10 Best SendGrid Alternatives Tested in 2026
SendGrid retired its free plan on May 27, 2025, and that single decision is why most of the traffic on this page exists. What replaced it is a 60-day trial of 100 emails a day; when it ends, Twilio’s own documentation says that “any active email send integration using your account’s API keys will stop sending messages”. There is no free tier to fall back to.
We priced 10 alternatives against that and ranked them by the review score each already carries on this site, out of 10. The result is unusually one-sided: all ten score higher than SendGrid overall, all ten beat it on deliverability, and all ten beat it on support. Nine still run a permanent free tier. We say what each one costs you anyway.
Why look for a SendGrid alternative in 2026
Three things changed, and none of them is about features.
First, the free plan is gone. Twilio announced that “Twilio SendGrid will be retiring its Free Email API and Free Marketing Campaigns plan starting May 27, 2025“, with sending paused after a transition period and contacts above 100 permanently deleted for accounts that did not upgrade. New accounts now get a 60-day trial at 100 emails a day, after which sending stops. Support cannot restore it; only upgrading can.
Second, our own scoring is blunt about where SendGrid sits. Overall 5.7/10. Deliverability 5.0/10 and support 3.5/10 — both the lowest figures on this page. Every one of the ten alternatives below beats it on both axes, and the support gap to SMTP2GO is 5.5 points.
Third, the account-termination risk is real but it is worth stating precisely, because the usual version of it is wrong. Twilio’s Acceptable Use Policy, which governs SendGrid, contains no clause explicitly prohibiting unsolicited bulk email, and the Messaging Policy that does prohibit it covers SMS, MMS, RCS, Conversations and WhatsApp Business — not email. What supports our Low ban-tolerance rating is enforcement rather than a published list: seven independent reviews across five years describe sending cut off without notice. That is a different complaint from “they ban my industry”, and it is the one to plan for.
What SendGrid still has: scale, and an ecosystem. Twilio states the platform delivers more than 200 billion emails a month, and single-vendor billing across email, SMS, voice and verification is worth real money to some teams. Its API scores 8.0/10 with us, above four of the ten below. Stay if your volume is enormous, or if the Twilio stack is load-bearing elsewhere. Otherwise, keep reading.
10 SendGrid alternatives at a glance
Ranked by the review score each platform carries on SMTPedia, out of 10. SendGrid itself scores 5.7. Click any name to jump to its deep block.
| Platform | Score | Starting $ | Free plan | Best for | MCP | Deliverability | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Brevo | 7.7/10 | $9/mo | 300 emails/day forever | One account for transactional and marketing | Yes | Medium | Beats SendGrid on all six of our scoring axes |
| SMTP2GO | 7.5/10 | $10/mo | 1,000 emails/month forever | Anyone who has ever needed SendGrid support | Yes | High | The widest single gap on this page: support 9.0 against 3.5 |
| Resend | 7.4/10 | $20/mo | 3,000/month, 100/day | Shipping the integration this afternoon | Yes | Medium | The best developer experience here, by our scoring |
| Postmark | 7.1/10 | $15/mo | 100/month, never expires | When the receipt has to arrive | Yes | High | The highest deliverability score we award anyone |
| MailerSend | 7.1/10 | $5.60/mo | 500 emails/month forever | The smallest paid bill on this page | Yes | Medium | Cheapest paid entry here, and SMS on the same account |
| Elastic Email | 6.7/10 | $19/mo | 3,000/month, 100/day | Volume per dollar without leaving a managed platform | Yes | Medium | 50,000 emails for $19, with a free tier that stays |
| Amazon SES | 6.3/10 | $0.10/1,000 | No (6-month plan, $200 credits) | Volume measured in millions | Partial | High | The cheapest send on the page, and the most work |
| Mailjet | 6.1/10 | $9/mo | 6,000/month, 200/day | The largest free tier on this page | Yes | Medium | 6,000 free emails a month, permanently |
| Mailgun | 5.9/10 | $15/mo | 100/day, permanent | The closest like-for-like swap | Yes | Medium | Same shape, and its 100/day free tier did not get retired |
| SparkPost | 5.8/10 | $15/mo | 1,000 emails/month forever | Most emails per dollar at the entry tier | Yes | Medium | $15 carries 50,000 emails, not 10,000 |
Scores are the overall review score published on each platform’s own SMTPedia page, out of 10, not a separate rating for this comparison. Prices verified September 2026 against each vendor’s public pricing page or help centre. Deliverability grades map our published deliverability score: High is 8.0 and above, Medium 6.0 to 7.9, Low below 6.0. MCP means a first-party Model Context Protocol server, checked vendor by vendor.
