8 Best Mailgun Alternatives Tested in 2026
Mailgun scores 8.5/10 on API and integrations, and 5.9/10 overall — the gap between those two numbers is the whole reason this page exists. Nobody leaves Mailgun because the API is bad. They leave because of the invoice and because of what happens when they open a ticket: our two lowest scores for the platform are pricing value at 5.0 and support at 5.0, and seven of the eight alternatives below beat it on the first, six on the second.
We scored and priced 8 alternatives against Mailgun’s current plans, ranked them by our own review score, and matched each one to the specific kind of Mailgun user it wins for. One of them scores lower than Mailgun and we left it in on purpose — it is the swap most teams reach for first, and the numbers say it is the wrong one for most of them.
Why look for a Mailgun alternative in 2026
Three concrete things, none of them about the API.
The per-email cost is high for what you get. Basic is $15/mo for 10,000 emails, which is $1.50 per thousand included, and anything over that bills at $1.80 per thousand. Foundation is $35/mo for 50,000, or $0.70 per thousand. For comparison at that same volume, Elastic Email is $19, Resend is $20, SendGrid is $19.95, and Amazon SES on the Essentials plan is about $8. That is the arithmetic behind the 5.0 we give Mailgun on pricing value.
The free tier is a staging allowance, not a plan. It is 100 emails a day on one custom domain, with a single inbound route, ticket-only support and one day of log retention. It is permanent rather than a trial, which is more than SendGrid offers — but one day of logs means a delivery question raised on Monday about Friday’s mail simply has no answer. Free tiers elsewhere on this page run to 300 emails a day at Brevo, or 3,000 a month at Elastic Email and Resend.
Support is the score that surprises people. At 5.0 it is the joint-lowest figure on the platform’s card, and it is the axis where the spread on this page is widest: SMTP2GO scores 9.0, Brevo 8.0. If your last three incidents ended in a ticket queue rather than a fix, that is the number to look at, not the endpoint list.
What Mailgun still does well is worth naming before you move, because most of this page cannot replace it: inbound routing with MX hosts and match/action rules, a genuine EU stack on smtp.eu.mailgun.org with data residency, granular SMTP header control, and an official MCP server shipped in December 2025. Full detail on all four is in our Mailgun API and SMTP settings tabs.
8 Mailgun alternatives at a glance
Ranked by our own review score. Every platform here has a full SMTPedia review, so the Score column is a measured number rather than a ranking invented for this table.
| Platform | Score | Starting $ | Free plan | Best for | MCP | Deliverability | Verdict vs Mailgun |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Brevo | 7.7 | $9/mo | 300/day, 100k contacts | One bill for transactional and marketing | Yes | Medium | Value 8.5 vs 5.0, support 8.0 vs 5.0 |
| SMTP2GO | 7.5 | $15/mo | Yes, limits not published | A human on the phone when sending stops | Yes | High | Support 9.0 vs 5.0, deliverability 8.5 vs 7.0 |
| Resend | 7.4 | $20/mo | 3,000/mo, 100/day | Templates written in code, not in a UI | Yes | Medium | API 9.5 vs 8.5, overage $0.90 vs $1.80 |
| Postmark | 7.1 | $15/mo | 100/month, testing only | Receipts and resets that cannot be missed | Yes | High | Deliverability 9.0 vs 7.0, but $55 vs $35 at 50k |
| MailerSend | 7.1 | $7/mo | 500/month | Non-developers editing transactional copy | Yes | Medium | API 9.0 vs 8.5, deliverability 7.5 vs 7.0 |
| Elastic Email | 6.7 | $19/mo | 3,000/month, 1,000 contacts | High volume on a fixed monthly budget | Yes | Medium | Value 8.0 vs 5.0, $0.38 vs $0.70 per 1,000 |
| Amazon SES | 6.3 | $0.16/1,000 | No | Teams already running on AWS | Partial | High | Value 9.0 vs 5.0, automation 3.5 vs 4.0 |
| SendGrid | 5.7 | $19.95/mo | 60-day trial only | Cutting the 50,000-email bill, nothing else | No | Low | Value 6.5 vs 5.0, but overall 5.7 vs 5.9 |
Score is our overall SMTPedia review rating out of 10, not a score built for this comparison. Deliverability is derived from the same reviews: High is 8.0 and above, Medium 6.0 to 7.9, Low below 6.0. Mailgun itself sits at 5.9 overall and 7.0 on deliverability, which is Medium.
