Transactional email · SMTP API

What does sending email actually cost?

Transactional and SMTP providers charge by volume sent, not by contacts — and the spread is enormous. Set your monthly email volume to compare all 7 major APIs, cheapest first.

Emails per month

Best value At 100,000 emails/month, go with Amazon SES — $10/mo billed monthly

	Tool	Plan	Cost / month	Link
01	Amazon SES Best value	Standard	$10/mo	Visit
02	Resend	Pro	$35/mo	Visit
03	SendGrid	Essentials / Pro	$35/mo	Visit
04	Brevo	Email API	$69/mo	Visit
05	Mailgun	Basic / Scale	$90/mo	Visit
06	Mailjet	Essential	$95/mo	Visit
07	Postmark	Basic	$177/mo	Visit

Prices are the base sending cost. Add-ons like dedicated IPs, validation and data transfer cost extra (especially on Amazon SES). Rankings are by price only. Confirm live pricing before committing.

Cost by monthly volume

Cost vs. size

Base monthly cost as your send volume grows (log scale). Amazon SES stays cheapest by an order of magnitude; premium senders cost far more at scale.

Amazon SES
Resend
Brevo
Mailjet
Mailgun
SendGrid
Postmark

Why SMTP pricing is so spread out

A raw sender like Amazon SES charges about $0.10 per 1,000 emails — so a million emails costs roughly $100. A premium transactional service like Postmark can cost 15–20× that for the same volume, because you're paying for guaranteed deliverability, speed and support, not just delivery. The right choice depends entirely on your volume and how mission-critical the mail is.