1. Brevo
Brevo
When to pick Brevo over SendGrid
Brevo is the highest-scoring platform in this comparison at 7.7/10, and it beats SendGrid on every one of our six axes: value 8.5 against 6.5, deliverability 7.5 against 5.0, support 8.0 against 3.5. It also puts a transactional relay and a campaign builder on one account, with a free tier of 300 emails/day that does not expire.
| Feature | SendGrid | Brevo |
|---|---|---|
| Permanent free tier | No, retired May 2025 | Yes, 300 emails/day |
| Our support score | 3.5 / 10 | 8.0 / 10 |
| Our deliverability score | 5.0 / 10 | 7.5 / 10 |
| Our pricing-value score | 6.5 / 10 | 8.5 / 10 |
| Billing basis | Email volume tiers | Monthly send tiers |
| Official MCP server | No dedicated server | Yes |
What you give up by leaving SendGrid for Brevo: Scale, and the Twilio ecosystem. Twilio states SendGrid delivers more than 200 billion emails a month; Brevo operates nowhere near that, and if your volume is measured in tens of millions you should read the Amazon SES block instead. You also lose single-vendor billing across SMS, voice and verification, and on the free plan Brevo caps marketing automation at 2,000 contacts.
Medium
half a day
SMTP credentials swap in minutes; templates and webhooks rebuilt
From $9/mo
Starter · from 5,000 monthly sends
Free forever at 300 emails/day with up to 100,000 contacts stored. Starter from $9/mo, Standard from $18/mo, Professional from $499/mo. Tiers are set by monthly send volume.
2. SMTP2GO
SMTP2GO
When to pick SMTP2GO over SendGrid
SendGrid’s support score is 3.5/10, the lowest we have awarded on this page. SMTP2GO’s is 9.0/10, the highest. A 5.5-point gap is the largest single-axis difference in this comparison, and it is the axis that matters the day your sending stops. SMTP2GO also scores 8.5/10 on deliverability and publishes its rate limits openly, including a default ceiling of 200,000 emails per hour per account.
| Feature | SendGrid | SMTP2GO |
|---|---|---|
| Our support score | 3.5 / 10 | 9.0 / 10 |
| Our deliverability score | 5.0 / 10 | 8.5 / 10 |
| Our ease-of-use score | 6.5 / 10 | 8.5 / 10 |
| Permanent free tier | No, retired May 2025 | Yes, 1,000 emails/month |
| Published rate limits | Only on the send endpoint | Dedicated rate-limit page |
| Our API and MCP score | 8.0 / 10 | 7.5 / 10 |
What you give up by leaving SendGrid for SMTP2GO: Developer surface. SMTP2GO scores 7.5/10 on API and MCP against SendGrid’s 8.0 — it publishes no full SDK list, templates are unavailable over SMTP, and its MCP server needs a wrapper for some clients. There is also no marketing campaign builder: this is a relay, not a platform.
Easy
about 1 hour
Drop-in SMTP relay; credentials and SPF record are the whole job
From $10/mo
Starter · 10,000 emails/month
Free forever at 1,000 emails/month with no card. Starter $10/mo or $100/year for 10,000 emails a month; Professional $75/mo or $750/year for 100,000. Paying yearly gives two months free. Premier is custom above 3,000,000 a month.
