifalia offers the most generous free tier (25 verifications/day). For bulk list cleaning before a campaign, you'll need a paid tier.
Email Forwarding & Routing
Custom domain email without running a mail server. Forward hello@yourdomain.com to your personal inbox.
Free tier: Up to 25 aliases per domain, forwarding to 1 destination. Simple MX record setup. Works with any domain. No sending capability on free tier — forwarding only. The simplest way to get custom domain email without a mail server.
Free tier: Unlimited aliases, unlimited domains. Open-source. Privacy-focused with no logs policy. Supports regex-based catch-all routing. The most generous free forwarding service. Also supports sending via SMTP on paid tier.
Free tier: 10 aliases. Email aliasing service (now owned by Proton). Create unique aliases for each service to protect your real email address. Built for privacy, not transactional email. Good for personal use; not designed for application email.
SMTP Infrastructure
SMTP relay services and infrastructure providers for teams that need raw email delivery without the marketing features.
SMTP2GO
Free tier: 1,000 emails/month, 5 sending addresses. SMTP relay with REST API. Email tracking, webhooks, and detailed reporting. SPF/DKIM setup assistance. Enterprise-grade deliverability with a generous enough free tier for development and small projects. Established provider (since 2006) with strong reputation — less acquisition risk than VC-backed alternatives.
Free tier: none. Our own pricing change record, on 2025-07-16, says: AWS restructured its Free Tier into expiring credits, which removed the per-service SES allowance for new accounts. The SES pricing page, read 2026-08-27, offers only 'up to $200 in AWS Free Tier credits' with 'the free plan will be available for 6 months after account creation' and no perpetual sending allowance from any source. Source ↗Read what we recorded →
SMTP relay vs API: Traditional SMTP relay (SMTP2GO, SES SMTP) works with any programming language and framework out of the box — just configure host, port, and credentials. REST APIs (Resend, MailerSend) require an SDK or HTTP client but offer richer features (batch sending, templates, scheduling). For WordPress and legacy applications, SMTP relay is often the only option.
Self-Hosted Email
Run your own mail server for unlimited volume and full control. The free-forever option — but email deliverability is hard.
Cost: Free, open-source. Full-featured mail delivery platform with web UI, click/open tracking, webhook notifications, IP pool management, and multi-organization support. Built for transactional email at scale. The most complete self-hosted alternative to SendGrid. Requires dedicated IP with clean reputation and proper DNS (SPF, DKIM, DMARC) setup.
Mailu
Cost: Free, open-source. Docker-based full mail server (SMTP, IMAP, webmail, antispam, antivirus). Designed for personal or small organization email hosting. More focused on mailbox hosting than transactional email delivery.
Mail-in-a-Box
Cost: Free, open-source. One-command mail server setup on Ubuntu. Includes Roundcube webmail, spam filtering, DNSSEC, and automatic certificate management. The easiest way to self-host a complete mail server. Best for personal email independence, not high-volume transactional sending.
The self-hosted email trade-off: Self-hosting email eliminates per-message costs but introduces serious operational complexity. IP reputation management is the biggest challenge — new IPs are assumed spammy by major providers. You need proper SPF, DKIM, DMARC, rDNS, warm-up periods, and active monitoring. For transactional email at scale, Postal is the right choice. For personal mailboxes, Mail-in-a-Box is simplest. For most developers, a managed service like SES or Resend is more practical.
Growth Cost Trap
Email costs seem trivial at small scale. They're not. Here's what happens when you grow.