Brevo
Brevo
Better for: the team paying Mailgun and a marketing tool separately
Brevo is the highest-rated platform on SMTPedia at 7.7, and the only entry on this page that is a full marketing platform as well as a transactional sender. If your stack is Mailgun for receipts plus something else for campaigns, Brevo collapses both into one account at $9/mo for 5,000 emails, rising to $29/mo at 20,000. The free tier is the most generous here in contact terms: 300 emails a day against Mailgun’s 100, with contacts to 100,000.
| Axis | Mailgun | Brevo |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing value | 5.0 | 8.5 |
| Support | 5.0 | 8.0 |
| Deliverability | 7.0 | 7.5 |
| Automation | 4.0 | 6.0 |
| Free tier ceiling | 100/day | 300/day |
| Overall | 5.9 | 7.7 |
What you lose. Inbound routing. Mailgun’s MX hosts with match/action rules have no equivalent in Brevo, and if any part of your product parses replies, this is the migration that stalls. You also give up the granular SMTP header control Mailgun exposes, and the API depth drops from 8.5 to a platform whose API is built for marketers first.
Medium
1 to 2 days
SMTP relay swaps in minutes; the API calls and webhook handlers are a rewrite, and inbound routes need a separate answer.
$9/mo
Starter, 5,000 emails
Free tier of 300 emails a day with up to 100,000 contacts. $29/mo at 20,000 emails. Official MCP server.
SMTP2GO
SMTP2GO
Better for: the team whose last outage ended in a ticket queue
This is the cleanest swap on the page, because the price is identical and two scores move sharply in your favour. SMTP2GO is $15/mo for 10,000 emails, the same $15 and the same 10,000 as Mailgun Basic, and it scores 9.0 on support against Mailgun’s 5.0 and 8.5 on deliverability against 7.0. Phone support is included on every paid plan, which is rare at this price and is most of why the support number is what it is.
| Axis | Mailgun | SMTP2GO |
|---|---|---|
| Support | 5.0 | 9.0 |
| Deliverability | 7.0 | 8.5 |
| Pricing value | 5.0 | 8.5 |
| API and integrations | 8.5 | 7.5 |
| Automation | 4.0 | 3.0 |
| Overall | 5.9 | 7.5 |
What you lose. API depth, and it is a real drop: 7.5 against Mailgun’s 8.5. SMTP2GO is a relay first and an API second, so if you are using Mailgun’s routing rules, tag-level analytics or fine-grained SMTP headers, expect to rebuild some of that on your side. Automation falls to 3.0, the lowest figure in this comparison.
Easy
Half a day
If you send over SMTP, this is a credentials and hostname change plus DNS. API senders have more work.
$15/mo
Starter, 10,000 emails
Professional is $75/mo for 100,000 emails, about $0.75 per thousand. A free tier exists; the publisher does not state its limits, so we do not quote them.
Resend
Resend
Better for: the product team that writes templates in code
Resend ties Postmark for the best API and integrations score on this page, 9.5 against Mailgun’s 8.5. Pro is $20/mo for 50,000 emails, which is $0.40 per thousand against Mailgun Foundation’s $0.70, and overage bills at $0.90 per thousand against Mailgun’s $1.80 on Basic. The free tier is 3,000 emails a month with a 100 a day ceiling, so it triples Mailgun’s monthly headroom without raising the daily one.
| Axis | Mailgun | Resend |
|---|---|---|
| API and integrations | 8.5 | 9.5 |
| Pricing value | 5.0 | 7.5 |
| Support | 5.0 | 7.0 |
| Automation | 4.0 | 5.0 |
| Deliverability | 7.0 | 6.5 |
| Overall | 5.9 | 7.4 |
What you lose. Deliverability, and it is the one thing on this list you cannot engineer your way out of afterwards. Resend scores 6.5 against Mailgun’s 7.0, the only downward move in the top five of this table. It is a young platform with a shorter IP reputation history, and a dedicated IP is $30/mo on the Scale plan if you need to build your own.