3. Resend
Resend
When to pick Resend over SendGrid
Resend scores 9.0/10 on ease of use and 9.5/10 on API and MCP, the strongest pairing in this comparison. It publishes an official remote MCP server and a first-party Claude Code plugin, which no other platform here does. The free tier is 3,000 emails a month at 100 a day — the same daily allowance SendGrid now gives you for 60 days, except Resend’s does not stop.
| Feature | SendGrid | Resend |
|---|---|---|
| Permanent free tier | No, retired May 2025 | Yes, 3,000/month |
| Our ease-of-use score | 6.5 / 10 | 9.0 / 10 |
| Our API and MCP score | 8.0 / 10 | 9.5 / 10 |
| Our deliverability score | 5.0 / 10 | 6.5 / 10 |
| Our support score | 3.5 / 10 | 7.0 / 10 |
| Dedicated IP | Included on higher tiers | $30/mo add-on |
What you give up by leaving SendGrid for Resend: Maturity and the extras. Resend is the youngest platform here: no campaign builder, 30-day data retention on the free plan, 3 sending domains before you pay, and dedicated IPs sold separately at $30/mo. Its deliverability score of 6.5 is mid-table rather than best-in-class, so high-volume senders should compare it against Postmark before committing.
Easy
about 2 hours
Clean API surface; SMTP also available, templates rebuilt
From $20/mo
Pro · 50,000 emails/month
Free at 3,000 emails a month and 100 a day, with 3 domains. Pro $20/mo for 50,000 emails and unlimited daily sending; Scale $90/mo for 100,000. Overage $0.90 per 1,000. Dedicated IP $30/mo, SSO $150/mo.
4. Postmark
Postmark
When to pick Postmark over SendGrid
Postmark scores 9.0/10 on deliverability. That is not merely the best figure on this page: it is the highest deliverability score in our database of 42 platforms, against SendGrid’s 5.0. If your email is a password reset or an invoice, the 4-point gap is the entire argument. Its MCP server is also the deepest here, at 24 tools.
| Feature | SendGrid | Postmark |
|---|---|---|
| Our deliverability score | 5.0 / 10 | 9.0 / 10 |
| Our API and MCP score | 8.0 / 10 | 9.5 / 10 |
| Our ease-of-use score | 6.5 / 10 | 8.5 / 10 |
| Permanent free tier | No, retired May 2025 | Yes, 100/month, no overages |
| Our support score | 3.5 / 10 | 6.5 / 10 |
| Our pricing-value score | 6.5 / 10 | 5.0 / 10 |
What you give up by leaving SendGrid for Postmark: Money, and latitude. Postmark is the only platform on this page that scores worse than SendGrid on pricing value, 5.0 against 6.5: $15/mo buys 10,000 emails where the same $15 buys 50,000 on SparkPost. Postmark is also strict about what it carries — it is built for transactional mail, so bulk marketing belongs on a different account.
Easy
about 2 hours
Message streams separate transactional from broadcast on arrival
From $15/mo
Basic · 10,000 emails/month
Free at 100 emails a month, no expiry and no overages. Basic $15/mo for 10,000 emails with overage at $1.80 per 1,000; Pro $16.50/mo at $1.30 per 1,000; Platform $18/mo at $1.20 per 1,000.
5. MailerSend
MailerSend
When to pick MailerSend over SendGrid
At $5.60/mo for 5,000 emails, MailerSend has the lowest paid entry price in this comparison — roughly a third of what Postmark or Mailgun charge to start. It scores 9.0/10 on API and MCP against SendGrid’s 8.0 and bundles 100 SMS messages from Starter upward.
| Feature | SendGrid | MailerSend |
|---|---|---|
| Entry paid price | Essentials tier | $5.60/mo for 5,000 emails |
| Our API and MCP score | 8.0 / 10 | 9.0 / 10 |
| Our deliverability score | 5.0 / 10 | 7.5 / 10 |
| Our support score | 3.5 / 10 | 7.0 / 10 |
| Permanent free tier | No, retired May 2025 | Yes, 500/month |
| Free tier size | 100/day for 60 days | 500/month |
What you give up by leaving SendGrid for MailerSend: Headroom and ecosystem. The permanent free tier of 500 emails a month is the smallest on this page — Mailjet gives twelve times that — and the platform has a narrower integration catalogue than SendGrid’s. Overage runs $0.90 to $1.50 per 1,000, so bursty volume wants a plan with room in it.