Monthly Volume
Amazon SES
Resend
Maileroo
MailerSend
SendGrid
Postmark
Brevo
3K emails
$0.30
$0 (free)
$0 (free)
$7.00
$19.95
$15.00
$0 (free)
10K emails
$1.00
$20.00
$10.00
$28.00
$19.95
$15.00
$0 (free)
50K emails
$5.00
$20.00
$39.00
$28.00
$19.95
$42.50
$25.00
100K emails
$10.00
$40.00
$79.00
$55.00
$89.95
$70.00
$65.00
500K emails
$50.00
$225.00
$299.00
$210.00
$449.95
$245.00
$169.00
1M emails
$100.00
$475.00
Custom
$360.00
$749.95
$400.00
$339.00
Why SES is 10x cheaper: Amazon SES charges a flat $0.10 per 1,000 emails with no base fee, no plan tiers, and no per-recipient surcharges. At 1M emails/month, SES costs $100 while SendGrid charges $750. The trade-off: SES gives you raw sending infrastructure with no built-in template editor, analytics dashboard, or suppression list management. You're paying for simplicity and developer experience with managed services like Resend and Postmark.
The dedicated IP trap: Shared IP pools work fine for low-volume senders. But once you're sending 50K+ emails/month, you need a dedicated IP for deliverability control. Postmark charges $50/month per dedicated IP. SendGrid charges $80/month.Resend includes dedicated IPs on Pro ($80/month). SES dedicated IPs are free but require manual warm-up. This hidden cost doubles your bill on lower tiers.
The per-email overage trap: Exceeding your plan's included volume triggers per-email overage charges. SendGrid charges $1.30 per additional 1,000 emails on the Essentials plan — 13x the SES rate. A single product launch email that exceeds your plan can cost hundreds. Always check overage rates, not just base prices.
Contact-based vs email-based pricing: Marketing platforms (Mailchimp, MailerLite, EmailOctopus) charge per subscriber count, not email volume. At 10,000 subscribers, Mailchimp costs $100/mo regardless of how many emails you send. MailerLite costs $50/mo. This model punishes large lists with low engagement. Clean your list regularly — inactive subscribers cost money without generating value.
By Use Case
Recommendations by Use Case
Best for startups → Resend or Maileroo
Resend: 3K/mo free, best DX with React Email and TypeScript SDK. Maileroo: 3K/mo free with no daily cap — the same monthly volume as Resend without the 100/day ceiling. Both are indie-funded with no acquisition risk.
Best for transactional only → Resend or Postmark
Resend for developer experience (free). Postmark for delivery speed (paid, $15/mo). Both have excellent webhook support and API quality. Resend wins on free tier; Postmark wins on deliverability reputation.
Best for marketing → EmailOctopus or MailerLite
EmailOctopus: 2,500 subscribers + 10K emails/mo free, simplest interface. MailerLite: 250 subscribers + 2.5K emails/mo, more automation features. Both are affordable at scale. Avoid Mailchimp — shrinking free tier and expensive growth pricing.
Best SendGrid replacement → Resend (small) or SES (large)
Under 50K/mo: Resend gives you a modern API with a smooth migration path and 3K/mo free. Over 50K/mo: Amazon SES at $0.10/1K is 7.5x cheaper than SendGrid's paid plans. Match your migration to your volume.
Best for testing/development → Mailtrap
Virtual inboxes, spam analysis, HTML checking, and link validation. 4K/mo production sending included, on a separate product from the 50-email testing sandbox. The standard for email QA workflows. Separate testing and production environments prevent accidental sends to real users.
Best for newsletters → Buttondown or Substack
Buttondown: 100 subscribers, markdown-native, API access, developer-friendly. Substack: unlimited subscribers, zero setup, built-in audience discovery. Buttondown for control; Substack for reach.
Best for email forwarding → ForwardEmail or SimpleLogin
ForwardEmail: unlimited aliases, unlimited domains, open-source, privacy-first. SimpleLogin: 10 aliases, Proton-owned, better UI. Both protect your real email. ForwardEmail for custom domains; SimpleLogin for personal aliasing.
Best open-source / self-hosted → Postal + SES
Postal for the application layer (tracking, webhooks, web UI) and SES as the SMTP backend for deliverability. Unlimited volume, no vendor lock-in, no per-email fees beyond SES ($0.10/1K). Requires DevOps expertise for setup and maintenance. The nuclear option for teams burned by free tier removals.