Medium
1 to 2 days
The send call is a near drop-in. Webhook payloads, suppression handling and any inbound parsing are not.
$20/mo
Pro, 50,000 emails
Free tier of 3,000 emails a month capped at 100 a day. Overage $0.90 per thousand. Dedicated IP $30/mo on Scale. Official MCP server.
Postmark
Postmark
Better for: password resets and receipts, where a lost email becomes a support ticket
Postmark’s 9.0 on deliverability is not just the best number on this page, it is the best number on SMTPedia. Against Mailgun’s 7.0 that is two full points on the axis that decides whether a password reset arrives. Entry is $15/mo for 10,000 emails, the same as Mailgun Basic, and the free tier is 100 emails a month, which is a testing allowance and nothing more.
| Axis | Mailgun | Postmark |
|---|---|---|
| Deliverability | 7.0 | 9.0 |
| API and integrations | 8.5 | 9.5 |
| Support | 5.0 | 6.5 |
| Cost at 50,000/mo | $35 | $55 |
| Overall | 5.9 | 7.1 |
What you lose. Money, and it is the only entry here where the bill goes up. At 50,000 emails a month Postmark is $55 against Mailgun Foundation’s $35, and overage is $1.80 per thousand, matching Mailgun’s Basic rate rather than beating it. Pricing value is a straight tie at 5.0: you are buying the inbox, not a discount.
Easy
About a day
SMTP and API are both straightforward. Budget the time for separating transactional and broadcast traffic into message streams.
$15/mo
10,000 emails
$55/mo at 50,000 emails, overage $1.80 per thousand. Free tier 100 emails a month. Official MCP server.
Read our Postmark review
We may earn a commission if you sign up through this link. It does not change the score, which comes from our own review.
MailerSend
MailerSend
Better for: the small team where a non-developer owns the receipt copy
MailerSend is the only transactional platform here with a drag-and-drop template editor a marketer can actually use, which is why it wins a job Mailgun does not do: letting someone outside engineering change the wording of an order confirmation without a deploy. Hobby is $7/mo for 5,000 emails, the lowest entry price on the page, and Starter is $35/mo for 50,000 — the same $35 as Mailgun Foundation for the same volume, with deliverability at 7.5 instead of 7.0 and API at 9.0 instead of 8.5.
| Axis | Mailgun | MailerSend |
|---|---|---|
| API and integrations | 8.5 | 9.0 |
| Pricing value | 5.0 | 7.5 |
| Deliverability | 7.0 | 7.5 |
| Support | 5.0 | 7.0 |
| Entry price | $15 | $7 |
| Overall | 5.9 | 7.1 |
What you lose. The free tier shrinks hard: 500 emails a month against Mailgun’s 100 a day, which is roughly 3,000 a month — a six-fold cut, and enough to break a staging environment that sends on every deploy. Automation ties at 4.0, so nothing improves there, and inbound routing and EU data residency are again not part of the package.
Easy
Half a day
SMTP relay and a conventional REST API. The work is moving templates, not moving traffic.
$7/mo
Hobby, 5,000 emails
Starter is $35/mo for 50,000 with overage at $0.90 per thousand. Free tier 500 emails a month. Official MCP server.
Read our MailerSend review
We may earn a commission if you sign up through this link. It does not change the score, which comes from our own review.
Elastic Email
Elastic Email
Better for: steady high volume on a budget that must not move
The Email API Starter plan is $19/mo for 50,000 emails, which works out at $0.38 per thousand against Mailgun Foundation’s $0.70 for the same volume — close to half, on a fixed monthly line rather than a usage meter. Pricing value scores 8.0 against 5.0. The free tier is 3,000 emails a month at 100 a day with 1,000 contacts, matching Mailgun’s daily ceiling while adding contact storage Mailgun does not offer.