Easy
about 2 hours
API and SMTP both available; templates rebuilt in the drag-and-drop builder
From $5.60/mo
Hobby · 5,000 emails/month
Free at 500 emails a month with the email API, SMTP relay and template builder. Hobby $5.60/mo for 5,000 emails; Starter $25/mo for 50,000 emails plus 100 SMS. Overage $0.90 to $1.50 per 1,000, with a 14-day trial of Professional features.
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6. Elastic Email
Elastic Email
When to pick Elastic Email over SendGrid
Elastic Email scores 8.0/10 on pricing value against SendGrid’s 6.5, and $19/mo carries up to 50,000 emails — five times what $15 buys on Postmark or Mailgun. The free tier is 3,000 emails a month at 100 a day with 1,000 contacts, and it has no end date.
| Feature | SendGrid | Elastic Email |
|---|---|---|
| Our pricing-value score | 6.5 / 10 | 8.0 / 10 |
| Emails included at entry price | Tier-dependent | Up to 50,000 for $19/mo |
| Permanent free tier | No, retired May 2025 | Yes, 3,000/month |
| Our deliverability score | 5.0 / 10 | 7.0 / 10 |
| Our support score | 3.5 / 10 | 5.5 / 10 |
| Our API and MCP score | 8.0 / 10 | 7.5 / 10 |
What you give up by leaving SendGrid for Elastic Email: Support depth and developer polish. At 5.5/10 Elastic Email has the second-weakest support score in this comparison — better than SendGrid’s 3.5 but not by much, and it is the axis SendGrid refugees care most about. Inbound processing, webhooks, sub-accounts and custom rDNS all sit behind the $49 Pro tier.
Medium
half a day
API and SMTP both available; contact model differs from SendGrid
From $19/mo
Starter · up to 50,000 emails/month
Free at 3,000 emails a month, 100 a day and 1,000 contacts, no card. Starter $19/mo for up to 50,000 emails; Pro $49/mo adds inbound processing, webhooks, reseller features, sub-accounts and custom rDNS. Both tiers scale to 10 million emails a month.
7. Amazon SES
Amazon SES
When to pick Amazon SES over SendGrid
Amazon SES carries a pricing-value score of 9.0/10 — the highest of any platform in our database of 42. At $0.10 per 1,000 emails a la carte, 100,000 sends cost $10, where the same volume is $90 on Resend. Deliverability scores 8.0/10 against SendGrid’s 5.0. If the bill is the problem and you have engineers, this is the arithmetic answer.
| Feature | SendGrid | Amazon SES |
|---|---|---|
| Our pricing-value score | 6.5 / 10 | 9.0 / 10 |
| Cost per 1,000 emails | Plan-dependent | $0.10 a la carte |
| Our deliverability score | 5.0 / 10 | 8.0 / 10 |
| Our ease-of-use score | 6.5 / 10 | 5.0 / 10 |
| Permanent free tier | No, retired May 2025 | No, 6-month plan only |
| Dedicated MCP server | No dedicated server | No dedicated server |
What you give up by leaving SendGrid for Amazon SES: Everything that is not sending. SES scores 5.0/10 on ease of use and 5.0/10 on support, both the weakest of the ten alternatives here: no template builder worth the name, no campaign tooling, sandbox removal by ticket, and AWS support rather than an email team. There is no permanent free tier either, and dedicated IPs are $24.95 per month each.
Medium
one to three days
SMTP endpoint is drop-in; sandbox exit, DKIM and bounce handling are not
From $0.10/1,000
A la carte · per 1,000 emails
No permanent free tier: new AWS accounts receive up to $200 in Free Tier credits and a free plan for 6 months after account creation. A la carte sending is $0.10 per 1,000 emails. The Essentials plan runs $0.16 per 1,000 up to 10M a month, $0.14 to 100M and $0.11 above. Dedicated IPs $24.95 per month each.