Hidden Costs & Gotchas
Deliverability reputation takes months to build
Email deliverability isn't just about the provider — it's about your sending reputation. New domains and IPs are treated as suspicious by Gmail, Outlook, and Yahoo. You need consistent sending volume, low bounce rates, and proper authentication (SPF, DKIM, DMARC) before ISPs trust you. Switching providers means rebuilding this reputation from scratch. This is the real cost of vendor migration — not the API swap, but the 2-4 week warm-up period where your emails may land in spam.
Shared vs dedicated IP reputation
On shared IPs (most free tiers), your deliverability depends on what other senders on the same IP are doing. If a neighbor sends spam, your emails get flagged too. Dedicated IPs give you full control but cost $20-80/month extra and require warm-up. The catch-22: you need volume to warm up a dedicated IP, but you need good deliverability to grow volume.
SPF/DKIM/DMARC setup complexity
Every email provider requires DNS records (SPF, DKIM, DMARC) for proper authentication. Setup complexity varies wildly — Resend and MailerSend make it simple with guided wizards. SES requires manual DNS configuration. Using multiple email providers (e.g., transactional + marketing) means managing multiple SPF includes and DKIM records, which can conflict. DMARC alignment failures silently break deliverability.
Overage charges that 10x your bill
Exceeding your plan's included volume triggers per-email overage charges. SendGrid charges $1.30/1,000 overages on Essentials — 13x the SES rate. A single product launch email that exceeds your plan can cost hundreds. Some providers hard-cap (emails bounce after limit); others charge overages silently. Always check overage pricing, not just base plan costs.
Contact-based pricing punishes large lists
Marketing platforms (Mailchimp, MailerLite) charge per subscriber count regardless of how many emails you send. Inactive subscribers cost money without generating opens or clicks. Mailchimp charges $100/mo at 10K contacts even if you send zero emails. Regular list cleaning isn't optional — it directly reduces your bill. Transactional APIs (SES, Resend) charge per email sent, which is fairer for most use cases.
SES has no free tier at all now
SES used to give 62,000 free emails/month when sent from AWS services (EC2, Lambda, Elastic Beanstalk) and nothing when sent from anywhere else. Since AWS restructured its Free Tier on July 16, 2025, accounts opened after that date get neither: sending costs $0.10/1,000 from the first email wherever it originates, drawn against $200 of expiring Free Tier credits until they run out. Being on EC2 no longer earns you free sending — it only adds compute and data transfer charges. Still very cheap pay-per-use, and still several times cheaper than most alternatives at scale, but plan for a bill from day one.
Warm-up: you can't send 100K on day 1
Every email service throttles new accounts. SES starts you in a sandbox (200 emails/day, verified recipients only). SendGrid starts at 100/day. Even after sandbox approval, ISPs will flag sudden volume spikes from new senders. Plan 2-4 weeks of gradual warm-up before sending at target volume. This catches teams who wait until launch day to set up email.
Pricing Change Timeline
Recent email and messaging pricing changes tracked in our index.