What you lose. Deliverability does not improve — it is a straight tie at 7.0 — so this move buys price and nothing else on the axis that matters most. Support rises only to 5.5, still the third-weakest figure on this page, and API depth drops from 8.5 to 7.5. If your reason for leaving Mailgun was the ticket queue, this is not the answer.
Easy
Half a day
SMTP relay plus a REST API. Warm up gradually; a shared pool at this price point rewards patience.
$19/mo
Email API Starter, 50,000 emails
Free tier 3,000 emails a month at 100 a day with 1,000 contacts. A separate marketing plan starts at $29/mo. Official MCP server.
Amazon SES
Amazon SES
Better for: the team already inside AWS with an engineer to own sending
SES scores 9.0 on pricing value, the highest figure on this page, and the arithmetic is not close. The Essentials plan is $0.16 per thousand emails with no monthly fee, against the $1.50 per thousand you are paying inside Mailgun Basic — roughly a ninth. At 50,000 emails a month that is about $8 against $35. Deliverability is 8.0 against 7.0, so the inbox improves as well.
The plan structure changed in July 2026: Essentials carries no monthly fee, Pro adds $105 a month per account per region at $0.22 per thousand, and Enterprise $500 at $0.23. The older a la carte rate of $0.10 per thousand still exists for send-only use.
| Axis | Mailgun | Amazon SES |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing value | 5.0 | 9.0 |
| Cost at 50,000/mo | $35 | about $8 |
| Deliverability | 7.0 | 8.0 |
| Automation | 4.0 | 3.5 |
| API and integrations | 8.5 | 7.5 |
What you lose. Nearly everything that is not raw sending. SES has no usable template or campaign interface, automation drops to 3.5, MCP coverage is partial rather than official, support ties Mailgun at 5.0 and is otherwise a paid AWS support plan, and new accounts start in a sandbox that only sends to verified addresses until you request production access. There is no free tier: new AWS accounts get up to $200 in credits for six months, which is not the same thing. Budget engineering time, and count it against the saving before you decide.
Hard
3 to 5 days
Sandbox exit, IAM policies, domain and DKIM verification, bounce and complaint handling wired to SNS, plus whatever replaces the dashboard you had.
$0.16 per 1,000
Essentials, no monthly fee
Drops to $0.14 per thousand above 10M emails a month and $0.11 above 100M. Pro adds $105/mo, Enterprise $500/mo.
SendGrid
SendGrid
Better for: the team whose only complaint is the bill at 50,000 emails
SendGrid is the name most teams try first, and it is the one entry on this page we cannot recommend on the numbers: 5.7 overall against Mailgun’s 5.9. It is left in because the comparison is the one people actually make, and because there is exactly one thing it wins. Essentials is $19.95/mo for 50,000 emails against Mailgun Foundation’s $35 for the same volume, which is $0.40 per thousand against $0.70, and pricing value scores 6.5 against 5.0. If cutting that line item is the entire brief, this does it.
| Axis | Mailgun | SendGrid |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing value | 5.0 | 6.5 |
| Cost at 50,000/mo | $35 | $19.95 |
| Deliverability | 7.0 | 5.0 |
| Support | 5.0 | 3.5 |
| Official MCP server | Yes | No |
| Overall | 5.9 | 5.7 |
What you lose. Two full points of deliverability, from 7.0 to 5.0, which is the widest downward move anywhere on this page and drops the platform into our Low band. Support falls from 5.0 to 3.5, the lowest figure in this comparison, so if the ticket queue is why you are reading this, you are moving to a worse one. There is no permanent free tier either: it is a 60-day trial at 100 emails a day, after which sending stops unless you pay.
Easy
About a day
Both platforms are mature APIs with wide SDK coverage, so the code move is short. Plan a warm-up regardless.