8. Mailjet
Mailjet
When to pick Mailjet over SendGrid
Mailjet’s free plan carries 6,000 emails a month at 200 a day — the largest permanent free allowance in this comparison, and twelve times what MailerSend gives away. Against a SendGrid trial that stops after 60 days, that is the difference between a migration and a deadline. Deliverability scores 7.5/10 against SendGrid’s 5.0.
| Feature | SendGrid | Mailjet |
|---|---|---|
| Permanent free tier | No, retired May 2025 | Yes, 6,000/month |
| Free daily cap | 100/day for 60 days | 200/day, permanent |
| Our deliverability score | 5.0 / 10 | 7.5 / 10 |
| Our ease-of-use score | 6.5 / 10 | 7.5 / 10 |
| Our support score | 3.5 / 10 | 4.5 / 10 |
| Our pricing-value score | 6.5 / 10 | 5.5 / 10 |
What you give up by leaving SendGrid for Mailjet: Value at paid tiers, and support. Mailjet scores 5.5/10 on pricing value against SendGrid’s 6.5: $19 Essential and $29 Premium both carry the same 15,000 emails, so the step up buys features rather than volume. Support scores 4.5/10, second-weakest here, and the platform now sits inside Sinch alongside Mailgun.
Easy
about 2 hours
SMTP and API both drop-in; template syntax differs
From $9/mo
Starter · 8,000 emails/month
Free at 6,000 emails a month capped at 200 a day, no card. Starter $9/mo for 8,000 emails, Essential $19/mo for 15,000, Premium $29/mo for 15,000 with automations, landing pages and priority support. All paid plans drop the daily cap.
9. Mailgun
Mailgun
When to pick Mailgun over SendGrid
Mailgun is the swap that requires the least rethinking: same developer-first positioning, same SMTP-and-API shape, and sendgrid vs mailgun is the most-searched comparison in this category. What matters in 2026 is that Mailgun still runs a permanent 100 emails a day free plan — the exact allowance SendGrid withdrew. It scores 8.5/10 on API and MCP against SendGrid’s 8.0, with an open-source first-party MCP server.
| Feature | SendGrid | Mailgun |
|---|---|---|
| Permanent free tier | No, retired May 2025 | Yes, 100/day |
| Our API and MCP score | 8.0 / 10 | 8.5 / 10 |
| Our deliverability score | 5.0 / 10 | 7.0 / 10 |
| Our support score | 3.5 / 10 | 5.0 / 10 |
| Our pricing-value score | 6.5 / 10 | 5.0 / 10 |
| Log retention on free | Trial only | 1 day |
What you give up by leaving SendGrid for Mailgun: Value, and the same corporate-ownership question you are leaving. Mailgun scores 5.0/10 on pricing value, the joint-lowest with Postmark and below SendGrid’s 6.5: $15 buys 10,000 emails where Elastic Email gives 50,000 for $19. Log retention on the free plan is 1 day, and Mailgun belongs to Sinch — trading Twilio for Sinch is a lateral move on vendor risk.
Easy
about 1 hour
Closest API and SMTP parity of the ten; templates map almost directly
From $15/mo
Basic · 10,000 emails/month
Free at 100 emails a day with 1 sending domain and 1 day of log retention. Basic from $15/mo for 10,000 emails with no daily limit; Foundation $35/mo for 50,000; Scale $90/mo for 100,000 with dedicated IP pools, SAML SSO and live phone and chat support. Overage $1.10 to $1.30 per 1,000.