Date
Provider
Change
Impact
discovered Sep 25, 2026 · effective date unknown
OneSignal
The free tier now has limits on monthly active users for mobile push notifications (up to 1,000) and web push notifications (max 10,000 subscribers per send). Email sends are limited to 10,000/month. Unconfirmed. We could not check this change against an archived copy of OneSignal's page, so it does not count toward the rating.Source ↗
HIGH
discovered Sep 5, 2026 · effective date unknown
Resend
The free tier now has a limit of 3,000 emails/month (100/day) and includes 3 domains. Previously 3K emails/month (100/day) and 1 domain. The free tier also includes ticket support, 10,000 automation runs, and 30-day data retention. Unconfirmed. We could not check this change against an archived copy of Resend's page, so it does not count toward the rating.Source ↗
MEDIUM
discovered Sep 1, 2026 · effective date unknown
CatchJS.com
The free tier now has limits: 1,000 logged errors per month, 1,000 log API calls per month, performance metrics for 100 URLs, time on page for 100 URLs, and pageviews for 10,000 URLs. It also includes email notifications, screenshots, click trails, and support for one domain and its subdomains. Unconfirmed. We could not check this change against an archived copy of CatchJS.com's page, so it does not count toward the rating.Source ↗
MEDIUM
discovered Aug 28, 2026 · effective date unknown
AppFit
The free tier now only allows for 1 Company and 1 Project. The free tier features manual data entry, product journal, and email insights. Source ↗
MEDIUM
effective Jun 29, 2026
Appwrite Cloud
Appwrite began deleting Free projects that stay paused for 90 days, with all their resources. Owners get email alerts before anything is deleted. Source ↗
HIGH
discovered Apr 13, 2026 · effective date unknown
OneSignal
Email changed from 100/day to 10K/month We hold no source for this record, so it does not set OneSignal's rating.
LOW
effective between Feb 20, 2026 and Apr 13, 2026
Cal.com
The free tier still exists. The description is incomplete. The free tier now explicitly lists features like '1 user', 'Unlimited event types & calendars', 'Email & SMS notifications', 'Integrate with 100+ apps', 'Mobile App', 'Browser Extension', 'Accept Stripe & PayPal payments', 'Two-way Salesforce & HubSpot sync', and '1-click import Calendly events'. Source ↗
MEDIUM
discovered Apr 12, 2026 · effective date unknown
MailerLite
Free tier reduced from 1,000 to 500 subscribers/month We hold no source for this record, so it does not set MailerLite's rating.
LOW
discovered Apr 12, 2026 · effective date unknown
Plunk
Free tier reduced from 3,000 to 1,000 emails/month We hold no source for this record, so it does not set Plunk's rating.
LOW
discovered Apr 12, 2026 · effective date unknown
Maileroo
Free tier reduced from 5,000 to 3,000 emails/month We hold no source for this record, so it does not set Maileroo's rating.
LOW
discovered Apr 12, 2026 · effective date unknown
Mailtrap
Free tier increased from 3,500 to 4,000 emails/month We hold no source for this record, so it does not set Mailtrap's rating.
LOW
discovered Apr 12, 2026 · effective date unknown
Bump Email
Rebranded to Alias.email We hold no source for this record, so it does not set Bump Email's rating.
LOW
Data Source
How we track this data: the tables on this page were compiled by hand from vendor pricing pages. They do not come from the catalogue behind our search and MCP tools. Prices and limits are for free tiers only — paid tier comparisons use publicly available list prices. Compiled 2026-04-03. Check data freshness.
A source check reads each cited page for that service's name and a price. The figures in the tables above are from our own records, except for the services whose entry below dates them to a read of the vendor's own page.
AhaSend — We read that on 2026-10-06 from ahasend.com/pricing, and our check recorded: the page names AhaSend as "ahasend" and states "1000 emails per month" and "1K emails/month" and "1000 emails/month". Our stored terms were last confirmed on 2026-10-06.
Amazon SES — We read that on 2026-10-04 from aws.amazon.com/ses/pricing, and our check recorded: the page names Amazon SES as "amazon ses" and states "$0.10" and "$200.00" and "$200"
Brevo — We read that on 2026-09-21 from brevo.com/pricing, and our check recorded: the page names Brevo as "brevo" and states "300 emails per day"
Buttondown — the page we cite for this offer states no amount, tier or rate we can read
EmailLabs.io — the page we cite for this offer states no amount, tier or rate we can read
EmailOctopus — We read that on 2026-09-30 from emailoctopus.com, and our check recorded: the page names EmailOctopus as "emailoctopus" and states amounts, none of which we matched to the terms we publish
Emailvalidation.io — We read that on 2026-09-28 from emailvalidation.io, and our check recorded: the page names Emailvalidation.io as "emailvalidation io" and states amounts, none of which we matched to the terms we publish
forwardemail.net — We read that on 2026-09-28 from forwardemail.net, and our check recorded: the page names forwardemail.net as "forwardemail net" and states "$0". The terms above come from our read of 2026-08-28, and we have read the page since, on 2026-09-28, without confirming them.