$19.95/mo
Essentials, 50,000 emails
Dedicated IPs are not included at this tier, so you share sender reputation. Free access is a 60-day trial at 100 emails a day, not a standing plan.
Leaving Mailgun: what transfers and what breaks
In rough order of how much trouble each one causes.
Inbound routing is the piece with the fewest replacements. Mailgun’s MX hosts with match/action expressions are unusual, and if any part of your product parses incoming mail, check that specific capability on your shortlist before anything else. Several platforms on this page have no answer for it at all, and discovering that halfway through a migration is what turns a two-day job into a two-week one.
EU data residency is the second thing to check, not the last. If you are on smtp.eu.mailgun.org because a contract or a regulator put you there, confirm the replacement offers a genuine EU region before you compare a single price. Our Mailgun SMTP settings tab covers how that region works today.
The SMTP swap is trivial; the API swap is not. If you send over SMTP, moving is a hostname, a port and a credential, plus SPF and DKIM records at your DNS provider — genuinely a morning’s work. If you call the API, expect to rewrite the send call, the webhook handlers and the signature verification, because event names and payload shapes differ everywhere. Mailgun’s o: message options in particular have no one-to-one equivalent.
Suppression lists do not move themselves. Export your bounces, complaints and unsubscribes from Mailgun before you cancel, then check whether the destination lets you import them — several do not. Sending to a list you have already burned is the fastest way to start a new relationship with a bad reputation.
Keep the old account alive for a full billing cycle. Mailgun Free keeps one day of logs, so if you need to answer a question about a message sent last week, you need the paid account still open. Cancel after the cutover has survived a month, not on the day of it.
Mailgun alternatives: common questions
Is there a free Mailgun alternative that sends more than 100 emails a day?
Brevo is the clearest yes: 300 emails a day with contacts to 100,000. Elastic Email offers 3,000 a month with 1,000 contacts but keeps the same 100 a day ceiling, and Resend gives 3,000 a month capped at 100 a day. MailerSend’s free tier is smaller at 500 a month. Amazon SES and SendGrid have no standing free plan at all.
Which Mailgun alternative has the best deliverability?
Postmark, at 9.0 out of 10 — the highest deliverability score of the 42 platforms we review, against Mailgun’s 7.0. SMTP2GO follows at 8.5 and Amazon SES at 8.0. Those three are the only entries on this page in our High band.
What is the cheapest Mailgun alternative at 50,000 emails a month?
Amazon SES, at roughly $8 on the Essentials plan, against Mailgun Foundation’s $35. Among managed platforms with a real interface, Elastic Email is $19, SendGrid $19.95 and Resend $20. MailerSend matches Mailgun exactly at $35, and Postmark costs more at $55.
Is SendGrid a good replacement for Mailgun?
On our numbers, no, for most teams. SendGrid scores 5.7 against Mailgun’s 5.9, with deliverability at 5.0 against 7.0 and support at 3.5 against 5.0. The one axis it wins is price: $19.95 against $35 at 50,000 emails. If the invoice is the entire problem and the inbox is not, it is defensible. Otherwise it is a lateral move that costs you two points of deliverability.
Which of these have an official MCP server?
Brevo, SMTP2GO, Resend, Postmark, MailerSend and Elastic Email all ship one. Amazon SES coverage is partial, and SendGrid has none. Mailgun itself shipped an official MCP server in December 2025, so this is not an axis on which leaving improves things — see our Mailgun API tab.
Should I move off Mailgun at all?
If your complaint is the API, no. Mailgun scores 8.5 there, fourth best on this page behind Postmark and Resend at 9.5 and MailerSend at 9.0, and its inbound routing, EU region and SMTP header control are genuinely hard to replace. If your complaint is the invoice or the support queue, yes, and the two smallest moves are SMTP2GO at the same $15 for the same 10,000 emails with support at 9.0 instead of 5.0, or Elastic Email at $19 for 50,000 if price is all that matters.
This review follows our email infrastructure testing methodology. We disclose affiliate relationships in our editorial independence policy.