10. SparkPost
SparkPost
When to pick SparkPost over SendGrid
The entry tier is the argument. $15/mo on the Startup plan covers 50,000 to 100,000 emails a month, where the same $15 buys 10,000 on Postmark and on Mailgun. The free plan is 1,000 emails a month with no card and no end date. Deliverability scores 7.5/10 against SendGrid’s 5.0.
| Feature | SendGrid | SparkPost |
|---|---|---|
| Emails at the $15 tier | Plan-dependent | 50,000 to 100,000 |
| Permanent free tier | No, retired May 2025 | Yes, 1,000/month |
| Our deliverability score | 5.0 / 10 | 7.5 / 10 |
| Our support score | 3.5 / 10 | 4.5 / 10 |
| Our pricing-value score | 6.5 / 10 | 5.5 / 10 |
| Product continuity | Stable brand | Now sold as Bird Email |
What you give up by leaving SendGrid for SparkPost: Continuity, and support. SparkPost’s email product is now sold as Bird Email — Bird states plainly that “SparkPost is now Bird Email” — so documentation, console and tooling are mid-migration and the MCP server lives under Bird’s domain. Support scores 4.5/10, and pricing value 5.5 sits below SendGrid’s 6.5 once you leave the entry tier.
Medium
half a day
SMTP drop-in; check whether your account lands on Bird or legacy SparkPost
From $15/mo
Startup · 50,000 to 100,000 emails
Free at 1,000 emails a month with no card. Startup from $15/mo covering 50,000 to 100,000 emails; Growth from $80/mo covering 100,000 to 2.5 million; Enterprise is custom above 2.5 million a month. Plans are published under the Bird brand.
Frequently asked questions
Does SendGrid still have a free plan?
No. Twilio announced that SendGrid would be “retiring its Free Email API and Free Marketing Campaigns plan starting May 27, 2025“. New accounts now receive a 60-day trial capped at 100 emails a day, and Twilio’s documentation states that when it ends “any active email send integration using your account’s API keys will stop sending messages”. Nine of the ten alternatives on this page run a permanent free tier instead: Mailjet is the largest at 6,000 emails a month, and Amazon SES is the only one without.
What is the cheapest SendGrid alternative?
By entry price, MailerSend at $5.60/mo for 5,000 emails. By cost per email, Amazon SES at $0.10 per 1,000 a la carte — 100,000 sends for $10 — though it scores 5.0/10 on ease of use and needs engineering time. The middle ground is Elastic Email at $19/mo for up to 50,000 emails, or SparkPost at $15/mo for 50,000 to 100,000.
Which SendGrid alternative has the best deliverability?
Postmark, at 9.0/10 — the highest deliverability score we award any platform in our database of 42, against SendGrid’s 5.0. SMTP2GO follows at 8.5 and Amazon SES at 8.0. Every one of the ten alternatives on this page scores above SendGrid on this axis, which is unusual and is the single strongest reason the page reads as one-sided.
Does SendGrid ban particular industries?
Not by name, and this is widely misreported. Twilio’s Acceptable Use Policy, which governs SendGrid, contains no clause explicitly prohibiting unsolicited bulk email, and the Messaging Policy that does applies to SMS, MMS, RCS, Conversations and WhatsApp Business, not email. Our Low ban-tolerance rating rests on enforcement: seven independent reviews across five years describe sending cut off without notice. Plan for an abrupt stop, not a banned-vertical list.
Which alternative is the closest drop-in replacement?
Mailgun. Same developer-first positioning, closest API and SMTP parity, and templates map almost directly — most teams are switched within the hour. It also kept the permanent 100 emails a day free plan that SendGrid withdrew. The caveat is ownership: Mailgun belongs to Sinch, so if what you are escaping is a large communications conglomerate, this is a lateral move.
Do these alternatives have official MCP servers?
Nine of the ten. Only Amazon SES lacks one: there is no dedicated SES server, and it is reachable solely through AWS Labs’ general open-source AWS MCP servers. SendGrid itself has no dedicated server either — Twilio publishes a platform-wide one and a tutorial for building a SendGrid server yourself. Postmark has the deepest at 24 tools including delivery diagnostics, and Resend is the only one shipping a first-party Claude Code plugin.
This review follows our email infrastructure testing methodology. We disclose affiliate relationships in our editorial independence policy.