ImprovMX — the page we cite for this offer states that it is free, in words, and states no allowance we can read
Loops — We read that on 2026-10-02 from loops.so/pricing, and our check recorded: the page names Loops as "loops" and states amounts, none of which we matched to the terms we publish. Our stored terms were last confirmed on 2026-09-03.
Mailchimp — We read that on 2026-10-04 from mailchimp.com/pricing, and our check recorded: the page names Mailchimp as "mailchimp" and states "$ 0"
MailerLite.com — We read that on 2026-09-22 from mailerlite.com/pricing, and our check recorded: the page names MailerLite.com as "mailerlite" and states "2,500 emails per month"
Maileroo — We read that on 2026-10-04 from maileroo.com, and our check recorded: the page names Maileroo as "maileroo" and states "3,000 emails per month"
MailerSend.com — We read that on 2026-09-28 from mailersend.com, and our check recorded: the page names MailerSend.com as "mailersend com" and states "500 emails/month" and "500 emails /month". Our stored terms were last confirmed on 2026-09-28.
Mailjet — We read that on 2026-10-06 from mailjet.com/pricing, and our check recorded: the page names Mailjet as "mailjet" and states "6,000 emails/month" and "6,000 emails per month". Our stored terms were last confirmed on 2026-10-06.
Mailtrap.io — We read that on 2026-09-22 from mailtrap.io, and our check recorded: the page names Mailtrap.io as "mailtrap io" and states amounts, none of which we matched to the terms we publish
Plunk — We read that on 2026-09-28 from useplunk.com, and our check recorded: the page names Plunk as "plunk" and states "1,000 emails a month". Our stored terms were last confirmed on 2026-09-28.
Postal — the page we cite for this offer states no amount, tier or rate we can read
Postmark — We read that on 2026-09-21 from postmarkapp.com/pricing, and our check recorded: the page names Postmark as "postmark" and states "100 emails/month" and "100 emails per month". Our stored terms were last confirmed on 2026-09-21.
Resend — We read that on 2026-09-22 from resend.com/pricing, and our check recorded: the page names Resend as "resend" and states "3,000 emails sent per day" and "3,000 emails / mo"
SendGrid — the page we cite for this offer does not name it
SimpleLogin — the page we cite for this offer states that it is free, in words, and states no allowance we can read
Substack — the page we cite for this offer states no amount, tier or rate we can read
Sweego — We read that on 2026-09-28 from sweego.io, and our check recorded: the page names Sweego as "sweego" and states "100 emails/day". Our stored terms were last confirmed on 2026-09-28.
Verifalia — We read that on 2026-09-28 from verifalia.com/email-verification-api, and our check recorded: the page names Verifalia as "verifalia" and states amounts, none of which we matched to the terms we publish. Our stored terms were last confirmed on 2026-09-28.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the best free email service in 2026?
We publish no ranking of these. Nothing we record measures popularity or generosity, so naming a best or a top few would be our preference rather than our data. We hold 55 Email services in our catalogue, each with the free tier terms. This page compares them on free tier limits, what each charges past them, and lock-in risk; the table above carries the figures side by side. Our ranking rule is published at /criteria.
Which email free tier is most generous?
We name no most generous free tier here, because generosity is not one quantity: the columns above measure different things and a tier that leads one trails another.
How do email free tiers compare on limits?
Each provider structures free tier limits differently — some cap storage, others cap requests or compute hours. Our comparison table provides exact numbers for each provider. Check the growth cost analysis section to understand what you'll pay when you exceed free tier limits.